Friday, January 22, 2010

Just Wait

I was told this morning, "It's the nature of my job. You don't like, then boh-bian."



Really? I boh-bian?



Ya, maybe for now I boh-bian. Just wait. I am waiting. Waiting for my sons to grow up. Then I will correct the wrong I have done. Then it will no longer be I boh-bian.

Maid = Solution?? *pui*

This morning, M said to me that it is about time to get a maid. She said she is very tired already.

That she is tired, I can understand. Tired of marketing, tired of getting WF ready for school, tired of cooking etc etc. I can accept this. In fact, I have been telling her to stop marketing, stop cooking, stop doing this and that, but she would not listen.

What I cannot accept is all her protests and arguments when I disagree to engage a maid. And her yelling at me because she thinks that I will 'retaliate' by sending WF to a student care.

Based on my experience, having a maid makes more trouble than there already is. Maid is not a solution for me. Why?

I have neither time nor patience to train and train and train the maid to do things as I want them done. It has never worked out before, and it never will. I ended up previously getting all agitated everyday, so much so that I was just a hand away from hitting the 1st maid. The 2nd one drove me up the wall similarly. You don't know what a relief it had been, when we were suddenly maid-free.

Everyone at home had assumed that I was the fussy one. That I was the difficult, miserly and mean employer. All the time, they 'good-intentionally' told me to close one eye here, another eye there and to lower my expectations/standard etc. I did. I really did, but it still didn't work out. I was going crazy, relapsing into the hyperthyroid thing and getting headaches every day. Why?

Because not only did I have to put up with the maid's nonsenses (which was quite a lot, too), I had to listen to daily doses of complaints and complaints, loads and loads of them. Earful after earful at the end of a long day's work, everyday. Cannot believe me? It's because you haven't tried this yourself.

Actually, now that WY and WF are much older than before, there should be even less reason to get a maid. Afterall, we never allowed the maid to handle the children nor marketing nor cooking because we don't trust the maid to do these properly and to our preferred standard. All that the maid did was laundry, ironing and washing up the dishes. Oh yes, and mopping the floor. That was all.

These days, WY's schedule is such that he will be out of the house even before the sky turns bright, and won't be back until the sky darkens. So where got need to get a maid to attend to him? Maid can coach him in his studies, meh?

And WF? He now knows how to shower and dress himself. It's only that if he 大便, then he needs some help to clean the buttocks and wash up. He eats by himself and loves to make his milk all by himself. He packs his school bag in the evening, so there's minimal that he needs to do to get ready for school. So how will the maid help? Coach him in his studies?!

Marketing? Cooking? I don't trust the maid.

I seriously don't think getting a maid helps in any way for me. Maids are, to me, a great liability and source of frustration. I was lucky to have been spared those nightmare of eloping maids, prostitute maids, lover-maids, voodoo maids, torture-kids maids and killer maids that we hear about both in the media and from our colleagues experiences.

The solution, as far as I can see it, must be a resolution of the problem itself and until the problem is acknowledged, there will be no solution. There Never Will Be.

Have I told anyone how my kitchen has ceased to be mine? How I cannot squeeze a few apples into the fridge because it is already packed? How I have to spend one hour or so everyday washing the dishes after dinner, scrubbing pot after pot? Bliss, you say? And I chose this?

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Good Morning!

Starting from the 1st day of school this year, I have been coming in to the office at about 7:40am everyday. Only on Fridays, I arrive about 8:30am.

That's much, much, much earlier than I have been arriving at the office last year and the years before that. Then, it was common to find me in the office only closer to 9am.

A typical school/work day will start off when my alarm clocks rings at 5:15am. Once up, I wash up a little, then set about cleaning the table, boiling the water and getting the boys' water bottles ready etc. Then I wake R and WY up when breakfast is ready at about 5:45am.

As R and WY eat breakfast, I go for my shower. Then it will be time to settle the lanudry (sometimes it is to put the clothes to wash, sometimes it will be to hang them out to dry). By this time, R would (have to) finish washing up the dishes and be in his shower. WY would also have been shoo'ed into his shower.

By about 6:40am or so, everyone would be dressed up and ready to set off for school. We only briefly check that WF is ok (still sleeping soundly on his bed), then we would dash off to the lift.

The journey to school via PIE is generally quite alright with only an unexplainable slow-down just outside Kallang Swimming Complex. The challenge comes when we exit at Whitley Road.

The crawl from Whitley Road to the junction where The Equatorial (which has been morphed from Hotel Equatorial) is, will take an average of 15 minutes. During this time, I will watch the dark morning sky slowly cracking up to a new, soft glow. The process seems no faster than our crawl on the jam-packed road.

When we finally turn into Bt Timah Road, the going will be a little smoother along the stretch just outside NIE. But once we hit the Bt Timah Road / Farrer Road junction, we will have to slow down once again.

Starting from Coronation Plaze (where a long line of cars waits to turn into King's Road, presumably for NYPS), it will be a slow crawl until Gate 2 of the school. In between, there will be many cars inching in from the left to the right, and from the rightto the left....

The ride up to WY's classroom block is a great relief from the jam on the road outside the school. In fact, it is nice to just look over the field and tracks, where some runners will be jogging on. What a contrast to the crazy jam just on the other side of the school fence.

After WY alights from the car, we will proceed slowly to exit at Gate 3 where the wait for our turn to go out to the main road will take an average of 5 minutes. Then to get to the U-turn and actually making the U-turn into Dunearn Road will take another 10 to 15 minutes.

All in all, we will be on Dunearn Road by about 7:20am - 7:30am. Our ERP-less ride (ERP has not been switched on yet at that time, phew!) to the office via Stevens Road, Scotts Road, Orchard Road, Penang Road and then Havelock Road and South Bridge Road (or sometimes we use Temple Street in Chinatown for this part) takes about 10 minutes.

It's refreshing to be the 1st person around my work station to arrive in the office each morning. I am still not very used to it yet, but I think I will soon; the guards at the lobby always sound very loud as they cheerfully greet me, "Good morning!" :)