Illegals

Twice now within a couple of days. Two-three nights ago during supper at Reaz and then now this morning during breakfast at Muthu half-serve cups of teh. At Reaz full cup was RM1.50/$AU0.50; half RM1; four or five Bangla lads they must have been crowded around a table with the same number of half-serves brought. Short, slight young lads of an age mid-evening taking some rest and sharing the burden. A newsreport last week cited a government functionary suggesting 41% of the workforce in Malaysia were illegal foreigners. (Yesterday morning ABC online reported the most recent ferry capsize, in this case a speedboat—which suggested illegals—departing JB here heading for Batam; eighteen at first then twenty drowned and twice that number rescued.) The Bollywood waiter at Muthu advises they did not do half-serves there; what you saw was a cup halved. (Not to the eye: those two cups madeth more than a single.) Memorably in Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur in the Baluch quarter, there had been the example of a single cup brought to table with two empties that made refreshment for three. Chap at the cashier here earlier in his early-seventies paying a bill in carefully counted RM0.10 pieces, about two dozen—teh and single vadai possibly.