Sorry, what did you say?

You know what?! My maid and I .. we have language issues ..

For all those of you who think Bahasa Indonesia is the SAME as Malay ... come, let me whack you on the head with my Tommy Hilfiger clogs. It isn't. Some words are similar. Most aren't .. and the language is just different. And before you say .. well, that should be enough to issue instructions - it isn't. Really.

I swear my maid probably only understands A LITTLE of what I'm telling her .. and the same goes for me. When she starts chattering to me about something, I have close to no clue at all about what she's telling me. SIGH. As long as I don't hear relevant words like "blood", "fall", "knife" etc .. I don't ask her to repeat her story.

SIGH. My previous maid, Khalimah ... did a 2 year stint in Brunei before coming to Singapore so she understands Malay very well and she can even speak it the way Singaporean/Malaysian/Bruneian Malays do .. so it was a piece of cake working with her.

Newbie speaks with a strong Indonesian accent. And she understands ZERO Malay. I think most of the time when I ask her to do something, she understand just 40% of my instructions and justs wings it. Damn.

Thankfully, Khalimah did manage to impart quite a bit of info to her those few days before she left and so, the situation isn't THAT desperate. I overheard Stanley trying to tell her something the other day .. and of course, she got it wrong much to his annoyance. hahahah!! I HAD already told him NOT to try to instruct her to do anything. Just tell me and I'll let her know but uncle decided to be clever ... anyway, his instructions were given in really really bad Malay ... cos of course, he can't actually speak proper Malay just the usual 20 words or so .. lol .. and even then it's the type of Malay u hear being spoken by the old Chinese aunties and uncles ... cos he learned it from his mother.

Anyway, I've decided that it's easier for me to use her Indonesian words so she can understand me quicker, so I've started saying "mobil" rather than "kereta" ... which is "car" in English (for eg) and I'm picking up words here and there from her and using them. Hopefully, I'll get to speak Bahasa Indonesia soon so SHE can understand me PROPERLY finally.

One can hope.

Fabulous find !!!

Check out the wide variety of Halloween decorations !! .. You'll never guess where I found them ..

Gosh, if I lived in a house and and not an apt, I would be buying all these up to decorate my front yard ...

Ah yes, you can find these decorations at Daiso ... YEAP, MY Daiso .. my all time fav store. LOL !!

And everything u see is 2 bucks each !! So blardy cheap !!

3 little words I dread hearing ...

It started with Stanley .. he was sooooo used to asking Khalimah (my previous maid) where anything and everything was in the house, that he took for granted that newbie would be the same too .. when Khalimah first arrived at my home, one of the first things she did was to recognize what went where in the cupboards and even rearranged most of the stuff in them to maximise space and to also make it neater. So basically, she more or less, KNEW where most things were.

Stanley would just have to ASK her ONE time and she'd know where it was ... or if she forgot, she'd have a rough idea WHERE to look for it.

Newbie .. well, that's just it .. she's newbie .. and she's blur-ie, and when he asked her a couple of times whether she'd seen this or that .. he'd get the answer

I DON'T KNOW.

hahahahahah !! It's fine and dandy hearing that once in a while .. but everytime he asked her where something was or whether she'd even SEEN it on the table/shelf etc ... her answer would be that.

And said with a smile too !! ..

It just KILLED him. He was soooo annoyed with her, he'd complain to me no end about how useless she was.

hahahahahah! ... I gave him a very simple solution. I told him to quit asking her anything. Or at least stop asking her where things were. I told him she had no clue. He'd probably be better off asking Emily where it was. HAHAHAHA !!

Anyway, I never ask where anything was if I wanted to find it. I just go looking for it myself. Or if I ask, I'm already mentally prepared to hear that standard answer from her. When I ask, it's more rhetorical than anything.

SIGH.

And the worst thing is, she doesn't help u to look for it. Khalimah would. She would try to remember the last time she saw it and search for it there.

Newbie doesn't have initiative. At all.

Anyway, I've been looking for my Canon camera charger for days. I usually keep it in my study drawer .. but must've put them somewhere else this time when I was rushing off somewhere. The problem is trying to recall WHERE that somewhere is .. so I spent a half hour today hunting around for it. It was at the tip of my tongue to ask newbie if she had seen it at all while cleaning up. But the thought of hearing those 3 words from her stopped me in my tracks.

I'll take my chances looking for the damn thing on my own.

Anaconda ...

So we were at Marks and Sparks at Wheelock this afternoon looking for a swimsuit so that I can go down with Stanley and the girls ... Yes, I don't have a swimsuit .. well, I did have one but I gave that away recently (cos the thing didn't fit well at the chest area) and so I was swimwear-less.

Anyway, yes .. I shop at Marks and Spencers cos I am BIG. lol. And those shops selling teeny little swimsuits .. yes, they won't fit me. EVER.

