Maid Mate Made...?

Anyone had encounter with maids before in Singapore? I think they're a pretty common sight if society had reached an affluent state where people can afford to employ someone to enact daily chores. Or you have a segment of society where they're damn rich and don’t know where to spend their money on. Or it could be a case of having domestic help because you really really in desperate need of one.

I am not at a stage yet where I need a maid, nor do I in a financial position which allows me to hire a maid. But I had my fair share of maid terror, or whatever you want to call it. It happened a few yrs back when I was staying in Choa Chu Kang. Its kinda freaky when I think about it. One morning I noticed there was a letter slotted inside my doorstep. I opened the letter and it was written in Bahasa Indonesia. So that rules out my other housemate who cant read Bahasa Melayu. At least I got an A for Bahasa Melayu in my STPM and I was one of the 3 shortlisted candidates for RSI (Radio Singapore International) for Producer Presenter for their Bahasa Melayu programmes.

The author of the letter said she had been observing a particular somebody going out of the house at a specific time and she wants to be friends with this person. So after checking out the timing of the stated time, the person she was referring to was me!!! Lucky me or unlucky me. Days go by, I wrote back trying to find out her identity but to no avail. Then I was away for about a week, and this stalker maid start to get paranoid, asking me where I been to, why I was not responding to her mails? I was like, huh? I started to get really wary whenever I walked out of the lift, fearing some psycho will come out and take a stab at me behind my back.

I even went to the point of getting 2 of my girl "friends" to pose as my girlfriends on 2 separate occasions. I purposely left my door open and let her see that I have girl guest. Wow, instanteneous reaction, she started to query me on who are the girls, saying she felt sad I have someone special someone in my life. I finally felt that this is all a nuisance and wanted to report to the police. At one point, she even sent chocolates to me which I threw away, and I even got other maid writing letter to me asking me to layoff this maid.

And finally a reprieve. the maid said that his employer found out she was sending letters to me and the wife also not happy that her husband chats up with her. So to end all this, she was send back to the maid agency. Well on a hindsight, I felt abit sorry for her predicament. On the other hand, I find the whole episode too freaking weird.

Anyway, I also saw maids getting a public tongue lashing before by their employers. A lady once scolded her maid in a packed mrt train till tears start flowing down from her eyes. Just last week, I saw a lady scolded her maid for dissapearing with the employer's young daughter. My friend told me that her 2 Filipino maids employed by the employer she is renting the room from, forbids them from turning on the fan during the day.

But on a lighter note, I had seen maid been treated nicely by their employers, for instance sitting on the same table enjoying dim sum breakfast, going for a brisk walk with their employers, or even reading about them in papers where maids are actually sent to pursue courses. Can you believe it? Even my company don’t send me to courses citing a lot of funny excuses for not doing so.

At the end of the day, all of us are humans. I think maids should be treated in a respectful mand humane manner. Put yourself in their shoes, working everyday with only 1 day off every month, being away from your loved ones. Its never easy for them. So let us be more gracious.


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