See the Broccolis along the way?

It was a decision made at the spur of the moment (which, incidentally, lasted the whole morning), that I decided to fetch TW earlier from her full-day childcare early today, just before she was to prepare for naptime at school. The load of library books are due for return today, and I think it’s high time I should bring both kids to the library again. (That meant it’s 3 weeks from the last visit – the loan period from Singapore public libraries.)

On the way home on foot from the MRT station, TW & I enjoyed a leisurely walk under the 1pm blazing sun. Ample time to smell the flowers and name flowers along the way. Then, TW pointed to the row of trees by the pavement and exclaimed, “Look, mummy, BROCCOLIS!!!”

Reminds me, that she used to like the broccolis I used to cook for her. How sweet is that…

How to reject the SnS sticker auntie

The 'Shop N Save' supermarket chain in Singapore has this great savings programme - for every $15 spent at the outlets, you'd get 1 sticker, and you'd get $9 to use at the supermarket when you've collected 12 sticker stamps within the calendar month.

I remember a time when I'd look out for aunties to give my Shop N Save sticker to, because I knew I'd probably not be able to finish collecting all the stickers in time for the end of month redemption. That is, until a certain time I realised that there are now 'professional' sticker-collector-aunties waiting in right behind the cashier lines, specially targetted for your wanted or unwanted stickers. I meet them almost 24/7 - everytime I shop at the SnS outlet near my place - and it's getting a tad annoying.

So what do I do? Had been trying to be a bit more creative than nasty during these encounters, until I met one enterprising auntie who tried to befriend me at the tofu counter this afternoon.

Let's call her 'Auntie Tofu'. Auntie Tofu asked, "Missy ah, do you collect the stickers?"

"Yes," I replied. You could almost see that exhilarated glint in her eyes. And I caught that spark and continued excitedly, " Oh! You have stickers to give me?!?"

"Oh, I was only thinking of asking if you are participating in the collection only lah..." The traffic police could issue a ticket for how quickly Auntie Tofu fled from me...it was, like, a nanosecond?

Boy, I'm thinking of printing and donning a T-shirt declaring my stand each time I visit SnS outlets now. That is, until the time when the scheme's (and associated aunties) no longer there.

And there she goes again

For the past few days we’d been quite flustered with the MOM officer’s message that we were supposed to pay the overstaying fine of $300 because this runaway maid has overstayed on Singapore soil. Apparently, the police did not charge her, and MOM said there was no proof that she had done anything wrong under the Penal Code.

We don’t intend to take all this nonsense hands down. However, before any side has taken any action…

I received a call from my maid agency yesterday, telling me they’d intend to repatriate this maid back to Indonesia that day, but our amazing friend has managed to run away from the agency’s boarding house.

Now we wonder. So we were supposed to forfeit the security bond of $5,000 because she went missing from our house, and then the embassy. Then she was found, and the $$ imposed is now changed to ‘overstaying fine’ on her which we had to pay, with whom we should have no relationship whatsoever, after she had unilaterally terminated our employment contract by running away. And now she has gone missing again when under custody of the maid agency, with no contact with us at all. Say if she were to be found again one year later, or 10 years later, are we still liable to pay for the x number of years of overstay she’d done?

I seriously doubt that the issue has been thought through thoroughly by the relevant officials. Someone will have to pay some fine for some anomalies, apparently, as the local system goes, and it’s not the policymakers/implementers’ business to care.

The Maid Saga Continues…

Following the last piece of news that my former maid has run away from the Indonesian embassy after running away from my house one fine afternoon in June, there had been no news of her until last weekend.

I received a call from the Woodlands Police Centre informing me that she has been found. The police officer was rather concerned when he called me, and the first thing he asked me was whether I had forfeited the S$5,000 security bond. Incidentally, I had just drafted and sent an appeal to Ministry of Manpower 2 days before this. MOM was about to take action to demand my insurance company to pay out the sum of money.

Having treated my domestic worker rather well during her employment with us, I do not feel it is fair to me as an innocent employer, who has contributed little to this girl’s decision to venture off elsewhere, not fulfilling her obligations, leaving us worried, anxious, thrown into pandemonium, and still, ultimately, having to pay for what she has done on a whim, financially, emotionally, physically and psychologically. We had been victimized throughout this whole affair, and now I have to shell out more money to pay for someone else’s crime? This just doesn’t make sense.

