Not so "chicken-soup" for the soul

Spending a few days at home has been pretty relaxing albeit boring. Too bad petrol is no longer subsidized by the government and hence dad now prefers to take the small car to work and I don't get to drive anywhere.

My activities at home include watching Chuck, reading (or rather nerding out of interest) about a book I initially thought was a non-fiction; light reading novel/story book but instead is a textbook-ish paperback about string theory. Nevertheless, since I've already started it, I have to finish it.

After watching the last available episode of Chuck and one episode of Gossip Girl, I decided that I'd kill time by baking. During the holidays long ago, my brother and myself used to bake stuff just to get through the day.It used up at least 2 hours of my day. But today, baking a simple orange cake only took 1 hour, half the time it usually took (you see, in the good ol' days, we didn't have the ingenious cake mixer to do the dirty work for us. We had to cream butter and mix stuff with a big salad bowl, a wooden spatula and our biceps and triceps! Hence, it took twice as long to bake). Anyway, since bro is currently in the UK, I seek some company in my maid (or rather she had no one to talk to and decided to bond with me).

I've quite literally been brought up by caretakers since I was born. Both mum and dad are hard workers and so they left the cooking and cleaning and taking care of baby Xiaowen and baby Guozheng (my bro) to maids or nannies. Talking to my maid isn't something new for me, my maids like to tell me stories about thier lives and I'm more than happy to just sit and listen during lunch.

So while bonding with my new maid (she's been with us for 4 months), she tells me stories about her previous employers and a little bit about the family she left behind in Indonesia. As with most Indonesian workers who travel overseas to work, their stories are not the "chicken-soup for the soul" type. These people have been through extremely tough times, they live in sheer poverty and many of them fight to survive, day-by-day. Listening to them makes you much more aware of the how lucky you really are. It's no wonder some people treat their maids like one of their own family members out of sympathy.

So it seems that my new maid has some sad stories of her own. I learned that all her kids have passed some years ago due to some unknown cause while she was working in Malaysia for another employer. Her hand and thigh had been operated on 3 times and she was hospitalised for 2 months because she was bitten by a huge dog belonging to her previous Singaporean employer ( the employer apparently has 7 dogs). I feel sorry for her honestly, she lost all 5 kids at once due to some unknown reason and had to be bitten by huge dogs!

On the bright side, her Singaporean employers did bring her to Hong Kong for holiday, all expenses paid for. I suppose the employers felt guilty because their dogs attacked her. :P

I'm not sure why I'm telling you the story of my maid's life. I suppose I'm just touched and I've learned yet again that I'm born extremely lucky. Sometimes it isn't all about having a Porche or a Ferarri parked in the garage. Having loads of money doesn't make you a lucky person. I think many people need to know that.