Saturday, March 03, 2007
-Its the state of confusion -Its after chinese new year and after i helped paint my home into a new shade (hopefully for many years to come) I was unexpectedly reined in to help my grandma paint her room. Because she decided to change rooms in her own apartment! After a bout of nausea i realised it was because she wanted the new maid to sleep in the same room as her first (nobody gets past her) till probably one day they become great friends and she decides to give her her own room.The thing about HDB flats is tricky. Because HDB flats whether its a 3,4 or 5 room flat, all the bedrooms are vaguely indistinguishable from one another especially in terms of size. Then you start thinking all the time if you should give the maid one of the rooms, because it could be another great guestroom, a great playroom, a study room and everything else. So technically if you give the maid a room of her own, then is she considered part of the family immediately? Or also an equal? Because i remembered in the maid agency reading their slogans in one of the 'donts list' for employers was not to treat them as equals. But if we dont do that will the maids get depressed? Will they run away? Will they start cursing you gibberish in the indonesian slang? Its so confusing! And also the only room in the normal HDB flat which is considerably smaller than the other rooms is the storeroom. But who the hell lets their maid sleep in the storeroom. Its like kidnapping someone in captivity.So in the end i told mommy and daddy that it was down to the choosing of the maids that would be the key towards not having a runaway maid. Matching the many photos provided by the agency with the database of my grandma's mannerisms, character, bouts of stubborness, practices, we had to find a maid with just one glance that would tell us that:-she wasnt too old or she would quarrel with my grandmama-she wasnt too young or she would feel bullied by my grandmama-she wasnt too dull lookin because we always must have the 'A' game around my grandmama-she wasnt too short because how to help grandmama when she's taller-she wasnt too skinny because how to help grandmama when she's heavier-she didnt have children of her own because she would think bout them more than grandmama-OR she did have children but they were at the age of talking back so she wouldnt miss them-AND THAT she looked approachable so that grandmama wont say she had the black face-she looked smiley so that it showed she herself was all about optimism in life.There. Because of these ridiculous terms of conditions choosing the maid in the end actually became indefinitely easier. It all got down to 2 out of 40 girls in just 10 minutes before i pestered my own mama that i wanted to eat my boon tong kee chicken rice for the over-analyzing done in my brain for the day.
Written fashion may not be history @10:48 AM
