Grandmum’s Lesson About Car Scratching

Posted on February 20, 2011 by admin

Toddler me

My mum was a public school English teacher pretty much all her working life. Mostly upper secondary, and she often transferred around to accommodate my dad’s job, just as I did. Though periodically sought by the private sector, she remained motivated, sometimes rather inexplicably, to stay a civil servant til she retired about 10 years ago – whereupon she is now extremely proud of her pension.

They’ve got a totally new door and signage now…

In her spare time, my mum liked to do a little social work. Reading aloud at St Nicholas’ Home For The Blind, that kind of thing. The giver is truly more blessed than the receiver, because later on when she was stressed or unhappy she found volunteering also nixed feelings of helplessness and futility at being unable to do anything about one’s own situation. (I can’t do anything for me, but I know I’m doing something good for someone.)

It was a source of inspiration, when I had crappy days in the office, I would surprise colleagues with smoothies or supermarket flowers. The crappier the day, the more I forced myself to do something nice and unrelated.

One of the public schools my mum once taught at was in a very tough neighborhood. There were gangs. 13 year olds sold themselves for a few ringgit. The school discipline teacher seated next to her once confiscated a love letter, then leapt out of her chair, as tufts of pubic hair fell out of the envelope.

It was in this school that my mum then decided to give free English tuition after her morning session was over, to any kids who wanted to attend. Her classes grew popular, as did she. Malaysia can be a pretty unsafe place so it’s not like we tempted fate by being unusually reckless, but in general there was some confidence we would go about fairly unmolested in the neighborhood where the school was.

Then one day, my mum drove her new car to school. At the end of the morning session, she came back to find it had been badly scratched up. She was devastated. That afternoon, she announced the end of her daily pro bono classes and why, much to her students’ dismay.

Several days later, some of her students approached her:

“Cikgu, we found the culprit. We would like to bring him over to apologize to you.”

The culprit was earnest, “I scratched it only because it was new. I had no idea it was yours. If I’d known, I never would have touched it!!”

My mum remained unconvinced.

Her regular students tried everything, “Would it help if we beat him up?”

It turns out her best lesson to them was when she stopped giving free lessons.

(But she did keep lending them her books and my rap music cassette tapes… She just wanted them to always remember they weren’t supposed to scratch anyone’s car.)

Have a good Monday.

ps: We can’t help Mondays but we can buy people smoothies.

Four year old me.

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About The “Jobs That Require Selling Kinky Financial Products”

Posted on February 18, 2011 by admin

“…..Maybe it’s an argument to teach the children to learn financial mathematics and avoid gambling on the markets?”

“Or teach them to avoid jobs that require selling kinky financial products, and to listen to people in those jobs with a pinch of salt because they talk rubbish…oh no, does this mean don’t listen to mummy & daddy?”

Lest you get the wrong idea, maker of said comments on my blog is in finance himself, and from what I hear is a pretty brainy quant… But then I realized I hadn’t clarified previously, so…

Guilt By Association: A monkey in Penang Botanical Gardens eating something next to a sign that says “Do Not Feed.” Did smiling bystander commit offence?

Kings is an IB Sales ie to institutions, not rich guys, and I sourced investment products from IB Sales like him for private bankers (RMs) to sell to rich guys…

Then Kings was on my back for ages to quit and I…. kinda dragged my heels on that one. I love investment products. I love the rush of execution in a moving market. Nerd talk turns me on. That’s how I ended up with Kings (sorry darling).

Other people like music, or Gossip Girls, I get jealous at night when Kings has a pending trade and is heavily fingering one of his two berries. I get misty-eyed watching West Wing. (Seriously. That episode where the president decides to run for a second term despite seemingly insurmountable political odds… So reader beware – this is the kind of fruitcake whose blog about raising her child you are reading. And yes, I am mildly obsessive compulsive. And… some things about Rockstar’s behavior make me think sometimes that he has it too.)

I love dark horses. In derivatives, if the dark horse wins the race, you make far more money than if you went for the obvious winner, the obvious trade. The obvious trade is also the expensive one, the market would have priced in the probability of it doing well, you would therefore “pay” for that success and likelihood of it upfront when you bought it – which means if it then turns out to be a dud you’re just losing money.

We once did an equity product (which eventually went multi-tranche and later became “flow”) that had a kind of “safety” in it at the end of the life of the product. It would be classified as one of the riskiest of equity products, and it was done when everyone expected the Hang Seng to go up and up – right before it went down and down, spiraling into the financial crisis.

“Why don’t we do without the safety, just pay the cost of that safety to the client as enhanced yield?” some of my RMs asked. It cost next to nothing, to put that safety in. Like, 0.5% p.a. out of some 15-18% p.a., depending on pricing period. We didn’t take it out. Even though no one, including the markets, ever thought we would need it. Which was why it was so cheap.

When the crisis hit, that cheap option saved us. Thank God. Thank God we didn’t take it out, because almost 90% of those RMs’ clients who’d done this riskiest class product at the worst of times received not just 100% of their invested principal, they received the entire year’s coupon of 15-18% p.a. too. The absolute worst performer of the remaining 10% or so lost just under 25% if I recall correctly. But this product was in the same class as Accumulators which were wiping entire investments out.

