Archive for July, 2008

Apart from the usual “What to cook today?”, I also have the following on my mind….

1. What to ask my doctor on my upcoming doc visit
2. Chinese School…National School….Chinese School….National School (since we have just one more month to decide)
3. How to tell my maid that I have epilepsy and teach her what to do in case of a seizure without frightening her and make her think that I am bad, possessed or that its contagious. Now thats a tough one. I’ve got some reading materials in Malay etc but I still won’t know her reaction.
4. This one I need some help with. We’re thinking of taking the kids to Genting for the first time but we haven’t been there ourselves for ages so we don’t know where to stay or what’s nice for kids aged 4 and 6. Any suggestions anyone?

Hmm… I thought I had more thoughts than this. Anyway, writing things down always help. This way my thoughts can be more structured. Otherwise, my mind will be in a blur jumping from one unresolved issue to another.

My new maid is 22 on paper but she looks younger. I am told she probably lied about her age to make herself more “marketable”. She looked 22 in the photo that I saw on the biodata. Her hair was all swept up neatly making her look older perhaps. When I saw her for the first time, I was very surprised to see a young girl with an afro hairstyle. So different from the photo I saw.

I’ve been chatting with her to get to know her and understand her better. This is what she’s told me so far.

My father is a farmer. We live somewhere near the jungle where there is not a car in sight. We only have the occassional lorry. We do not have electricity. We use candlelight and it is very dark at night. (When I first came here, I was scared to switch on the lights. I was afraid of the lights and I was afraid to see so many cars on the road.) We don’t have proper roads in our kampung, only a dirt road. We do not have toilet facilities. We place sticks above the ground then we dig holes below them to use as toilets.

I decided to come here to work because life is hard there. I did it to escape from my stepmother. My mother died when I was 7. I attended primary school but later on my stepmother persuaded my father to take me out of school because she said we didn’t have enough money. She then made me help out in the farm. Its hard work. I have two sisters. My younger sister and the youngest is my stepsister. My stepmother loves my stepsister but not us. The love is not the same when its not your real mother. So I came here because I couldn’t get along with my stepmother.

We had to attend camp first. I had to travel one day by lorry to the camp. The lorry was very crowded and there was no place to sit. I had to stand for the whole day. There were so many people at the camp, probably 300 at one time. Sometimes about 5 or 6 would leave for the new jobs only to be replaced by another 5 or more new ones.

We slept in longhouses. Everyone slept together. There were people on my left and right and bottom and top. We lay beside each other in rows. We had to bathe together, about 60 of us at the same time. There were so many of us they couldn’t afford to let us bathe one at a time. So there was a big bathroom where we had to all bathe at the same time. We would wash our clothes after our bath and hang them out to dry. They gave us uniforms from the maid agencies. There would be 3-4 different types of uniforms depending on which agency you were sent to. We had to label our clothes but even then sometimes its hard to distinguish them because there would be people with the same names around. They call out our names for baths and mealtimes and if your name was called out last or you were accidentally missed out somehow, you would get very little bathwater and only get to eat around 9pm.

Some of the girls cried everyday, especially those who were there for 6 to 8 months and still hadn’t secured any jobs. I was there for 3 months. It was so noisy all the time. There was always a buzzz of people talking. Sometimes other girls from the upstairs or different parts of the longhouse would throw stones at the windows of the girls who cried to shut them up because it was difficult to sleep with all that noise.

We had 4 teachers. They treated  us like children. Its difficult to control 300 over people. They would shout at us to stop making noise but then another group would start. We had to wake up at 5am to attend class and they would make us sing everyday. Those who were late were made to put on ridiculous looking big dark glasses and asked to sing in front of everybody with accompanying dancers (joget) by the others who were late. Sometimes we played silly games. This cheered up those who were sad.

Most of the girls there were heading for housekeeping jobs  but some for factories to be factory workers. Those who wanted to be factory workers had to pay money upfront. I made some friends but I don’t know where they are now because we all left for different places.

Of course I do not know if this story is entirely accurate or true but it helps me to understand my maid and her motivations better. It also gives me a picture of how things are at the camp overseas and why the system is such that some of them pass the medical tests conducted overseas but fail the ones conducted here. (Our different maid agencies here get some of the maids through some of the overseas camps or agencies like these or they would source them directly at times.) It also explains why some of those who have no experience still have much to learn when they come here after receiving “training” at the agencies.

