Ano ang bago?

Finally we decided to get a helper. The decision did not come easy though. It came after many sleepless nights and thinking. But we were left with no choice since Mr Hubby was despatched to Bintulu, Sarawak to work. 

Working frantically at that time to get a maid due to the limited time frame, I finally found one. Of course, I considered maids from Indonesia, Cambodia and Philippines. I grimaced at the thought of hiring Indonesian maids, since there are too many cases heard of, most of which were not good ones. 

So I settled between Cambodian and Philippines maids. After thorough searching and asking around, Cambodian maids are quite hard to train, due to the language barrier; they cannot speak Bahasa AND English. Therefore, it would be cruel to the kids too since they are my primary concern for taking a maid in the first place.

Philippines maids are expensive... no doubt. But since it is for the well-being of my kids and my peace of mind too, upon discussion with hubby, we decided to go through with hiring a Filipino maid. The search took quite some time since I wanted to be almost absolutely sure, she will be able to handle my kids well,  have the dedication to work and honest, of course. 

So biodata after biodata were exchanged between me and the agency, until I found one that caught my attention and were worth considering. She had the right qualification, she was married with two kids which I thought at that time was crucial for her to understand how having kids is like, and she had  the earnesty in her words in the biodata. Of course, if the biodata was a fake,  I would have been duped.

So I interviewed her via phone to confirm the good perception I had of her from the biodata and confirmed her employment with me, made the necessary arrangements and then the wait, of course. Her training and her preparations to come here took 3 months.

She came 1 week shy of 3 months. Picked her up from the agency, had a long talk of what I expected of her and what she can expect from me as the employer. And the journey began...

I took a week's leave since I was very nervous leaving my kids to a total stranger that could not speak  a word of Malay and my kids were not that fluent in English too. At first it was like watching a duck and 2 hens speak... :-D A lot of frustrated wailing and yelling especially by my eldest when his requests were not understood but I was there to help out with the translation and the maid tried her best to learn Malay. She even borrowed my English -Malay dictionary to learn how to speak Malay. And the kids learn the basic words of english to tell her what they want.

Work-wise, I could not ask for a better maid. She did not need coaching, just a little bit of direction on where to get what and the dos and don'ts with my kids. My kids adapted to her, and vice versa. And life went on as usual, with me sighing in relief whenever I needed to work on off days and public holidays coz it used to cost a bomb to send my kids to nurseries when I was working on public holidays.

Good thing about having a Filipino maid is that my kids are starting to learn English words since they are forced to... :-) I hope good things do come our way, I try to treat my maid well and she does the same thing for us as a family and I have learnt to give a little to get a little, to which she is very grateful for.

So now, my kids call me 'maam' since my maid call me that... Oh well, they will soon understand that I'm not their 'maam' but their MOM... :-)