Anyway… I remembered that because this last CNY one of my favorite ex-RMs was travelling and asked if Kings and I needed him to drive us from Seremban to KLIA for our flight home to HK. He’d done a lot of that product and ALL his clients got 100% principal + interest back was why I suddenly remembered… I remember the joy I felt watching the Hang Seng move to trigger the “safety feature” on his final tranche that day…

(I love RMs. Sometimes they say the most hilarious things – one from Taiwan once asked “Are you sure no one in your family messed around, because <indicating my face> those really aren’t pure Chinese features.” Sigh. How I loved my job.)

My point, in response to the comments above, was just that the bad press gets out because people complain, but we often don’t – can’t – talk in detail about success stories. There are private banks that didn’t even do equity accumulators til post-crisis, so they were completely untouched by the carnage. I worked at 2 such banks in my career. And if I saw recognizable names attached to the client account numbers I dealt for, I would look the other way. Scratch that. What famous names? When Compliance starts hunting down a potential breach with the email and conference call equivalent of a 2-by-4, that’s hours and hours of your life you will never get back.

Hours and hours I could have spent with Rockstar. Voluntary amnesia. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try hypnosis.

I wasn’t the kind of person who sold myself at work, RMs expressing a preference for whether they wanted me to cover them, I felt, would be my constant performance review. (But well which person ever loves something they suck at??) I socialized very little with the RMs whom I served. I just thought if I made them money, served them well, they would like me. No amount of drinks with anyone could make up for it if I lost their money through any measure of incompetence or even simply thru mediocre performance, and anyway I wanted to Rockstar after work. No RM ever begrudged me that, bless them.

It’s possible the not selling myself cost me. I once told one of my bosses the targets were fine, I could make the money fine, just please don’t put me down for any team head meetings (back then famously political) because I don’t want any additional aggro that might follow me home to Rockstar. (In the first year, I also thought it might sour my breastmilk). Bosses rarely begrudged me that, bless them.

But, I’m digressing.

Kings sells investment products because way back when he had a choice of Structurer (ie one of the quants) or Sales, he realized Sales made more money faster – and he had a younger bro and sis to put thru college.

And – I say this because it is something he never will – he has been known to absorb the losses from pricing errors made by competitors, when his clients come to him to fix it. Don’t believe me? The market is small, most know I blog, you can easily ask the right traders if he absorbed losses for his clients when his own P/L could afford it.

Not every trade he did for his clients made Kings money. It’s just not the way he deals, is what I mean by mentioning this. So it’s no surprise he believes his clients should know all their options in the market and still choose to deal with him, he is no true salesman if clients deal with him for lack of knowledge about their options to deal elsewhere.

There are IB Sales, and then there are IB Sales.

(This about Kings also makes him more magnanimous than I. When I was still on the sell side, I got mad at my own bank’s Sales (Kings’ competitors), whom I had counted close enough friends to invite to help out at one of our wedding dinners. They picked the reception table, then cold called some of our wedding guests who were Kings’ clients the next day.

“Must try mah,” was the Bloomberg message they sent to Kings.

He was “Fair ‘nuff”.

I was “That was our wedding!!”)

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What A Rockstar Sees

Posted on February 17, 2011 by admin

This <pause for effect> is an old drawing Rockstar did of his parents when he was maybe 33 months old.

It’s Rockstar’s favorite drawing from school and we save a lot of these to turn into artwork around our own home or little gifts for the grandparents… My mum wants to do a wall collage in her guestroom (my old bedroom – my dad already turned the study portion of it into his gym)…

So I have a box of these I was sorting through, and Rockstar says he likes this one, so I ask him what it’s supposed to be.

Rockstar says proudly “Daddy And Mummy!”

Rockstar’s the only 3 year-old I’ve ever been around, and I’m thinking He’s totally putting me on, like all the smart-ass I’ve been getting for the last few weeks – but then I remember the school label saying it’s a picture of daddy and mummy. Rockstar can recognize some words now, but he definitely doesn’t have those two words down yet.

So I ask him to point out “Daddy” in the picture. Then “Mummy”. I cover part of it up. I turn it sideways. Then upside down. He always picks out the same spot where Kings and I are supposed to be in that picture.

For some reason I feel… humbled. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, even if I can’t quite say what it is.

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Bidding Goodbye 2010 By Beating The Small Person And Stew At Snake King II

Posted on February 16, 2011 by admin

CNY is almost over… so goodbye, 2010, famously the horrid Tiger year that Feng Shui masters proclaimed “bad” for many other animals of the zodiac. (Kings and I are “dragons.” Dragons, “everyone” knows, don’t see eye to eye with Tigers. Rockstar is a “pig”. Might I add, an unplanned pig who landed us bad service at Sanatorium because pigs are desirable (they will “never go hungry” ie will have good life) so the staff were horribly overworked at Christmas.)

