after having witnessed how efficient one of our friend's maid was in cleaning up after us, i have finally decided that we do need a live-in maid. actually i did wanted one a long time back but i was heavily relying on my gut feeling on employing one. if i was not comfortable with one lady, i would instead take her on a weekly basis to clean our house. once friends introduced Myanmar refugees to us. but i was taken aback when they were too demanding and did not want to stay in our house but instead be fetched and sent back to their quarters in OUG every day. how to tahan like that?

so finally this lady that i have agreed on is actually the mother of a friend of ours in Indonesia. since i know this guy and trusted him i had no hesitation when he told me that his mother is willing to come all the way to Malaysia to work. what worries me though is the age. she is 55 years old. but sometimes if one lives in poverty and 'kais pagi makan pagi kais petang makan petang,' they tend to look and act younger than their age. besides that she used to baby sit, so that was a plus point for me.

at my side i have agreed to sponsor her passport fees, air fare and visa if any. i hope to get her a working permit once she is here, provided that we are okay with her and vice versa.

actually i am not sure how to have a maid. i have seen a lot of my relatives and friends treat their maids. some are treated like a family member, some like slave. sigh. i do hope that i would not face too much of a problem with her. i also hope that she is independent cos i am already so bogged down with 2 children, work, myself and my husband. i cannot be baby-sitting another one as well.

well wish me luck!

Many a times relatives, friends and even strangers have asked me - so are you working, where do you work, you are not working today? What is my answer? - Oh, I'm not working anymore, I have my own business, I am a housewife (especially to cut short a conversation). I remember not so long time ago, one particular relative told me to do something part time at least or to work instead of sitting at home. She was actually referring to people's perception (negative obviously) if I say that I was a house wife.

You see, a few months after graduating I had set up my own home business. I had a cosy little bookstore that I myself had expanded from merely just selling to actually distributing books and magazines to 5 other different shops. It was a hectic business but I managed it along side my first born that time. I remembered I had him sleeping at the back of my shop while I worked long hours to the night. I remembered bringing him around on my distribution trips in the morning. But also I remembered him crying one time in the bookstore and banging on the door to let him out (well I went to the washroom for a while and I locked the door with him sleeping inside). It was quite tough indeed.

That was 7 years ago. I left that business to join Shell, thereafter Sunway and finally another company in Glenmarie. I only lasted 3 years in between those jobs. I knew that my forte' was doing my own business on my own time and pace.

So here I am back to where I started. Actually I am more like the kaki and tangan of my hubby's because he is the initiator (and the brains) of most of the projects we are doing. I maintain and follow up. Which constitutes a big chunk of it. But of course without my hubby's marketing and initiation, there would not be anything to handle in the first place anyway. So a big credit goes to him as well.

However there are times when I would slack. To be a WAHM is to be a superwoman. Plus with my low self-confidence at the wrong time, I tend to mess things up. I go into Mummy mode and leave the Working Woman part of me behind. I mean I can afford to mess the work part up, but my role as a mother is too important and should be prioritised at all times.