And I would ask anyone to think twice before labelling their maid as “stupid”, “brainless”, “good for nothing” or “really can make you vomit blood” etc when they squat on top instead of sit on the toilet bowl, or is not careful enough with the kids near car doors etc. How to you expect someone who has not been in a car to be careful with car doors? How do you expect someone who is frightened when the light comes on with a switch to be able to use the kettle, the rice cooker, the iron the washing machine etc in just a week or two? How do you expect someone who probably leaves their door open all the time to remember to close doors and turn off taps? How do you expect someone who has not seen so many cooking equipment and pots in her life to be able to remember not to use the hard brush for your non-stick cooking pan initially? Or to remember to be gentle when wiping your priced breakable little decorations?

There are some maid are not “careless” or “forgetful” but I think they need to be given time to adjust to a new way of living. Of course some of the maids may not come from such a rural area as my maid and may really be stubborn and forgetful but there are those who are having a culture shock so I think we should be patient and help them to adjust.

My second job which lasted 7 years was as a Conference Organiser. 

Organising a Conference from start to finish takes about 3-4 months. First, you have to come up with an idea. Doesn’t everything start with an idea? Once you have an idea of what you think is current and will bring in the participants (participants translates to profits), you give your idea a title. Then you go out there and speak to your target audience to see what they think of your idea and you build upon it. The target audience is the best person to talk to about your idea.

So, how do you go and see your target audience? Well, you can do so by cold calling (like an annoying telemarketer) or you can see past participants or even potential speakers. Then you ask them what topics or subjects they would like to learn in a Seminar. Well, at first you have to come up with the topic yourself (looking at a competitor’s brochure would be one good way. haha). Then you modify those topics as you see and talk to more people.

I love this part of organising a Conference. Most of the time people will say, “Ok, but I’ve only got 5 minutes” but some end up talking to you for an hour sometimes, complaining about their job grouses. Hahaha. Sometimes they just want to “ponteng kerja” (skip work) for a little while I guess. And talking to a visitor allows you to do that. Lol!. I’ve had many memorable experiences doing research for my Conferences. Some of them include…

• being scolded or reprimanded by a CEO for being late. Oops!
• being wolf wistled at by factory staff when visiting Factory Managers or Store Managers
• stopping to admire the scenery at a luxury condo when visiting a Condominum manager
• having to don plastic caps, gloves, and plastic over my shoes when visiting an electronics factory
• being asked to buy an expensive lunch at some exclusive makan place
• and many more

We saw people in HR, finance, accounts, people who are managing buildings and car parks, merchant bankers and lawyers and CEOs etc. It was really interesting and an eye opener to talk to so many people of so many levels in so many industries.

After, we have completed our research and come up with a final program, we start to invite the Speakers for each topic. Sometimes the speakers are repeat speakers, people we know, sometimes, they’re recommended while we are doing research, sometimes we err… look at competitor’s brochures. Hahaha. Sometimes we invite a Minister to officiate or open the Conference. Sometimes we invite sponsors (Secretaries’ Seminars usually have sponsors). We’d invite as many as possible to make it more exciting and we’d forecast a bigger number of participants so that our staff could get some extra goodies. Hahaha.

After that, we book a hotel and we start writing the copy for the brochure. Then we give our copy to the artist to design a nice looking brochure and proofread or check it many times before we send it to the printers.

We separate the functions in our office. The admin people in the office would deal with the admin part ie sending out the letters to the hotels, sending out the printed brochures and getting the tickets to the participants and handling the participants on Conference Day. It was also their job to update the database of participants. This is very important because you need participants in a business like this.

The Conference Organiser will do the running around and liase with the Speakers for their notes and remind them about the timing etc as well as liase and write out the Minister’s Speech if one is attending.  You have to coordinate with many people, the Speakers, the artists, the printers, the hotel sales staff, the Sponsors, the delegates (although this is more of the administrator’s job).

And basically thats it. Putting together the program takes about a month to complete then you sit back and wait for your participants to register (the more the merrier) and you get busy again about 3 weeks before the Conference Day, reminding your Speakers to submit their notes, the hotel to do the setup that you want them to do, confirming the numbers etc. And then you do a countdown, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week. All the time running around to make sure that everything will run smoothly on the DAY. We would sometimes organise several Conferences back to back and continue to move on to the next and the next and the next.

One funny thing was, we would sometimes be offered jobs by the Speakers who decide that they want to go into Speaking full time but didn’t have the experience of how to put together a program and getting people to attend it. Sometimes we even got job offers from competitors when we bump into them at a hotel. Haha.

After a while my job was more of managing the other organisers rather than running around. I plan out the training calander for the whole year making sure we had programs nicely spaced out. I dish out the ideas to the Conference Organisers and made sure that they handle as many programs as they can in order to be profitable. I check their copywriting for the brochure and I drop in at the Conferences if they need help, usually they don’t. Its a very fast moving job and very satisfying because you get to see results in a few months when your Conference is running.