We don’t really follow this closely but my mum is quite an avid Feng Shui-er so we get an occasional earful…

And this is very much not an older-generation thing, one of my close girlfriends didn’t start trying for a baby til after July last year because she didn’t want a Tiger baby… I overheard a colleague in the office give the same reason for skipping a year…

Come to think of it, the very obviously “desirable” vs “non-desirable” years probably make quite a difference to school intakes and various other kiddie facilities in Hong Kong so if you are not into Chinese superstition and live here, milk it! (For eg one of our pastors loves the “death floor”. There are no 4th floors in newer buildings in HK, (or 14th, or 24th or 34th and so on) so he seeks out old buildings and “death floor apartments” so he can negotiate cheaper rent.)

But, I digress.

 

 

If 2010 was a crappy year for you, you can Dar Siu Yan (literally Beat The Small Person). I think the definition of “small person” is the same in English as it is in Cantonese, ie back stabbers and such in the office. But there’s an additional belief that if you had bad luck (usually in health or business) it might be because “something bad” is “following” you, or some small person did something like this to you. So this is not just revenge, it’s kind of self defense?

(My friend speaks only Cantonese ok, think that’s easy to reproduce in English??)

For that, you only need a name. And under this flyover in Causeway Bay is the famous “Dar Siu Yan” service. Note the burning candles next to the lady in the grey jacket. (At my incredulity, my companion responds “What, this is famous, don’t you know?”)

You only need to give these aunties a name. My friend earnestly tries to remember if you also need their birthdate (he thinks maybe not), but assures me you don’t need the “Siu Yan’s” nail or hair clippings (he thinks this is useful for you to know). Wonder if this is why I once saw a guy count his nail clippings and make sure he properly disposed of every single one after he finished clipping his nails.

Unlike in temples where they accept “donations,” you must pay an official fee for this service. Then the auntie will take out a clog (traditionally), though that may have evolved into a shoe nowadays, and she will start hitting something with the name of your small person and recite a ditty something like this:

“Dar Lei Ge Siu Yan Tau
Dar Dou Yau Hei Dou Ng Sik Thau”

(Rough literal translation: Beat on your small person head, til even if you’re alive you will not know how to draw breath)

That was all my friend remembers, there are apparently many and varied chants

———–

When I first got here, one of my former (half-Aussie) bosses regaled me with tales of a market near Times Square that sells snake – apparently you could see Chinese Tai-tais stuffing bloody snake parts into expensive Louis Vuitton and Prada bags so on a whim one day I went looking for it. Never did find it, but a local friend showed me Seh Wong Yee or Snake King II, the famous Causeway Bay cooked snake/ snake stew restaurant… Eating snake is popular when it’s cold, like right now, usually in a broth or thick soup.

(And yes I’m aware of the “chiak jua” eating snake pun – in Hokkien or Teochew it apparently means to slack off)

This store used to open just 3 months a year, my friend continues, but the “younger generation doesn’t eat as much snake” so they open longer and throw in chicken and duck meat nowadays to supplement their income.

Closeup of the store

(Eating cat or dog is –surprise, surprise – illegal in Hong Kong btw, but not snake. So if you see someone selling dog/cat meat please feel free to call the cops on the bastard. I’ve met local Hongkie dog owners who say they’ve done that before years ago in the Pok Fu Lam area.)

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Why I Hate Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2011 by admin

It’s v-day… and like the massively overpriced flowers so many poor boyfriends are heavily obliged to send out this day, I feel the pressure to serve up a v-day related post.

For the 2 of you left reading my blog on v-day, here’s why I hate it (and yes this all really happened. I’m not smart enough to make it up):

About 9 years ago, I had just broken up with someone my parents didn’t approve of. The (very short) relationship wouldn’t have survived anyway, but I was really mad at them for interfering – I “grew up” when I left home at 17 to study in Singapore, and was the kind of kid who even had General Knowledge Time scheduled in – on a Saturday morning in the school library where I could find The Economist.

SO I was deeply offended by my parents’ lack of faith in my judgment at age 25.

Anyway. As an un-married, I often took leave on v-day just to avoid the observations of who got flowers and who got bigger flowers. The traditionally open-plan dealing room lets everyone see each bouquet making its way thru the rows and rows of desks and computer screens, ending up at – oh, her desk. How come she got that? Did she send it to herself? (Yes, really, that can happen.) Her boyfriend could’ve done better. Does he not know what that looked like before he sent it? To be safe he should have used <insert name of atas florist>

One of my (fairly openly) gay colleagues got exquisite flowers. This (very unpopular) older woman who was divorced then bitched about the arrangement. Gay colleague (still my friend today) said “You’re a woman you didn’t even get any.” Mee-ow. I’m escaping on leave.

After I broke up with Guy My Parents Disapproved Of, my mum, knowing I was really mad at them, sent not 1 but TWO giant bouquets to the office. As usual, I was on leave, so my more gossipy colleagues then had a whole day to speculate. It must have to do with this dealing room in particular because my married roommate during this bank’s orientation had decided it was hilarious to have an affair with a married trader- and call the man’s wife for the ensuing painful conversation in front of me. For some reason social lives were uh, a little more talked about here.

