Can't help it when some people come across strongly as hypocritical...
Incident 2
First time it happened lately, it was over a mirrored cabinet...The domestic helper was around and she was around but she did not mention anything she wanted to mention to the helper. I didn't see anything wrong, obviously. If I did, I would put my request across. If it was something I could clean on my own, I wouldn't ask the helper to do it.
Then one fine day, when I was resting with the kids, I got a call from her reminding me to ask the helper to clean our mirror cabinet coz it was "EXTREMELY DIRTY" (in her words and she was really agitated about it!). I settled the kids and went out to have a look at the cabinet (I see the cabinet everyday and it never occurred to me that it was EXTREMELY DIRTY). And true enough, there were just water stains and not as dirty as she made it out to be. I wondered, this first time, why she wouldn't speak to the helper and had to call me to get me to tell the helper when she could have done so there and then.
I took a damp cloth to wipe the water stains away and the mirror cabinet was shiny as new. Not a very hard thing to do at all...
Incident 2
My mum hangs some cloths on our window grills to dry before putting them back into our wardrobe (some clothes do not dry as well as the others and remain a little damp at the seams). I do not like clothes all over the house too but I agree damp clothes do not belong to wardrobe immediately too.
Someone came over, saw those clothes, and then commented that it was unsightly. Once upon a time, she did the same things with those clothes at her own daughter's place, except that her daughter lived in a condo, and she hanged UNDERGARMENTS in the BALCONY of her daughter's ground level apartment in full view of everyone who drove or walked past. Then she commented that her daughter wouldn't allow her to hang clothes like my mum did. And she actually had the cheeks to say: "I also think its ugly" when we all remember how upset she was with her daughter when her daughter asked her not to display all those clothes plus undergarments in the balcony.
Hypocrite isn't it? And who's going to notice clothes we hang INSIDE our own home on level 16? Aliens or aeroplanes?
But when she rinses her mouth after meals, she leaves bits and pieces of yucky chewed up food in our sink, and traces of toothpaste foam on the lever of our tap. Is that not sightly? It's also not a least bit hygienic! AN washes her hands there and coz the basin resembles a bowl, sometimes AN plays with the foam in the basin after she washes her hands with hand soap... Imagine her hands emerging with spit out food pieces...
Incident 3
1. As usual, whenever our part time helper comes, it will be around AN's nap time. I do not see what she does or how she does things. Mum will also be cooking and we leave her to do her work. No one has time to sit and stare at her work... As long as she gets things done (mirrors are clean, floors are mopped, clothes are washed etc), we're ok.
2. While I was having dinner yesterday, she came to tell me to tell the helper not to climb onto our sofa when she cleans something high. Asks me to tell her to use a stool. And she asks me to tell her to clean the kitchen cabinets, saying the kitchen cabinets are sticky (you know, when she told me that the first time, my mum had just left our home after wiping our kitchen clean. Mum leaves our place for a day of rest on Friday after making sure the kitchen is grease-free..I know coz I HATE greasy kitchens and is internally sensored to find greasy spots.)
And because I'm very particular about kitchen cleanliness (and toilet, above everywhere else), I couldn't help but run my fingers alone kitchen tops, hood and hob, and even sink to make sure what needed to be clean, were cleaned.
Mum left our kitchen on Fri, squeaky clean. On Saturday night, I found burnt noodles in the stove, and a black stain that I couldn't scrub away.. And she has the decency to talk to me about maintaining cleanliness in the kitchen...???? And she was more concerned about kitchen cabinets, not the kitchen table top?
3. She told me to tell the helper to clean the grills all the way to the top. She said the helper only cleaned as far up as she could reach. But although she saw that, she had to wait for me to tell the helper even though I've not seen it for myself...
Oh, the only few times she spoke to the helper, she asked if she wanted some coffee, no mention of the 'stepping on sofa', 'must clean kitchen cabinets', 'must clean grills all the way to the top' issues. Hypocrite isn't it? She wants me to play bad guy who's particular about everything and she is the good and kind mother-in-law who's gracious and nice? (And she definitely speaks VERY differently to her own domestic helper..)
I asked her why she wouldn't tell the helper since she saw her climbing our sofa to clean the grills and when she didn't clean the grills to the top, and she said Mr Liow wouldn't allow her to speak to the helper about it. And then if he wouldn't allow her to speak to the helper (or if he thought nothing about not being able to clean high enough, about her stepping on our sofa etc), she wants me to go against my hubby then? And then she remains the good mother and me to turn into the 'wife who's overly particular'?
