Archive for March, 2010

Previously I had written a post on What is the process of renewing maid after 2 years. I had very useful feedback. Thank you to all those who commented. There were also some who asked the same questions as I did. For those, I would like to share some information which I got from my agent.

After speaking to the agent, I realised that my maid’s passport expires a year later but not enough to cover one more full year of work permit so I have to renew both the work permit as well as the passport. The agent tells me that the fees for renewal are RM350 to renew passport for 3 years. In addition it will cost RM895 to renew the work permit for 1 year plus an extra RM97 for insurance costs.

If we wish the agent to renew the passport, we have to drop the maid at the agent’s on a Tuesday evening. Arrangements will then be made for the maid to queue up at the embassy on early Wednesday morning. However, the agent tells me that if we have the time, we can renew the passport ourselves. It will only cost about RM20 if we do it ourselves but we must be prepared to spend at least 1 whole day at the embassy. All we need to bring is the passport. There is no need to prepare and bring along passport photos with a red background as before as all photos will now be taken at the embassy. So just bring yourself, your maid and her original passport.

2 months before the maid’s work permit expires, we must bring the renewed passport to the agent to renew the work permit (assumming we wish the agent to do the renewal process for us). The new salary under the Embassy Contract is a minimum of RM600. The Indonesian Embassy will interview the maid to find out whether the employer will be paying them this amount.

According to the agent, it is then up to us whether to send the maid home for a short holiday. We must pay for the flight. It is also up to us how much we wish to increase the maid’s salary by as long as we comply with the minimum of RM600.

That is all the information I got from the agent. Hope that helps those who asked. For others, perhaps we can compare costs….

Last Saturday we brought the kids to i-city Shah Alam. We were not sure whether the lights would still be on after Christmas and Chinese New Year. We thought we would be taking a lazy evening drive. We were afraid that it would be too lonely and quiet now that the festive period is over. We were wrong. We ended up in a traffic jam to get to the car park.

Traffic jam at i-City

We also got caught in a people jam to view the indoor lights display. We had to queue up to take photographs. There were just so many people around. You had to wait your turn, then quickly run to pose and then afterwards there would be others waiting to pose at the same spot. Still, it was worth it to go “ooh” and “ahh”.

Colourful Christmas trees at i-City

It was really quite nice to see Christmas trees in March. It is like visiting the magic of Christmas all over again. There were pine trees, snowflakes, reindeers, white and coloured christmas trees, snowman, penguins, castles and falling snow.

White Christmas at i-City

Right beside the Christmas trees were cherry blossoms, peaches, mandarin orange trees, bamboo trees, pandas, storks, red lanterns all made up of lights. It was very beautiful indeed.

Here is a video of i-city shah alam for those of you who have yet to visit the lighted park. Nice, isn’t it?

And here is the i-City Shah Alam map.

School Holidays has come and gone. We fulfilled most of our grand plans for the school holidays. We did all that plus we went to the park for some fun as well, visited the dentist for a much delayed appointment and went to i-city in Shah Alam too. I’ll blog about the dentist appointment and i-city trip later either on this or my other blogs.

Now, that the school holidays are over, I have more grand plans. I have to…

• finish reading the new book I bought (it is a parenting book written by a local author. I like to read local authors because I think they are just as good and the content is more relevant too)
• blog a little bit… or more when I get my momentum back. I’m always lazy after a break.
• take out my dusty cross stitch and do some stitching before I have to wear reading glasses (My vision has started to become blurred when looking at things near me. It is funny how blur my food looks as I am eating it. I have to eat it from afar. )
• get my leaking roof fixed… again… (the contractor who told me that he guarantees that he will come back anytime to continue fixing my roof if it leaks again just told me that he is busy elsewhere and will call me back… as if he will….Contractors!)
• plan the boy’s birthday (being lazy, I’ll let him celebrate it at the kindy. Saves a huge amount of work.)
• try to bake and cook more using my oven toaster… perhaps..
• dance to my new salsasize tape (Why do you need another new tape goes the man, can’t you use your old tapes? I need variety to keep up with my exercise routine…..)
• tinkle on my piano a little bit

Well, I guess, I better get started on some of those plans now….

Only 2 more days to go before the school holidays. As usual we have grand plans. No, not to go anywhere but we have lots of activities planned for the kids. As usual, mummy will be more busy than ever during the school holidays, so I will take a blog break too.

I hope that the schools won’t dish out too many homework for them. It is only a week’s holiday after all. Minus the weekends, it is only 5 days. That is too little for all the things we want to do. I hope to…

• let them explore the computer more (on mommy approved games and sites only) Hehe. No shooting, racing or other mindless games. There are many educational games that are fun and equally challenging
• brush up their languages by letting them watch more Malay and Chinese cartoons
• let them read stories in 3 languages (learning 3 languages at the same time is tough.) and discuss with them afterwards
• do arts and crafts (which the children love)
• teach them a little bit of English because it has been neglected to make way for learning Chinese and Malay
• let them play ball and skipping and bean bags (we made two to play with this holidays)
• let them practise more piano (I am glad that the kids love the piano. I do not have to nag at them to practise. It is the other way around, they beg me to let them practise but usually there is not enough time, so piano practise is low in priority, unfortunately, unless there is a piano exam around the corner)

That is a tall order indeed. Crafts, Languages, Music and PC Skills plus a little bit of sports. That is our objective this school holidays. Only 5 days to do the things that they seldom get to do during regular school days due to lack of time. What a pity.

The kids love holidays even though we seldom go anywhere. They look forward to our own home school holiday program. We usually draw up a timetable together and they look forward to following the timetable of activities. During some school holidays, if there is a test pending afterwards, then we have to do more revision and practise in workbooks. However, this holidays, with the test just over, we can do more fun things.

This year for hubby’s birthday, he was on leave. His birthday is near Chinese New Year as it always is. However this year, something was different. This year, the kids were both at school in the morning. Hurrah!

So we had 2-3 hours to ourselves to “paktor” just like the old times. We went to “jalan-jalan” and held hands like we did in our 20s and 30s but here we are now both in our 40s.

Quite often when we are with the kids, we have no time to hold hands because either one of us would be holding one or two pairs of little hands.

We don’t have anyone we can rely on to babysit for a few hours so it is unrealistic for us to go for the suggested “date nights” that one is “supposed to go on” to keep your relationship with your spouse alive instead of concentrating on family and talk about babies and children all the time.

Now that the kids are old enough to be in school we can have stolen moments again. 

I often see my neighbours having stolen moments after their 3 kids are in school. They would walk out together for breakfast holding hands.

So, to parents of very young babies and toddlers who never seem to have the time, be patient, you will find time again for each other once the kids grow up and they grow up so very fast.

The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly.  ~Peter De Vries