That wasn’t all. The Mother of All Mortifications was when my mum, in full covert mission mode also penned a mushy “You are my whole world” love note on the card. Which got passed around the dealing room because some idiot apparently thought the bouquet was for him and opened it. Also attached to the bouquet was the bill – with my dad’s name on it since my mum had used his credit card. I.. happen to share the same surname as my dad.

So the next day the #2 boss in the whole dealing room hands me the bigger of the 2 giant bouquets n asks, “so, WHO is <insert name my mum signed on card>?”

<thinking> Don’t try to stop me from killing myself.

“You can’t like him much or you would have told him you were off yesterday.”

<thinking> This is true.

“Not cheap you know, v-day flowers.. If I had known you weren’t coming in I would have sent your bouquets to my wife and girlfriend. Bigger one of course go to girlfriend. Then go and buy cheaper one today and give you back. Arbitrage.”

<thinking> I have no one to stop me from killing myself.

I was alone on v-day. I’m not speaking to my parents.

Ironically my colleagues refused to believe my parents sent the flowers. And love note. Everyone just went on about my “secret boyfriend”. For weeks the boss who handed me the flowers would plump down in the chair next to me periodically and go “So. Who is he?”.

Took me awhile to figure why anyone would give a flying F- about my “secret boyfriend” – it’s because they wondered if he might be a boss at a competitor bank. (Btw Kings and I once worked for bosses who famously hated each other when they worked together – so then one killed the other, who then had to move to another bank)

<thinking> Like it wasn’t bad enough I was dateless and hiding at home. Or that I was born of people who send me mortifying love notes and bouquets. Now I apparently have some senior investment bank secret boyfriend to pull out of a hat.

I HATE MY LIFE.
I HATE V-DAY.

Parents.

Write this down.

Sympathy flowers are worse than no flowers at all.

Stay. Away. On. V-day.

If you’re so upset your daughter is upset, get her a car or something. Better value for money anyway.

PS: That’s my Pandora charm bracelet up there. Seriously addictive. Kings and Rockstar put it together last Christmas and I’ve been adding stuff since. Rockstar picked the blue polka dots on white to symbolize the great time we had in the snow that he wanted me to remember. Kings picked the teal celtic bead because he thought it looked a little like the fortune cookies – of which he ate one, paper and all, much to all our amusement.

The two hearts with crowns are to symbolize the two “Kings” who gave me the bracelet.

When we got back from CNY last week, I went straight down to pick up that leaves with hearts and diamonds charm. It’s called “Fruits Of The Spirit” (Biblical reference) but also, it reminds me of the greenery my mum lovingly tends to outside the home where I used to grow up. The greenery wasn’t always there – nor were happy memories. Both came much later.

Oh yeah, and we kinda celebrated with family sushi  dinner last night. And JD got a pack of tennis balls, just because.

Must… Ask Kings how many bouquets he helped his clients order for wives and girlfriends this year. I used to tumpang and ask him to help me send one to a girl who used to work for me way back before Rockstar.. (She takes me out for nice lunch on my bday). One year she told me Kings’ name had appeared on the receipt. That brought a mad rush so Kings’ clients’ wives and girlfriends would not also see his name on the receipt.

I like to say when you complicate investment products with more derivatives, you always have to pay for the additional derivatives in the structure. So you should only spend the money  when you put the structure together if you have a very good reason, ie it’s something you really want the structure to do (as opposed to investing in the newest fad of structured product). It drives me crazy when you buy a derivative when it’s pricing “expensive”. The investment bank Sales showing me the product has to have a very, very good reason for recommending it.

K was my very good reason. For sending overpriced flowers on v-day, I mean. She was recovering from the end of a 12 year relationship and hardly spoke on the desk for the  first 6 months after it happened. She’s getting married this year. Not when she didn’t work for me anymore (I left for a better opportunity, then got pregnant before she could join me), I stopped sending her flowers when she met this guy.

(<sheepish> I kinda slacked off calling her after hearing at catch up that he had proposed in an Ocean Park cable car with a few friends to catch the moment on camera. I figured she was doing better than alright you see).

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3 Conversations

Posted on February 13, 2011 by admin

**Updated with one detail – I was too embarassed initially to admit Rockstar wasn’t just speaking rudely, he was also making this kicking action at people. He gets a bit off after coming back from relative lawlessness at the grandparents’ when Main Law Enforcer (a.k.a. mum) gets undermined. Which, btw, is also embarassing to admit.

#1:

I bump into 2 Relationship Managers (RMs – the private bankers who sell investments to and manage the portfolios of rich guys) I used to make recommendations for. My first <guilty> thought is Thank Goodness I Dressed Rockstar in Jacadi today. My second is Why Did I Have To Meet Them With Rockstar.

Taken just before we meet the RMs. (Yes, he was wet through, up to his hips after all the splashing. We got amused looks from passersby.)

RMs: What a cute boy! Hello! Here’s some Hong Bao

Rockstar: Don’t want it.

(Proceeds to shake his head and say “No”.)

Me: What did I say, if Mummy can’t meet friends with you around, Mummy is going to have to meet friends without you around.

<expectant pause>

<silence>

Me: (after numerous apologies to RMs): Uh, doesn’t he make your kids look good?

