Arrival of Jovelyn

After about two weeks of looking around and waiting (including one and a half hours of going through the Employers' Orientation Programme (EOP) online course for first-time employers like myself -- and the course is mounted by Singapore Polytechnic!), my foreign domestic helper Ms Jovelyn, a Filipino, arrived in the afternoon today.

I met her at the employment agency and brought her home for a quick orientation, and then we proceeded to Tan Tock Seng Hospital to orientate her with the enironment, and also to introduce her to mom, more for formality than anything, since my mom can't recognise and respond anyway. In fact, even if my mom had been well, I doubt if she could pronounce Jovelyn properly.
After Jovelyn and I returned from the hospital, it's time for me to bring Cowen to his weekly music class. After the music lesson, we reached home at 10pm.

Tomorrow (Friday) will be a long day at work, so I have arranged the hospital to start the training for Jovelyn on Saturday morning. I would certainly tag along. It would take a couple of days (depending on how fast we can pick things), and good thing is that next week is the university's 1-week recess, so I've taken a week of leave to attend to mom.

They plan to shift mom to Ren Ci Hospital on Tuesday, as her white blood cells count has gone back to normal.

This weekend I will also go shopping for adjustable bed. I came across the Solax health bed at a shop in TTSH, and I looked up the internet and found the Rainbow Care Equipment selling adjustable beds of different models. I think I will go for the latter, as they also sell the alternating pressure mattress which is ideal for my mom as she will be lying permanently on the bed, which will cause bed sores.

If any reader has any suggestion or recommendation, I would appreciate if you could drop me a note. Thank you in advance.

(BTW, I have a facebook account and you can search for Aaron Tan.)

As for my mom's current bed, I guess I have to dismantle it. The sorry thing is that the mattress I bought for her is a pretty good one, and it's been used for only a year plus. Now, I will have to get rid of it, as I have no space to keep it.

Coming back to the domestic helper. Given a choice, I would never have wanted to employ one. I am just worried about the impact on Cowen. Not that I am worried about any negative influence from the helper on him. I have seen kids who scream at their domestic helper and boss them around (well, I have seen kids who scream at their grandparent too). I had to explain to Cowen that she is here to help take care of his mah-mah, and not a servant. He still has to tidy his own belongings, get his own drink, and we still have to do our own household chores. First and foremost, he has to respect her and greet her.

As a first-time employer, I am also apprehensive about whether she is comfortable with us. You know, I am not a person of words, so most of the time I just keep quiet and do my own stuffs, and she also keeps quiet. From time to time, to break the silence I would ask her "do you have any questions/problems?" as though I am conducting a lesson (sorry, occupational hazard). She just sat at one corner quietly, as I didn't have anything for her to do. At one point when I spilled my drink I took the table cloth and cleaned it, totally forgetting that she was just sitting a few metres away. And when I brought her to the supermarket to buy some stuffs for her, I found myself queueing up for the cashier! So I think her first day of work must be very uneventful and a complete bore.

And now Jovelyn is sleeping in my mom's room. In fact, the whole family is sleeping, except me. I'm still slogging with my work (but taking a break typing this). Always the last to sleep, the first to rise (at 5am in the morning). Sigh...

I don't quite understand how some employers could bear to mis-treat their domestic helpers. You read the news, some of these employers are educated professionals like the teachers and doctors. Even some people whom I know are also known to be quite harsh to their helpers, sometimes scolding them in public (using words like "stupid" and "idiot"), or the 'kinder' ones might scold them in a language the helper wouldn't understand. And some of these employers are usually the nice people you meet on a normal day!

When some people knew that I was looking for a domestic helpers, they gave me 'advice' like "don't give them any off-day", "don't be too nice to them". I wonder, oh my, why?

When my mom was well, sometimes we did discuss how people treat their domestic helpers. She is of the same mind as I, that these domestic helpers are here to earn a living, and we have no right to treat them as lesser beings, just because we are financially better off or we are their boss.

I bought a small teddy bear for my mom last week. I tried to look for the letter "M" on the bear, but it wasn't available. In the end I got one with the letter "L", as it is the first letter of her surname.

I bought mom this teddy bear because she likes to grab my hand and squeeze, so I wanted her to have something to squeeze when I am not around. Indeed, when I visited her today, I found her squeeze a little bit stronger, and she is now able to turn her wrist a little.

Aaron