This morning, I received a call from an officer from MOM, who has read my appeal email. She said I will have to pay up an overstaying fine on behalf of this maid. I think I almost lost it there. I referred her to the maid agency, which has undertaken to repatriate the girl, and would be liaising with the police. Why can’t the police charge her? She was found at the Woodlands checkpoint and detained by the police there. Isn’t this clearly indicative of her criminal intent? She wanted to cross over to JB. How she had survived for almost 2 months here in Singapore is a marvel, and we really wonder how much cash she may have pilfered from us, or she may have an accomplice, or found some other source of income somewhere, somehow.

Why should I, as a innocent employer with proper intention to hire a domestic helper, pay for an ill-intent this employee had? Just because the security bond says so? I believe the security bond was conceived to deter potential maid abusers so that they will have to pay for their wrong-doings when their domestic workers cannot tolerate further abuses. Then, where is the protection for good-intentioned employers? The average citizen who needed a little extra help at home, and has paid for such arrangement fairly?

This girl clearly is a criminal now. So if I will have to be responsible for her own wrongdoing, which I had no part of, i.e. pay overstaying fine or other what-have-you fines or charges for her when she’d decided to run away on her own agenda, does it mean I’ll have to pay bail for her if she were to kill someone, rob a bank, etc etc?

Sometimes I find government policy implementers ridiculous. Just like how we aren’t even allowed to drink any sip of water on MRTs these days. Singapore will probably be world-famous for yet another reason besides the chewing gum issue in time to come.

Free Flower

I was browsing around in the Watsons shop located at the Toa Payoh HDB Hub and a tall young man dressed in a white suit just gave me a single pink flower on a long stalk. I stared suspiciously at him, and he understood my signal.

“It’s free. You don’t have to pay anything, and I’m also giving you this voucher for you to get a free pink pouch when you buy 2 packets of our product.”

Guess what’s the product he’s selling? It’s the Carefree pantiliners – new packaging, new look, new selling approach.

Then I was remarking to the cashier that it’s so funny that you’d get sweet young girls to sell stuff to men, and now a male to sell women’s stuff. She couldn’t restrain a giggle. What’s next? Intriguing.

Decepticon in the Car Park

There’s been quite some Transformers fans dressing up their cars in the likes of their heros, and this one caught my attention on my way back to my car in the Toa Payoh Hub Car Park today.

 

Take a closer look. The red lights move along a horizontal panel outwards and then inwards again while the vehicle is parked there, much like the Knight Rider’s KITT. Cool.

Why, oh why?

If you've seen my previous blog post, you'll know that my Indonesian domestic helper has run away from my house suddenly, brought 2 other runaway maids to the Indon embassy the next day, and then run away from the embassy 2 days later.

I did some simple searches on the web on found quite some 'horror' stories involving domestic helpers. Then, again, there will always be another camp of dissidents who are totally unsympathetic to victimized employers and these are usually the world most perfect employers with zilch real-life experience.

We've been wondering and wondering and this incident totally took over our idle thinking time. Why, oh why did she have to run away? This is one of the cute stuff which may provide the answer:

Notice the lower right hand corner, spelt out in big capitals: BORING. This kind of doodling turned up in some other random pieces of paper retrieved from her stuff left behind, but they weren't as cute as this page with the smileys all over.

Lest you think we've been cooping her up all day at home all this while, we've taken special planning to bring her on some recreational trips. Here are some pictures taken during our East Coast Parkway and Singapore Flyer outings.






Oh, if I might add: she'd ballooned up (gotten fat, lah!) quite a fair bit since she came 2.5 months ago.

And she'd scorched my favourite Esprit top, broken a few mops (with aluminium handle, we are really quite perplexed...like, how?), torn a curtain and a few other stuff around the house...and we hadn't even reprimanded her one bit, and attributed all that to her needing some learning and adaption. It was like, she informed us such and such thing was spoilt, and we'd utter, "Uh, ok. Can, thanks."

Or maybe the Singapore Flyer was so anti-climax it bored the hell out of her? One previous maid also quit right after we brought her on a Star cruise to Langkawi about 9 years ago. Seemed to us it isn't advisable to bring maids on holidays after all.