(One of the RMs has a 16 year old boy who gets strings of As… She also imposes a diet and martial arts on her tween daughter who is apparently tubby. Have never met her kids, have no idea what counts for “tubby.” The other has a 6 year old boy.)

#2:

Me: Look, Rockstar, the little girl wants to be friends with you!

Rockstar: No.

Me (gushing embarassedly to little girl’s mum): Uh, he’s shy with pretty girls

Rockstar: I’m only shy if they’re pretty*.

*His definition of “pretty” is any little girl sociable enough to approach him… Or who has long hair (go figure – he complains I’m “not pretty” if I tie my hair back)

#3:

After similar episode with waiters at Peak Lookout where we’re regulars:

Me: That’s it. Be rude again and I’ll – I’ll throw away your skates*.

Rockstar: WHY?

Me: Because you need to understand there are consequences to bad behavior. If you’re naughty, you lose friends. Get grounded. Go to jail.

Rockstar looks incredulous.

Me: What, you think I won’t? Try me. Mummy might still love you even when you’re naughty (he asks every once in awhile when I say he’ll lose friends) but Mummy can live without your skates.

Do it again, and your skates are going in the trash. And don’t expect any amount of crying to get me to fish them out again. You know your mother is a germ freak.

<10 minutes later>

The next table is filled by a young man and woman with a giant Golden Retriever.

YM: What you got there, buddy?

Me: What did I say?

Rockstar (no trace of sullen-ness): Skates.

YM: Can I see?

Rockstar lifts a foot.

YM: How old are you?

Rockstar: I just turned three.

YM: How many fingers is that?

Rockstar counts, then holds 3 up.

After they turn back to their menus:

Rockstar: Mum.

Me: What?

Rockstar: I’m keeping my skates.

*Rockstar just started clattering about in skates this weekend. I got that from an ex-colleague who once described how she binned her 10 year old boy’s favorite toys for misbehavior. She used to head a small dealing room that was more than 90% male. She was also one of my shopping buddies <blissful reminiscence>…..

She took leave for weeks when her son had exams, but she never took crap.

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Snack at Mc Donald’s in Queensbay Mall

Posted on February 12, 2011 by admin

*Updated on 12 Feb 2011 with pics after we got back..

Sorry no pictures for the next few posts until we get back to HK… The servers were moved to China, which is why this site takes so long to access from Malaysia – also why it’s really difficult to upload pics from Penang or Seremban…

 

New Year, Old Friends

 

I haven’t met K in maybe a decade. She’s one of my friends from secondary school – except we didn’t attend the same school. Her very well-behaved almost-6 year old wants Mc Donald’s for a mid-day snack. Rockstar is camped out at Coffee Bean in Queensbay Mall (they have toy cars to drive just upstairs!) asleep on my parents’ laps while Kings and I organize catch-ups with Penang friends nearby.

 

 

When my family moved from Sandakan to Penang (I was born in PJ), I was expected to start all over again in a martial art my school did offer, otherwise it would simply not be a recognized activity on my school leaving cert. I’d spent the last 3 years in belt gradings, I didn’t want to start over. K’s school had the nearest training center. If there was such a thing back then (seems nothing, compared to what HK can be like today), I guess my own school was probably a more “desirable” school in terms of academic performance.

 

 

 

I loved training at K’s school. They had a taekwondo club, and for months I trained there (among other centers – I trained at least 5 days a week) using all their club facilities. K joined later – she was a sprinter on the track and field team who wanted to learn a little self defense on the side.

 

 

I wished she went to my school. Then I wished she were part of my life in Singapore. By the time I followed Kings to Hong Kong I was resigned that we would hang in different circles. But my girl friends from my new life would have loved her. Fair, with wide, lighter-brown eyes and long wavy hair, so would my male friends. Once, I planned for one of my college mates to strike up a long distance relationship with her (didn’t work out, we quickly realized she’d just started seeing someone).

 

 

In another life, she would have kicked butt in Hong Kong – when we met in our teens, her father had walked out on the family. She would accept assistance from none of us. She helped her mum get by, including taking care of an aunt with special needs, until one day she had extra school expenses. Then she picked up the phone and told her father he at least owed it to her to get them through that one patch. He did.

 

 

From my sheltered world of extra

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Goodbye, Old Help

Posted on February 11, 2011 by admin

We fired our helper this morning, new one arrives tonight.

(And to the reader I got to know thru my blog who emailed in a recommendation that had been circulated at another school, thank you!! Too bad we’d signed the new one just before or we would’ve jumped to snap up your recommendation – it’s not very common for helpers to get good employer references.)

So Rockstar helped with the JD walking this morning…

And had his before-school sandwich on a park bench…

JD returned the favor by walking the Rockstar…

Then, The Talk…

Me: (deliberately casual) Jie-jie’s going home to Indonesia, she left this morning while you were sleeping, so she couldn’t say goodbye

Rockstar: <gets really still> WHY?

Me: <so reasonable> She lives in Indonesia, just like Grandmum lives in Malaysia. So she’s gone home. I told you before, she works for us and periodically she goes home to see her little girl?

Rockstar: Oh. Yeah.

Me: We have a new jie-jie coming to work for us tonight.