So we were looking at my choices .. and boy, there wasn't much ... cos strangely enough .. even though the swimsuits were meant for bigger sized women like myself ... you'd have THOUGHT that they'd be more modest at the boob area .. I mean come on, if you're a big lady .. WHY would men want to stare at your boobs anyway? ... I thought it was bizarre that a lot of the swimsuits had fronts that revealed quite a lot of boob. HUH. There was ONE swimsuit that had a fairly modest front ... but guess what? .. It had this weird ass serpent like pattern on the front ... sort of like a snake's belly ...

I took one look at it and my heart sank. I was PRAYING my hubby wouldn't insist I get that just cos the front wasn't revealing. I'd rather die than look like a GINORMOUS ANACONDA.

hahahhahaha. Come on, don't u remember that awful movie in 1997 which had Jennifer Lopez in it ... getting chased by a giant anaconda in some Brazillian rainforest??!!

Anyway, I decided to just try it on. And true enough, even hubby had to agree that I looked like a snake cos of the design .. plus it blardy cost 110 bucks!

Thank GOD he didn't insist that I get that one. We settled on a plain black one with a pretty black and white design under the bust area .. yes, the front is a bit low but it isn't that bad. It wasn't $110 ... but $99 ...

And no .. there is NO WAY ON THIS EARTH I AM GOING TO POST A PIC OF ME IN IT .. lol.

reorganizing ...

So yes, that's what we did today ... I made her take every single thing out of my girls' wardrobe then I used a laundry rack with wheels and slowly hung the their dresses back up ... taking out the ones which either didn't fit or was old looking or just didn't look nice to me. Then made her roll it into the room to hang it back up in the wardrobe .. also instructed her on which way to hang the clothes up so that they all faced the same way .. and to hang them according to length for the dresses. While I was doing the sorting, I told her to wipe the whole cupboard interior. Like I said, my maid is not lazy ... just that she doesn't know A LOT OF THINGS and she lacks initiative. Anyway, I don't care. I am up to training her .. even if it KILLS ME. I don't want to have to do it MYSELF WITHOUT A MAID (like I stupidly did for many many years) .. lol !!

I have a super bad habit of NOT recycling clothes from one child to another. I just cannot stand seeing it being worn again ... so boring. There are like a gazillion clothes out there in the stores just waiting to be bought and worn so I refuse to reuse ... I chucked out dresses and tops and bottoms ... there are a few that I really really like that I keep .. either cos Lauren only wore it once or twice and I know I won't mind seeing Emily in it but other than those few pieces ... I packed up the rest to give away.

And now the wardrobe looks so much neater !! And I can tell that the girls can do with more clothes !!! YAY !!!! It's SHOPPING TIME !!!

Ah yes, the benefits of being organized ... u can tell what u need more of and what u need to throw out ... :p

Frustration ...

While my new maid isn't lazy or anything, she has zero organizaional skills. ZERO. She has no clue and no initiative to say, clean up and organize cupboards. So imagine my horror, when I opened my girls' wardrobe and saw the state it was in. Everything was more or less hung with no sense of anything. They were not hung according to length, type or even whether it was Lauren's or Emily's. I could see Lauren's school uniform just hanging in between some party dresses and such.

sigh. It's only been THREE months and my cupboards are fallin apart ... not literally, but the stuff inside. She cleans and cooks and irons fine .. except for minor stuff here and there .. but she won't do anything extra unless tasked to. One thing is mainly, she seems to have no time .. ah, that's another thing she has ... BAD TIME MANAGEMENT. really bad. She's always rushing to do this and that. I don't know why cos my previous maid had tons of free time to sit down and play with my girls. Newbie can barely get things done and at the end of the day she looks frazzled and tired. While I do pity her and try to cut down on her chores ... the basic stuff still has to be done.

My maid is lucky I am not the screaming sort. I have never yelled at or hollered or screamed at ANY of my maids. I consider it counterproductive. Yes, I feel like doing it but I don't. I just nag and remind and nag and remind till the cows come home. And I look resigned. This is just with my new maid. My previous maid was SuperMaid. Never had to remind or nag her about anything.

My previous maid used to tell me that if I ever decided to yell at a maid in my big ol' voice, the maid would pee in her pants (this was when she heard me yelling at my dog one day) .. hahahah !! This was of course after a few years with me so she could speak plainly to me ... I have never had any need to yell at anyone except my hubby and kids. Ah that group of people, I yell at a fair bit of time. Not really hubby though unless he yells first when we argue then I just holler back out of anger and retaliation. The kids I do too once in a while if they're really naughty and won't listen to reason. Actually, I mostly just raise my voice. Not really scream or yell.

Anyway, I'm taking the opportunity to use the cupboard cleanup to also look through my girls' stuff to chuck out stuff they've outgrown or stuff that looks either drabby or worn or I just don't like anymore.

What a way to spend my Saturday afternoon. Blah!

Clovis, NM ... I miss it :(

here u go .. a pic taken somewhere in the town of Clovis, NM .. yes, it is a teeny town 3 hours away from Alburquerque. It took us 28 hours to get there from Singapore .. and the last flight we took was on a small plane that seated barely 20 people and we could see the pilot flying the plane. ha ha ha !! But it was home for 2 years and we (Claudia and I) loved it there.