skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Observations at WorldWide Plaza Hong Kong
On the morning of my observation study, I headed towards Central using the MTR. During my journey, I observed a large number of foreign female groups that are traveling either alone or in groups and carrying large suitcases or baggage. Their carry ons are much larger than the paper and plastic bags seen with Filipino domestic workers in Singapore. As I alight into Central Station, I followed the crowd to the exit and found a large number of people have already gathered at the entrance to the MTR station that appears to be waiting for friends and family. Next to the gathering spot is an entrance to a bank that is roped off with a sign clearly station "no-waiting/no sitting". At 9:00 am, the path leading towards Worldwide Plaza (a plaza similar to Lucky Plaza Singapore and Kota Raya Kuala Lumpur) are already packed with hundreds of people and many promoters of telco deals, phonecards and other Filipino consumer products are already stationed to wheel in Filipino customers. There were also a number of church members present in the area. While most stores around Central are not yet opened for business, the WorldWide Plaza is bustling with people and business with hardly any space to circulate. The atmosphere is peculiar with almost 95% of the crowd is female and mostly likely foreign domestic workers. I was surrounded with Tagalog and Filipino snacks are piled outside shops and people eating and chatting in and out of the shops. It is as if the entire floor was a singular space where the internal spaces of the shops merely provides a space for the shopowner and for storage. I walked around and found alot of the shops similar to those found in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, selling mostly phonecards, mobile phone credit, food, groceries, clothes, jewelry and others. The difference here is that there are also tiny shops that sell a combination of all these goods and appear to extend the food business for Sundays as the food is placed in the circulation 
area beyond the shop. The place was extremely crowded with a LOS of E , reminding me of the weekend shopping traffic in Oxford Circus, London. The plaza has three floors but unlike the other complexes, the whole complex caters for the Filipino consumer with no or very little sign of shops catering to local consumers. The plaza is at the same level to a network of pedestrian overhead, which a large number of female domestic workers are also waiting or resting although no one is seen picnicking in the World Wide Plaza or the overhead bridge. While there is a large number of female customers in the building, there is only one washroom for each female and male per floor of the building but unfortunately they 
are not opened for public but for tenants only. They are locked and only tenants have access keys to these facilities. I expect this to be highly inconvenient for customers since there is a very large number of female customers in the complex. At around 9:30, the bottom floor female toilet was opened to public and ropes were placed around the entrance to form a queue. Large number of foreign female domestic workers are already seen queuing up for the facility. As I have mentioned before, the entire complex and area appears to have been permanently privatized and this is more apparently when I looked at the advertisements around the area which is sometimes entirely in Tagalog or adverting directly towards Filipino clients.
On the morning of my observation study, I headed towards Central using the MTR. During my journey, I observed a large number of foreign female groups that are traveling either alone or in groups and carrying large suitcases or baggage. Their carry ons are much larger than the paper and plastic bags seen with Filipino domestic workers in Singapore. As I alight into Central Station, I followed the crowd to the exit and found a large number of people have already gathered at the entrance to the MTR station that appears to be waiting for friends and family. Next to the gathering spot is an entrance to a bank that is roped off with a sign clearly station "no-waiting/no sitting". At 9:00 am, the path leading towards Worldwide Plaza (a plaza similar to Lucky Plaza Singapore and Kota Raya Kuala Lumpur) are already packed with hundreds of people and many promoters of telco deals, phonecards and other Filipino consumer products are already stationed to wheel in Filipino customers. There were also a number of church members present in the area. While most stores around Central are not yet opened for business, the WorldWide Plaza is bustling with people and business with hardly any space to circulate. The atmosphere is peculiar with almost 95% of the crowd is female and mostly likely foreign domestic workers. I was surrounded with Tagalog and Filipino snacks are piled outside shops and people eating and chatting in and out of the shops. It is as if the entire floor was a singular space where the internal spaces of the shops merely provides a space for the shopowner and for storage. I walked around and found alot of the shops similar to those found in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, selling mostly phonecards, mobile phone credit, food, groceries, clothes, jewelry and others. The difference here is that there are also tiny shops that sell a combination of all these goods and appear to extend the food business for Sundays as the food is placed in the circulation 
area beyond the shop. The place was extremely crowded with a LOS of E , reminding me of the weekend shopping traffic in Oxford Circus, London. The plaza has three floors but unlike the other complexes, the whole complex caters for the Filipino consumer with no or very little sign of shops catering to local consumers. The plaza is at the same level to a network of pedestrian overhead, which a large number of female domestic workers are also waiting or resting although no one is seen picnicking in the World Wide Plaza or the overhead bridge. While there is a large number of female customers in the building, there is only one washroom for each female and male per floor of the building but unfortunately they 
are not opened for public but for tenants only. They are locked and only tenants have access keys to these facilities. I expect this to be highly inconvenient for customers since there is a very large number of female customers in the complex. At around 9:30, the bottom floor female toilet was opened to public and ropes were placed around the entrance to form a queue. Large number of foreign female domestic workers are already seen queuing up for the facility. As I have mentioned before, the entire complex and area appears to have been permanently privatized and this is more apparently when I looked at the advertisements around the area which is sometimes entirely in Tagalog or adverting directly towards Filipino clients.
No comments:
Post a Comment