Rockstar: <hopeful> A… boy?

Me: Sorry darling, a girl.

Rockstar: <theatrical disappointment> WHY...

So… the new Jie-jie will cook for us? Does she make scrambled eggs?

Me: You can ask her. And you have to tell her what you like, ok? Noodles, broccoli… You can’t expect her to know what you like if you don’t tell her…

Rockstar: Y-eah… She’s not a boy….. Mum!

Me: What?

Rockstar: I use the boy’s toilet in school!

Me: Uh… Excellent!

I believe our previous helper had a relatively cushy life with us – when we travel she has our 1,500 sq foot apartment in Bel Air all to herself for weeks. She went swimming in one of the Bel Air Club pools (until they banned helpers from using club facilities), not always on her day off. She was inflexible about shifting her days off (despite us paying her double wages to shift around because of our long trips abroad) because she signed up for hair dressing, guitar and computer lessons.

We fired her because of the serving-expired-food-repeatedly thing. But not so much because she couldn’t seem to learn to read expiry dates despite being taught repeatedly (yeah and she’s apparently taking computer lessons!) – it was because not only did she claim to have understood each time we taught her, she would discourage us from checking the food ourselves by vehemently insisting she had already done so. That last, we will request Immigration and her agency in Hong Kong inform any prospective future employers.

I took some flak for being so soft on our helper for almost 2 years (bet some of you were reading about her swimming in swanky Club Bel Air and going You’re Pathetic, Aileen!!) But she took care of my home, walked my dog… Because she took care of something dear to me, I wanted her to be happy. I would always go to as much length as I could to make someone doing something important for me happy.

One of my greatest fears is regretting my own actions.. I needed to be positively, irrevocably sure they had it coming before I could hammer anyone. Regardless whether we blackmark her, I’d like to see her find another employer who was openly fine about her reading her papers or magazines frequently during working hours. (Seriously – I didn’t care as long as she did the job fine. She increasingly did not do the job fine.)

I hope she really misses working for us. That should be her greatest punishment.

It’s amazing, the extent to which kindness can be taken for weakness.

Bel Air has a very strong helper community. They’re always walking the dogs or the children together at the park, texting each other… And yes, another mum assured me, they also politik among each other. We don’t expect too much from the next one because there’s no way we can keep her from socializing with the rest of the community when she walks our dog, and picking things up really fast.

Here’s an eg of their savvy: Once when we were at the clubhouse, Rockstar and I were messing on the music machine. To get us off the machine so she could park the little girl in her care there without waiting her turn and apparently go in search of the girl’s brother, the helper first filled out the booking register for the machine (which most mums never do, we just walk in and use whatever’s available or wait our turn) then came up to me and very politely explained they had booked the machine we were using for – oh wait – right now. And then the little girl very politely apologised and thanked us.

So we live here, and that’s going to happen, and all the while I’m thinking WHERE did the little girl’s parents find this helper, so I can hire mine from there too…

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Dog Training And The GIK In Parenting (Continued)

Posted on February 10, 2011 by admin

Random pics of the village we were at

Just a follow up because I’m getting emails.. Guess I shouldn’t be too surprised the GIK elicited some reaction. GIK behavior is extremely unacceptable to mums I know in Hong Kong.

One reader carefully elaborated how I could keep a hold on to Rockstar for a moment and speak directly to him before letting him go to GIK. Even acknowledge GIK so she wouldn’t have a chance to gripe, but be sure to finish with Rockstar before letting her  cut in and undermine. I really appreciate the thought and the time that went into the email. (And btw I don’t even know who this reader is!)

How could I let GIK cut into conversations with Rockstar?

1) I did say something**

2) Straddling Hong Kong and select Malaysian culture, one of the most important lessons I needed was realizing how completely different something can look when seen thru another person’s eyes.

Like The Eye: Blind girl gets cornea transplant. Formerly Blind Girl sees herself in mirror for first time. Formerly Blind Girl has great time celebrating with her friends, takes lots of pictures, develops her first roll of film, and – who’s that in all the pictures? Formerly Blind Girl looks in the mirror. Dead girl cornea donor looks back at her. Formerly Blind Girl realizes the person she saw in mirror along had been the dead girl thru the dead girl’s eyes <creepy music>

But seriously. I would have snapped if I didn’t realize cutting in to another mum’s conversation is not as uncommon (and not considered as heinously rude) as in Hong Kong. Though it’s still rude.

OK, now that’s out of the way, I can bitch.

I never forgot what happened with my dog. GIK’s dad gushed that my dog loved her more than me. Under her dad’s insistence, JD stayed with her while Kings and I went on honeymoon for 3 weeks.

That love affair lasted 5 days. GIK called us complaining how ill-behaved JD was. She had shut JD in her apartment and, supremely bored, JD tried to get out the kitchen window, knocking over a plate in the process. GIK was mad about the broken plate. For some reason it never occurred to GIK she was telling us our border collie missed enough daily walks to inspire an attempted jailbreak out a window 8 floors up.

**So when GIK cuts in, I politely ask “Do you remember my dog JD? Do you remember how much you wanted her?”

Suddenly, everyone in earshot is still. Kings btw, is not around. It’s just GIK’s family.