Oh Gosh. It was nice to take a trip down memory lane. Anyone wants to organise a Conference? You can follow my tips. Hey. Its free. I don’t charge.

In my old office I was in charge of writing out the procedures to achieve our ISO certification. Later on, I did work on a contract basis for a Speaker where I wrote out the entire procedure step by step for him including sample letters etc. Another consultant who was attached with him commented that the procedure was so detailed it looked like an entire Conference Paper or Seminar Package on its own. Later on, I heard from the staff that he had left and he stole those when he left! My own brother borrowed my original copy of my work and never returned them to me. *stomps foot* Now, I don’t have it anymore. Sob. Sob. I wrote every single darned procedure myself together with every sample letter to hotelier, artist, printer, sponsor, etc. To come up with the written procedures, I used what I knew and researched several books too but now they’re gone….. accept whatever little thats left in my head. Sob. Sob.

My first job was as a Company Secretary in an Accounting firm. I consider this as my first job because the other small time jobs that lasted less than a year don’t count. This one lasted 3-5 years, I think.

This is different from a private secretary’s position but many people get confused when they hear the word “secretary”. It is also different when you are Company Secretary for a corporation compared to being a Company Secretary in an accounting firm. In an accounting firm you are company secretary to many corporations not just one.

I remember one of my tasks was to do company searches for companies. I would often go to the Registrar of Companies to queue up, get a number, then go into a separate room like a library to copy down all the information like the directors and shareholding etc from a given file. It was all very err…. manual. Then I would take the info back to the office, type it out and give it to the client for a fee. People sometimes check on the backgrounds of who is behind a certain company for various reasons.

Another thing I did was to form shelf companies. We would appoint ourselves as directors, then form a RM2 company ie RM1 share of each shareholder, then do a general M&A (Memorandum of Association) and do all the necessary filings with the Registrar of Companies. Then we would sell those companies to anyone who wants to set up business as a corporation. We would change the directorship, transfer the shares and sometimes change the name and M&A of the company to reflect the client’s new business. This way the client gets to “buy” an instant company without doing any paperwork. Then they can concentrate on running the business immediately. In those days, it was very cheap to own a company like this. It was around RM1,800. Imagine that, for that sum you can be the director and shareholder of your own company.

In order to form a company, we would first have to think of a name for it. A unique name. Then do a research to see if that name is available. You’d really have to think of something different because when you conduct searches for names, you’ll find that almost everything you can think of is there. Haha. I used to think of beautiful names (Ahem) like “Mutiara Abadi Sdn Bhd” (That means Pure/True Pearl) but sometimes my boss would come up with names like “Gembira Bahagia Sdn Bhd” and have me laughing real hard. I remember we did go ahead with Gembira Bahagia even though I thought it was a ridiculous name for a company. Haha. He’s the boss mah. A good name was very important too because sometimes people don’t want the hassle of changing names so they would just stick with the shelf company name and they would choose one that they thought sound good.

The rest of the time, we just did annual filings for companies and company resolutions. A company is a separate legal entity so it must have a resolution for whatever it is that it wants to do, whether its to buy an asset or appoint a director. Everything must have a resolution on paper and file as a record. And so thats what we did. We also made sure that the company files its accounts to the Registrar of Companies on time.

These are jobs that are done by a small fry Company Secretary. The job of a big time Company Secretary is very different. You often have to sit in board meetings to advise the directors and shareholders. Once, when I tagged along with my boss, I decided that this job was not for me when I saw him struggling to maintain peace among the quibbling partners who comprised of locals and Japanese. How boring and stressful, I thought and thats how I moved on towards Organising Conferences instead. End of story. Hehe.

Everyday I hear maid horror stories from friends and relations.

My maid ran away after _________ (Fill in the blanks. It can be anything from 1 week to 1 year).

This is the most common of them all. Most of them whose maid ran away are surprised by it. Wouldn’t you be surprised if the maid you have come to trust runs away after a year? I would. So the question is how and when do you learn to trust? I don’t have the answer to that.

Sometimes, I think it is outside negative influences that causes them to run away. The  promise of better things that sometimes do not materialise for these poor girls. Sometimes its the agents using them to recycle and earn more. Sigh. Its so sad isn’t it?

The other thing is the maid advices. The most common ones would be…

• Don’t allow her to nap or she will get lazy
• Don’t let her watch tv or she will get lazy
• Don’t be too nice to her or she will take you for granted

The agents even came up with a list

• Don’t buy her things too soon or you will spoil her
• Don’t give her too many of your old clothes or you will spoil her

The list of Don’ts is endless. Its a little bit crazy. It makes it hard to manage to be always on your toes and trying not to be nice to someone in case she takes you for granted.

