Lazy Fri

It's a lazy friday. End of the week and my energy is almost gone. Printed worksheets for single period and scheduled tests for double period classes. Kids have been restless all week as they are looking forward to their 1 week camp at Pulau Ubin. So shall not force them to study too much, give myself a break too.
XX has been pressing on a nerve and causing shooting pain down my entire left leg. Pain to sleep, sit, stand, walk.... just no position is right to take the pain away. Can't sleep properly too. Feels so tortured and Ed had to keep sayang me while i cry miserably.

My helper

She came to Singapore in September 2009 to work in another family but was later transferred. I took her cause she looked humble and friendly and willing to learn. QQ seems to like her too, picking her out from 2 other transfer maids.

She was humble, so much that I wonder if there is any pride or integrity in her. I cannot stand the way she bends her knees and lowers her body to a bowing, submissive pose everytime she walks past us.

She has very poor command of English and miscommunications between her and my family had caused alot of mistakes in her work. It's exasperating. I asked her to cook plain porridge but she mixed vegetables and prawns, which are meant for a separate dish into it.

She couldn't understand " boil xx amount of water, then put this packet of food inside. DON'T CUT open the bag". We understand that heating food up by immersing the packet in hot water is new to her so we gave detailed instructions and even show her how it's done. We gestured to her how much water is needed with a pot, took the food packet and simulated the "put the packet into water" action to show her, and stressed DON'T cut the packet. What she did..... boiled xx amount of water, cut open the packet and empty all the contents into the huge pot of water. Our much anticipated, brought back from Shanghai pork knuckle stew became nothing but tasteless meat soup.

Ok, maybe she is not used to our chinese way of cooking. I asked her to prepare some common Malay/Indon food. She blended 20 pieces of chilli paddis to make a little bowl of dip. Do Indonesians eat such tongue burning, spicy dips?

I gave her mangoes to cut. I assumed mango is a tropical fruit that should be common in Indonesia. She should know how to cut a mango. sigh..... First she tried to get rid of the skin by cutting it thinly, like the way we peel apples. I had to tell her to cut off more of the skin. Then she tried to cut the mango into half, through the stone and all. I give up. Conclusion: she had never seen a mango. No point teaching her, cos half the time she don't understand what I'm saying. Cut it once to show her.... then watch her clumsily try to cut the rest of the fruits.... by then I already need the fruit for cooking. So end up, I cut the mangoes myself.

For 7 months she knew to collect enough dark coloured clothings to form one washing load and to wash the whites and light coloured ones separately. Ed and I wore so much blacks that it is easy to collect one load every few days to wash. Recently I acquired 8 pieces of dark blue maternity clothings. Suddenly her routine of black-in-one-load got complicated. The programming in her mind says"dark blue is not a dark colour". So she mixed the dark blues with the rest of my whites and pinks.... QQ's sweet pink clothings are all an even shade of blue now. In defence of her actions, she told me she had put the QQ's whites in the laundry bag, meaning to say the bag can prevent the blues from staining the whites. She would have seem less idiotic if she had use plastic bags.

I think she is from the stone age cos she has no common sense of our civilisation. Ed was shocked to see her use the handle part of the wok turner/spatula to stir the cordial in my pitcher. A spoon or fork would have serve the purpose. Anyway, we rationalised that so long as she didn't use the broomstick or her arm to stir the drink, we can live with it.

She didn't know how to store my food. Cartons of fresh fruit juice and fresh milk were left in the open. Yogurt was stored in the freezer. Fresh prawns and meat which I told her were meant for lunch that day also went into the freezer. Frozen crabsticks and sotong balls that were suppose to be in the freezer ended up in chill compartment. She had gone to the supermarket with me to pick up these items. Didn't she see for herself where the supermarket store these stuff and she should probably store them the same way too?

Then I taught her about food preparation and the need to be hygenic -- use different chopping boards for cooked and uncooked food. I specifically show her where I store these boards, basically the cooked and uncooked boards cannot mix together. In some effort to save space and make my shelves look neat, she stack all of them together. Ok, no concept of bacteria can cross contaminate. I can accept this, science no good. My breaking point came when she used the uncooked food board to cut my fruits. Then it occured to me that she never understood the words 'cooked' and 'uncooked'.

I am sending her back to the agent. If I have to go down to the last detail of matching food to chopping boards for every edible items in my house, I will be happier doing the chores myself.