ITH the price hike in petrol and food, I was just biding my time before encountering a merchant who would rip me off in the name of profiteering.

WITH the price hike in petrol and food, I was just biding my time before encountering a merchant who would rip me off in the name of profiteering. As opportunism is as natural as breathing in human beings, I braced myself by being as philosophical as possible about the whole thing, putting it down to human nature. Sooner or later, I will fall victim to an arbitrary price hike based on the car I drive or the clothes I wear or the handbag I carry. After all, I’ve always found 17th Century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s view of “Mankind” in its “natural state”, the state pertaining before a central government is formed, so sexy. Hobbes declared the life of man without state control as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” That’s right; I’m fundamentally a pessimist, essentially a defence mechanism against disappointment. But when I finally did get ripped off, I still found myself reeling in shock despite all that mental and emotional preparation because the perpetrators were not strangers – not vendors or “merchants” (of Venice or otherwise) – but members of the ‘healing’ fraternity in whom I had (obviously too much) faith, trust and respect. The first was the family paediatrician to whom I have been taking my son for four years now. As part of the application process to a private school, we had to have a medical doctor fill in a two-page medical questionnaire on my fiveyear- old’s state of health. After the usual 60-minute wait for an “audience” with the said doctor, we traipsed into the consultation room and happily declared that we weren’t there for a cure, but for a form to be filled. Scanning the document, the “good” doctor gasped, declaring that the school to which my son was about to be admitted was possibly the most expensive in the Asean region, never mind Malaysia. He then went on to lament how his own children were subjected to local “Kebangsaan” schools with all the attendant drawbacks and limitations of which my son would never know in the private school chosen for him. Twelve minutes later, with the health form duly filled and stamped, I was presented with a bill of RM80. No doubt, in the grand context of the impending school fees that my husband and I will have to fork out for the next 13 years, this amount is admittedly a proverbial drop in the ocean. Yet, I felt my heart drop with disappointment – even crushed by a sense of betrayal – that the doctor to whom I had hitherto gladly entrusted my son’s life would charge me double his usual consultation fees of RM40 to fill up a form. I don’t know if I were him whether or not I would have filled up the form gratis, given that my son and I are (were, would be more exact) his “regulars” The most I had paid in the past, before he realised that we are “monied” folk, was RM75, and that too with medication that included “expensive” paediatric antibiotics. Sigh! Then there’s the vet who made a house-call last weekend. Thanks to over two years of careless, callous and exorbitant mis-diagnosis and so-called “treatment”, our five year-old Rottweiler, Paco Roban, has cancer of the spleen and intestines. We’re just biding time before we have to put him to sleep. Over the weekend, he had to have stitches from an operation removed and we decided to have the vet come to the house as it would be less stressful for sweet old Paco, knowing from first checking) that the standard charge for a house-call is RM50. After all the needful had been done, we were presented with a bill for RM115, RM45 for medication and RM70 for housecall charges. Looking at the bill, I had that same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I did at the paed’s. As the bill was handwritten, it was only too clear that the number 70 was written over 50. This hasty correction, we’re certain, was inspired by the fact that we live in a home most will consider a mansion. After all, what’s an extra RM100 to folk like us to whom such a sum amounts to no more than “spare change”. My only protest is that it isn’t so much the money we were overcharged, but the spirit and principle (or lack thereof) behind the act of deliberately overcharging us. I harp on principles – yes, I’m obviously old fashioned that way. So, put the screws on the “rich”; why not? Viva Thomas Hobbes’s vision of “solitary, poor, nasty and brutish” indeed!
• Woo Lynn (woolynnchai@gmail.com), who has a Masters in English Literature from Canada, is saving more of her ‘rich’ thoughts until the next rip-off comes along.

Source: Malay Mail – July 10, 2008