I drive a very respectable car with all the mod cons expected of a 2 year old vehicle. But call me old fashioned, I still far prefer driving our ‘spare’ car – a little 22 year old white Mazda 121. Often rudely referred to by my friends as The Marshmallow, it’s zippy, can fit into pretty well any parking space, it has a great music system and a heartily strong air conditioner. What’s not to love about it I ask!
And how have we been able to keep this old treasure in good health for so long? The short answer is due to a very understanding and skilled car mechanic.
We’ve known Ah Ping for many years and followed him from his first garage (I use this term loosely as it really was just a tiny space probably no bigger than 300 square feet) to garage – from the Red Market area and then further towards the Zhuhai border to an even smaller ‘hole in the wall’ as rents kept rising. He’s been brilliant; trustworthy to a T in his advice, patient and kind, generous with his time – even helping with a roadside puncture and then adamantly refusing any payment.
One of Macau’s true gems.
Imagine our horror then to discover, on returning from summer leave, that Ah Ping’s given up his business in order to get his license to be a coach driver! The rental payments on the tiny space he’s been struggling to repair cars in has finally got the better of him, he could afford it no longer.
So unlike the last so called ‘Brain Drain’ that everyone worried about in Hong Kong pre the days of the Handover, in this case, whilst thankfully the brains remain in Macau, skills and experience are totally wasted. Ah Ping will join the rest of the coach and bus drivers who sit behind a wheel all day driving mindlessly from point A to point B and back again – when really his technical abilities could be put to so much better use, if at the very least to train other up and coming car mechanics.
Surely there should be some safety net offered to support honest, hardworking Macau people like Ah Ping to keep their businesses going when the rents of their little shops become impossible to cover?
And it raises other issues too. As I understand it, drivers of commercial vehicles, such as the buses and coaches, may only be Macau residents. So rather than bringing in unskilled labour to do this tedious work, we relegate our own to this mind numbing existence when their talents could surely be put to better use?
It seems we’re doing the same with croupiers, restricting this work for only Macau residents. A whole generation of young Macau people lured into working at the gaming tables, inspite of the boredom and lack of natural light and not putting their intelligence and true potential to the benefit of Macau’s society.
Is Macau shooting itself in the foot with these policies?
