Singaporean family opens home to Malaysian worker amid lockdown

A Singaporean Reddit user recently took to the online discussion site to share a heart-warming story of how his Singaporean family opened their home to a Malaysian worker in need of a place to stay amid the Malaysian lockdown, which commenced on Wednesday (March 18).

A Redditor with the handle batsimal on Tuesday (March 17) posted a short story on the online forum. Beginning the post with a prelude to the Malaysian lockdown announced on Monday (March 16), just two days before its commencement, the netizen made mention of how Malaysians and Johor folk had to think fast as they had little more than 24 hours to make the necessary preparations for the two-week lockdown, which was set to last from March 18 to March 31.

As the story goes, when the Redditor’s father, a “(Singaporean) boomer who stays and works in Singapore, owns a 5-room flat, (and) is the sole breadwinner of a family of five,” heard that one of his young colleagues from Johor Baru would have no place to live in during the lockdown, the kind man opened his home to the young man. Both work in the retail business.

“My dad prepped and made plans this morning before heading to work, and was concerned by the sofa bed being too small for his colleague, and then proceed(ed) to ask my mother to get us to bring out the folded ma(t)tress for his colleague,” the Redditor said before joking “Me being a jealous brat–j(ust) k(idding), I’m not like that, ok(ay)–questioned how is the queen sized sofa bed not big enough when his two biological sons were sleeping on single beds. Turns out, he didn’t know how to properly set up the sofa bed.”

According to the Reddit user’s story, his mother also pitched in with extending a kind hand to the Malaysian worker, by offering to prepare him dinner.

To batismal, the highlight of this story is the fact that though his parents were not wealthy wealthy, they had more than enough kindness to pass around. “My point is, my parents never had much, my parents never stood out. But their simple, small and selfless actions never fail to amaze me,” he said. For this alone, he held his parents in high regard, saying, “They have my utmost respect for what they have done, albeit small actions, but to their best ability nonetheless. They are heroes to me and I just wanted to share some heartwarming stories amidst this tough period for everyone.”

The Reddit user ended his brief story with a short message of encouragement addressed to whomever came across his story. “Stay strong everyone, a little kindness goes a long way.”

He also posted snippets of follow-ups to his original story, to the delight of other Reddit users.

Apparently, his parents fed the Malaysian worker well.