Left Behind

Today, an old lady stopped me at the mrt station and asked for $2 change in coins. With distraught, she explained her handphone was not working and she needed coins to make a call. Having earlier emptied my coins into my office kopi coin pouch, I did not have any coins on me and suggested she approached the station control instead. A look of anxiety crossed her face before she said "uhh...我怕他们骂我..." I ended up changing the note for her and she thanked me profusely.

On the level where I used to work, there is an old cleaning lady. She is clearly not well-educated, does not read or speak English and her Mandarin is weak too. In my 2 years on that floor, she had approached me on several occasions to either make a call on her behalf or to help her with her mobile phone. The automated answering machine at the other end of the line confused her; the piece of metal and plastic we call mobile phone escaped her. Before I taught her how to use the mobile phone, she was paying a monthly bill without even making a successful call.

My mother did not dare to touch her handphone for a while because she had accidentally deleted my dad's number and had no idea how that happened. She once got lost within the City Hall mrt station on her own because the many escalators and English signs could not help her exit the station.

The rapid advancement of technology eludes many of the uneducated or lowly educated elderly. They get left behind, lost and bewildered. Without knowledge of English, they are unable to express themselves. Knowledge is power. But only if you know how to acquire it. Who's there to help them acquire the knowledge?