Incident 4
Oh, when she wanted to hire the helper, she suggested we could get the helper to wash our clothes and then we could spin dry them to be hung out, or dryer-dried. We weren't keen because we couldn't find anything much that we needed help with.
Yesterday, she told my mum not to let the helper wash the clothes coz it's too time consuming. Mum then came to tell me not to let the helper wash the clothes. I was like "huh?? What?". Seriously, the most important things to get done for this month, is the cooking (which my mum's solely in charge of, plus cleaning the kitchen, and I mean REAL cleaning.), and cleanliness, and clothes. Baby burps, baby spits out milk, baby stains towels/ wraps coz of diaper leak etc. CLOTHES & wraps! ONLY BABY laundry!
And now she says washing clothes take up too much time.
If that's the case, we do not need the helper to come at all.. I can clean dirty basins by myself (unless whoever dirties the basins clean up after herself..), my mum cooks and cleans the kitchen. Mopping the rest of the house is no big deal for her. Windows, grills and mirrors do not need to be cleaned on a daily basis. Why then did she insist we get domestic help? Why then did she suggest the helper can do laundry in the first place?
It then dawned on me that the helper is recommended by her best friend whom she idolises, who can drive and is rich. Hmm....she has to remain a reputable friend, so she will not do the dirty job of giving instructions to the helper (we do it for her). She is the kind person her friend knows, who will only offer drinks and help.
And even though we insisted we had no need for domestic help initially (who knows she'll change her mind and now thinks doing laundry takes up too much time), she insisted it was help for my mum so mum doesn't need to do too much housework. Now I wonder if she insisted we get the domestic help because her best friend simply did the recommendation?
She's the one paying for the help. I did mention I was grateful for her thoughtfulness. Precisely because she's the 'boss', I wonder why she wants everyone else to give instructions and she doesn't do it?
When i needed the domestic helper to wash the clothes, I asked her to. When I needed her to clean the toilets, I asked her to. Mum did ask her to clean the kitchen window grills when it got a little sticky. Why then wouldn't the 'boss' ask the helper to do what she thinks needs to be done? One just needs to ask politely, you do not need to speak like you speak to your own domestic helper at home, do you?
Incident 5
Mum had been asking around and is getting better with understanding the medicinal properties of food and herbs for confinement. Someone then commented that my mum is more knowledgable when it comes to chinese medicine. In her exact words: "I'm more westernised. Your mum is more lao gu dong (old-fashion)." Yes, she said my mum was lao gu dong (old fashion). Exact words, ok?
This same person was one day telling her daughter not to place stove and sink on the same side, continuing under the same breath : "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in all these but people don't usually place these together. It's not good."
And this person was the same one insisting I do not be present during drilling sessions in the midst of reno, that I do not look when the guys were helping shift our bed out of Tucson home before we left while maintaining that she doesn't believe even though it's still safer not to look (crap).
You guys go figure..
"I can consider getting the current domestic helper to clean up my house after the maid leaves since I will be staying at your home and there will be no one to clean up the house after that."
I got a shock. I asked relevant parties who had totally no idea when she'll be 'moving over' because she had not discussed it with him either.
It's always like that. She plants a thought, decides and acts upon it. No need for discussions. Just like when we were preparing for our wedding and she told me: "Ask your restaurant colleague to give us utensil holders for EVERY guest. You are their colleague, they will not say no.", just like when she kept changing dates for our food tasting because my groom's dad had to work (which is fine because he's the groom's father) BUT finally, she decided to find a good day when the groom's AUNTIE AND FAMILY can make it (even if my groom's dad needed to work on that day), get me to change again (for the 3rd time to suit the auntie's timing) for OUR FOOD TASTING! What's the auntie got to do with our food tasting, I wonder...?? Just like I found S$1 coins at all 4 corners of our matrimony bed a month after we got married (while changing bed sheets). Back then, she believed the ba-gua in the coin (八卦) in our S$1 coin could do us good and secretly hid it without telling us!! She mentioned it to me once but I never thought she would actually hide it under our bed without telling us!!!
We will be living together. Is it going to be tough? It's going to be more than just tough...
And I realised, our first tenants probably didn't abuse our kitchen on purpose. If a close one uses our kitchen as such (stains the stoves and do not clean up, spits into the basin and leave disgusting stuff right there), can we even expect a stranger to be responsible for keeping our kitchen clean for a whole year? I'm expecting my kitchen to evolve into the same one that I'll hate to have soon...unless I still have the time and energy to scrub and clean every night with 2 kids now. We do not have a maid you know......
Sianz...
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