The young Indonesians who serve our meals and clean our rooms twice a day are casually referred to as "boys" (there are occasionally young women on the cleaning teams, but the usage is still "cabin boys"). One woman on the excursion I took today to see penguins bought a couple bracelets at the souvenir shop "for my boys' wives". It took several more sentences before I realized she wasn't talking about her sons.
This evening, one of my tablemates, a very elderly woman, needed help cutting her meat. Our waiter Iwan sat down in an empty chair next to her to cut it for her. Of course it was much easier for him to cut the meat sitting at the table than standing, it was what any of us would have done, but even I could feel the social shock of his going from standing behind us to serve to his sitting in the chair as one of us. So could he. When he stood after cutting the meat, he said, "Next time when there is someone sitting next to you, ask him to cut your meat for you." The woman is quite deaf. She probably didn't hear him. But she did leave the table early.
There is a young Indonesian woman among the passengers. Just about every day she has to explain her status to someone who orders her to fetch something or clean something.
It feels like there should be a concluding paragraph here providing meaningful insight into this. But aside from a sense of discomfort and impotence, I got nothing.
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