So perhaps I am making my maid lazy but at the moment she naps when I nap and she has quite a lot of free time because I don’t load her with work from morning till night as advised. She does not cook but she helps me to wash up. So I also cook and serve her meals. Crazy? It does not matter to me. I am happy that there is someone to help me wash up.

To me, she is here to be my housework assistant. She is not here to take over my housework. I am still very much the lady of my house, in charge of my  house, knowing every nook and corner and when things run out etc. Previously I had a part time helper who was quite good. Soon, I became lazy and left a lot of things to her. She cooked and did the housework independantly but although things were easier for me and it gave me more free time, I do not think that it is an ideal situation. It is still better to be the master or mistress of your own home. It is also not a good to be too reliant or dependant on another to look after your own home. Do I sound very idealistic?

I do not give her free access to my closet and my bedroom. She helps me fold my clothes and put them in a basket then I sort the clothes out myself and keep them in the closet myself. She comes to my bedroom only to do specific tasks when told. My bedroom is still our private place. No one should walk in and out of it whenever they like even if it is to do work.

She doesn’t help with the children. They are my children. Thats it. The sentence “They are my children” says it all. I am their mother and I am the one who is responsible to take care of their needs like feeding, bathing etc. If the maid is free or if I am busy, I may ask her to sit with them for a while but she does not handle the children. I also asked her to refrain from wearing their shoes etc because they must do these things for themselves. I hate seeing maids running around after children carrying their stuff and fussing over them. Once I saw a maid pushing a boy in a stroller fussing over him and feeding him buns in a bookshop. The boy is older than my 4 year old. That kind of thing is a No No for me. We ditched our strollers as soon as they could walk and we don’t feed them to keep them quiet. So, no, the maid is not here to be my kid’s assistant. She is my household assistant.

When she is free I give her a magazine to read to pass her time. Everyone needs a little recreation and rest. I do not worry that she will become lazy. (Ok, maybe I do worry a bit after hearing all the advise but I can’t worry about everything. From running away to health issues to laziness to this and that. It’ll drive me crazy!) In the future I hope to teach her some cross stitch or something so that she will have a hobby to occupy her when she is free. Hopefully that will take care of her mental wellbeing. I am afraid I am going to have to limit her contact with outsiders because there are many negative influences for young easily influenced girls like her. This does not mean that I will lock her up in the house. Far from it. She goes whenever we go and she eats whatever we eat.

Maybe I will end up with a lazy maid who walks all over my head but I still believe that I am doing the right thing. Perhaps I am naive since this is the first time I am having a maid but I still believe I am doing the right thing. Somehow I can’t allow myself to be not nice to a person just because I think she will take me or my kindness for granted. If she does or if she runs away then at least I have done my part.

One thing that I always hear is “I was too soft and too nice to my maid but no more!” So, I do worry a little bit but how do you avoid being nice just because you are afraid. However I also remind myself that being nice does not mean there are no rules. We lay down the ground rules immediately in a firm but nice manner.

Now, regarding the maid. The maid that I have selected has had 2 years or recent experience in Malaysia. Initially I thought that may not be such a good thing because my agent and others had advised me that this might make her more stubborn and cocky etc. However, so far it has turned out well since I don’t have to teach her everything from scratch.

My first impression of the maid. So far she seems like a obedient young girl. She learns fast and is always ready for new instructions. She is good in ironing and folding laundry. She does not cook but that is fine with me. Cooking myself gives me better control of the food cleanliness etc for my family. She is good in personal hygiene which is very important for us. She does use her own initiative sometimes but not overly so. She does not do careless work. For example, when cleaning the toilet, I saw her picking out the hair that has clogged on top of the drain pipe to throw instead of sweeping them into the drain like me. Hehe. So far so good. Some people tell me that this will change in _____________ (Fill in the blanks. Can be anything from one month to after 6 months). But I shall not worry too far ahead. I am satisfied with her performance for now and hopefully we can work together for the next 2 years and she won’t run away. When we first opened our doors to the maid, we did it with almost zero expectations (after hearing so many horror stories) and that is why we are positively surprised now. Keeping fingers and toes crossed that things will stay this way.

Regarding her health. She has been certified fit by Fomema and I have spoken to the clinic that did the test. The doctor assured me that the Fomema test covers the infectious deceases like STDs, AIDs, Hepatitis etc and there is no falsifying of results as the test is sent to independant labs who keys in the results. Doctors are not allowed to key in the results. She has also worked for 2 years up to last year. She looks healthy and has good personal hygiene so I have decided not to take her for a second medical check up for now.