GIK gushes loudly, “Of course I remember JD! Of course I MISS her.”

Most bold-faced lie ever. You’ll see why in a minute.

“She likes tennis balls – right? Right?”

Which freaking border collie ever doesn’t like tennis balls??

“So what happened to JD in the end, where is she now?”

She bloody thinks I gave my dog up when Rockstar was born. Rockstar was born freaking 3 years ago. That’s how long at least since she last asked about The Dog She Loved So Much She Had To Have Or Her World Would Come Crumbling Down.

“JD still sleeps in our bedroom. I still play fetch with her about 20 hours a week on top of the twice daily walks she gets with our helper.” GIK starts in surprise. In fact, one of the primary reasons we moved to Bel Air after Rockstar was born is because of the big waterfront park nearby. I hoped it was an adequate compromise for the dog when she had to share her time and attention with a baby. And all the other stuff we did to make sure dog and baby got along.

After we nixed the dog-for-GIK’s-birthday idea, someone else got her a rabbit. It eventually went to her neighbors who were caring for it whenever she went on vacation anyway. Lucky for the rabbit. It hadn’t exactly been kept in a tiny hutch, but hopped about increasingly only in a tiny storeroom and got so fat from lack of exercise it didn’t appear to have a neck.

(Not. That I’m a rabbit expert. Somehow I turned the only rabbit I ever had when I was about 8 from a cuddly, woffly-nosed baby bunny into a giant wild…. Thing that snapped at dogs that bothered her. Other people had Beware Of Dog signs in their yards, we had Honey Bunny. She bit. She growled. Once, she brought a huge papaya tree down with her burrowing.

Oklah, my dad was an agricultural consultant and one-time scholar stationed in Sandakan for a few years in the 80s testing minerals in soil, experimenting on crop yields… It’s possible the rural “pet shop” from whence we got her literally picked up a bunch of wild animal babies from the forest… Sometimes I followed my dad to the “office” and there would be a baby honey bear in a huge cage or baby elephant loosely tethered with a dog chain, casuall eating the decorative plants out front and the guide would say something like  “Oh we shot the mum in self defense and then felt bad about the baby so here it is”)

Anyway. Immediately following the JD conversation, GIK turns back to my son and asks him to move a little way off with her to play cards. Her entire family is avoiding my eye, as she has someone deal the cards.

I’m not surprised. I have known them almost 10 years. I don’t shy from polite confrontations, I prefer open discussion to everyone pretending not to see the 300lb gorilla sitting in the living room. Even when it takes a giant dump and the stink is making their eyes water. I move over and invite myself into the card game. Wordlessly, the same person deals for me too, without my having to ask.

10 minutes later, Kings arrives back from a last minute errand and we start moving our bags as we leave for the airport. GIK’s dad asks, “So, we can come visit in HK sometime right?”

I don’t answer. I let it hang in the air. As we leave GIK’s family’s home, I notice no one pursues it. Or looks me in the eye when they say goodbye.

Almost as hard as it is for them to admit there is a gorilla and a big pile of crap in the living room.

This is what really gets me. Denying there is a gorilla costs so much. The significance of that conversation cannot have gone unnoticed, yet we cannot fix it because no matter how blatant, no matter how clearly they see it, they will never admit it exists. Even as they watch the gorilla finish its crap in their living room and carry Rockstar away from them and back to his life in Hong Kong.

Yet I’m Malaysian too. At the last, when no one else is around, I gently tell GIK’s parents we’ll come visit when it’s “quieter”. They both know I mean when GIK isn’t in town. “Ok,” they say. No more “It’s not fun without GIK,” which they did before.

Create monsters in your parenting, and you have to live with them.

Ps: I told this story as a metaphor for what continues to cost a lot of Malaysian society.

Pps: Someone mentioned if GIK was in her early teens. She’s not, she’s in her early 30.

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Dog Training and The GIK In Parenting

Posted on February 9, 2011 by admin

Random pics from the village we were at

Cesar Millan, host of National Geographic’s Dog Whisperer who counts numerous “impossible” success stories under his belt, once gave up on a Chihuahua whose owner who couldn’t bring herself to correct the tiny animal when it attacked family members. When interviewed for What The Dog Saw, he said “When you love someone, you fulfill everything about them. That’s loving.” He was referring to the need for discipline, along with affection.

I know… a guy. He’s a sincere friend, hardworking, polite, we really like him – and since he doesn’t read my blog I can disclose that at annual CNY gambling sessions Kings and I try our hardest to lose money to him. He’s one of Kings’ old village friends who works in Singapore, comes back at CNY like so many Malaysians we know.

He’s bought a house here, which his parents live in – except his elder brother who doesn’t really work also stays there rent free with a wife and two kids. So our friend made it a bigger house.

Back then our friend was single. He had no time to date, shuttling back and forth between Johor (cheaper rent) and Singapore where he worked. Hard. Would I introduce one of my girlfriends to him? Preferably a girl without a college degree, because I don’t have one either, he shyly added.

I wanted to. But how do I knowingly inflict those inlaws on any girlfriend of mine?

