not exactly orange county

Working at Cedar Point has been quite an eye opening experience so far, not least because of all the people I'm meeting over here. A big proportion of the people who work here at the park are what we'd call disadvantaged back home in Singapore. A lot of them come from broken homes with parents who earn low wages and who might not even give a damn. One of the black guys who used to hang around in our place, Terrell, he spent a night ranting about the plight of black people and generally blasting his own race. Well he comes from a family where his brother and him share the same mother but different dad while his sister and him share the same dad but different mom so I guess I really can't blame him. I learnt a lot about how a large proportion of black people lived that night. And the thing is, Terrell is only 19 and he shows a maturity that I think I still lack at 22. But Terrell's gone now. Gone from Ohio I mean. As if he didn't have enough to worry about, his diabetic mom just got hospitalised in a coma so he had to grab the next bus back to Detroit.

Lots of these kids show a maturity beyond their years. At least beyond the standarads we're used to back home. The guy who runs the game next to mine, Bobby, is only 16 and his mom barely gets by earning a minimum wage. His car has no gas and he has absolutely no money at all to get anymore. As in no money in the entire household because he's yet to get his paycheque. This is a man in a boy's body and he doesn't even have a dad to look up to.

I think if you walked and talked to everybody working here at Cedar Point you'd find enough stories to fill a hundred books