I've always been buying fruits especially apples, as well as tomatoes from the turkish shop...they are way cheaper than the supermarket and are more or less similar in quality...however i really dislike the shopowner, a Turkish man, because he is always trying to cheat on me, always trying to charge a higher price when i pay, and i always have to ask him to re-calculate, i wonder how much he has cheated of my money initially before i started paying attention to the price he pressed on the cashier machine...i seriously prefer his wife who is more honest...
...dislike the fact that someone tries to cheat or take advantage of you because you are not able to argue or fight back as you dont know the language...(i only know a few words of Dutch, which is luckily sufficient in this case, but certainly not Turkish...)...the same thing happened in one of the supermarkets...the little ALDI here in Rabot where they always have the old price on the food items, and when you pay you realised then new price is higher...you try to tell them, and they ignore you and tell you to go off...i really think this is some sort discrimination...they discriminate because they think we (Asian/Chinese) are poor and cannot afford higher-priced items, and we that count every single cents...ok, fine, true to a certain extent...but does that entitle them to 'bully' us in such a way? in this case, the price displayed on the board is the price that customers are entitled to, not updating is the staffs problem?!)
...and another example of discrimination is that as a friend mentioned...(I never really realized until she mentioned...and indeed yes, it is like that many times)...whenever we go up the tram/bus, the driver would keep an eye on us and make sure we validate our tickets...and no one really prefer sitting with us Asians, sometimes even if it is crowded they'd rather stand...it makes you think that you probably have some contagious disease or something...and once, I being so blur, didnt even realize until this friend of mine alerted me, we were on the train, and a French lady sat diagonally opposite us, with her doggie, and I without much thinking touched the dog, and then my friend suddenly asked me to stop doing that and when I looked up, the French lady gave me an expression that probably meant: 'dont you dare touch my dog, you low status foreigners/Asians'...
...but these are still not as scary as some encounters i had, sometimes alone, sometimes with one/a few frens...where we were verbally harassed...phrases like ' you XXXXing asians...blah blah blah..'..during those moments you dont normally get angry because you are too afraid, wanting to escape as quick as possible...
...and because I look typically chinese/japanese/koreans, sometimes i get people following near behind my back and saying chinese phrases like '你好吗？' etc...i had two encounters where some young lads tagged really near behind me and keep repeating names of Japanese brands...and even children sometimes shouted words which I dont understand (Turkish)...once me and my friend from Kenya were walking to school (he's a big tall guy) and I think those children threw a stone or something at us, though my friend said it is probably accident (he is a super kind man)...all these are done by Turkish...Belgians (Flemish) never really do these kind of things...
...however, certainly there are also many nice experiences, despite those episodes of discrimination/harassment...for example, while visiting the Gravesteen (a castle near us in Gent) with my friend (also Malaysian Chinese), a French man initiated a conversation with us and praised us (lols:P)...and also as I am a super blur person and never possess proper direction sense, sometimes i walk around with my map looking very very lost, turning my map 360 degrees figuring out my direction, and some kind belgians would offer assistance...also had some nice experience when people would help us drag our heavy luggages down the train when we were travelling...and when we offer seats to some old people, they would thank us profusely... I hope that our little act of kindness sometimes would help change perception of Westerners towards us Asian/Chinese...and those with selfish act in mind, who avoid from doing anything that would endanger our reputation, as we are already bad in their eyes, well to some of them at least...
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