One of my “famous last words” is “everything’s a package.” How the choosing of an “atas” school package can be diminished by unnecessary ultra-competitiveness and bla bla. In there should be something about inlaws and extended family. Whether they have any idea how much they are diminishing what a guy has to offer by being the Relatives From Hell Who Guilt Him Constantly. (I assume they care about his happiness, but haven’t thought this bit through. Wouldn’t it be total karma if they scare away the nice girl, and so he comes back with a money-grubbing harlot since she is the one who can take any bullying they dish out?)

Anyway. Do we even tell our friend what we really think about his situation? Does being a real friend, the way we’ve come to define it after almost 2 decades of living in larger cities, mean being brutally honest or would we be committing a horrible faux pas that would cause our friend more pain?

We don’t know.

So instead we keep trying to lose money to him at gambling.

We didn’t get to lose any this year though – now approaching his mid 30s like we are, he’s married with a kid. He couldn’t meet up for a gamble because his dad imposed a midnight curfew and everyone had kids they needed to tuck into bed before that.

There is a girl I know. By virtue of a certain extended family relationship, I am obliged to be polite to her in social situations. When she interrupts conversations I have with my son, calling him away for a treat or toy, I am expected to keep mum. It’s not a big thing. I’m being too sensitive. (Frankly I know a lot of mums in Hong Kong who would squish her like a bug for doing that).

It wasn’t always like this. Before our boys were born, there was JD, the border collie Kings bought me one day when we were drooling in a pet shop. Girl I Know (GIK) wanted a dog. She talked about it often for many weeks. So we engineered for her then-boyfriend to find out what breed she wanted, thinking we would surprise her on her birthday. Two weeks before de-day, she found out. She loudly and self-righteously corrected us (obviously this wasn’t something she felt the need to be ashamed of) – she wanted only “Aileen’s dog.”

It seems so absurd as I type, I had to ask myself over and over again if it really happened. In fact I remember much, much more. I’m back in Hong Kong now – what I really want to do is highlight the last few paragraphs and hit the delete key. Like I’ve done for years. But that’s the thing – hitting <delete> when I cool down is what made me take much more. It’s why I’m forcing myself to see the above in print. That’s the behavior you somehow enabled by keeping mum, Aileen. What the freak took you so long?

When more Malaysians living at home began reading my blog, I got facebook messages asking (out of curiosity) why I didn’t live in Malaysia anymore. My replies were I don’t drive, can’t get around. I was almost kidnapped as a child. We are in the financial sector and our work has taken us away. All true. But the bit I never told them was the part played by the GIK Phenomenon.

This is one of the things that costs (some) Malaysians. In Hong Kong, people complain about everything. In Singapore, people complain about nothing. Sometimes Malaysians think more things are ok than they really are.

We allow GIKs to get away with crap because after a time we are so numb with all the shitty things they do that it starts to look ok. Or we just want to forget after they ask for our dog, when we succeed in not giving them our dog. For years until she started leaving her own son with her maid in her determination to keep scooping my son up and away from me (just for the heck of it – and btw she has no mummy friends or for that genuine female friends at all that I am aware of, in the almost 10 years I’ve known her), it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t about me not forking over my dog. It was about her brazenness in demanding my dog and her own father backing up her insane whim.

Then we go abroad to study, to live, we make friends outside the people who also put up with GIK crap (and thereby subliminally imply to us that it’s acceptable behavior) and we get a shot of “Are you freaking KIDDING me??”

There is something about being “Malaysian” that I cling to. The way people abroad can say some Malaysians make really good friends. The way people in the opposite lane flash oncoming traffic on the highways when they pass police posts / roadblocks – their intent being to tip off traffic in the opposite lane of the roadblock they will be encountering in another few hundred yards. When I tell people I’m Malaysian, when I don’t want to give up my citizenship despite almost 2 decades living abroad, this is one of the things I’m thinking of.

But the problem with “nice” people is they get taken advantage of. One of the byproducts, if we allow it, of “nice” people is GIKs.

It’s when I have no problems believing in a God who says people are all sinful.

Being “nice” isn’t being quiet and tolerating the GIKs in our life. That’s creating monsters. Like Cesar’s adventure with the Chihuahua, loving includes discipline.

I know no mother around me in Hong Kong (or whom I ever worked with in Singapore), regardless of nationality, who would accept GIK behavior. But if you know someone who knows someone especially in the smaller towns in Malaysia, I bet you can find an example of similar. A few (but not all) my close girlfriends living/ working in Hong Kong and Singapore know of some too. Some of em have relatives like that. They don’t like coming home at CNY to it either. The GIK is not an uncommon phenomenon. Nor are the people who think they’re being nice, by spoiling them out of “love”.

Not that bad, the guy/girl-I-know thing?

Just in case you’re still living there and surrounded by people who keep saying it isn’t really,

It IS.

That bad.

Ps: You realize for reasons undisclosed I didn’t squish the GIK in my life like a bug, like I should have, when she was being annoying around Rockstar? I didn’t give up my Malaysian citizenship either. But then I did politely tell her off in front of her whole family. And I come back to Hong Kong happy and looking to be reminded that they squish bugs here.

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