Penang -- Week 12 -- The Trouble with Shanti

MONDAY - WEDNESDAY, June 2nd - 4th
I webcammed with my sister JoAnn again. YAAAAAYYYYYY! Love webcam. The internet is still garbage, so it's not an easy conversation, but it's still fun.

I'm starting to wonder if I made the right choice with using the sling again so much with Regin. Suddenly now he won't sleep unless he's touching me. Nap time or night time, I lay him down and walk away he wakes up and says, "pppphah!" (From Faroese "Uppa" or "Up a" (??) -- it's how he tells me he wants me to pick him up). I put him in the sling and I could do jumping jacks and he wouldn't wake up. He's not letting me sneak out in the mornings either. Within two minutes of me leaving the bed, he's sensed it and awake.

I'm addicted to TV. I'm watching it as much as I can. Not local TV mind you, we still don't have satellite. Nope, the TV I'm watching, I'm downloading from iTunes. So far we've watched Mad Men, Tudors, Weeds, Lost, and, though I'm ashamed to admit it, Gossip Girl. That last one I started only because all the fashion blogs talk about it so much that I had to check it out. The thing about watching TV this way, you end up spending lots of money to watch marathons. And now I've watched so much Gossip Girl in such a short period of time that I can't stand most of the actors/characters in it, even though I can't wait to find out what happens next!

We're also renting movies from iTunes. The price isn't bad, $2.99 - $3.99 per rental, and there are sometimes some available for $1.99. The problem is that it takes several days download with our crappy internet, so you have to plan days in advance. I have started having three or four ready to go at any time now, because I miss the way Netflix let me do that. Why don't I just go rent a DVD here in Penang? THERE ARE NO MOVIE RENTALS AVAILABLE IN PENANG! Why? Because everyone buys them black market. When we ask if there are any places to rent movies, they think about it for a minute as they sift through half forgotten memories of places that used to carry VCDs (we didn't know about those, did you?) or VHS. Then, they finally say, "no, but why would you want to rent? Pirated ones are so cheap!"

Many of you know how I feel about pirated anything, so we download from iTunes.

I'm not sure about my maid, Shanti, anymore. I mean she's so nice, and Regin likes her -- he's so cute, he follows her around all day and babbles to her. She's also useful for any questions we have about where to find things, or how to pay bills, etc.. But she's not doing what I want.

When she first started, I showed her where the dustpan and broom were and she told me, "In Malaysia we use a soft broom and a tall dustpan. I can get for you." When I showed her what we use to mop (a scrub brush with a tall handle and a wet towel, so that you can thoroughly wash the towel in between and you aren't simply moving dirt around every time you mop) she said, "In Malaysia, we use a mop, and a bucket where you can do like that," and she mimed the action of wringing a mop in one of those mop buckets. I said, "Yes, in America, they have those too, but we like to use this."
"Maybe you can get the other kind."
"Hmmm."

When I showed her our home-made cleaners and the baking soda I use to scrub the bathroom, she said, "In Malaysia, we use Cif, you can buy at the supermarket." When I told her that we don't want any strong chemicals, she says it's not, you can use it on pots and pans too. But there aren't ingredients listed, so we didn't get it.

The only thing I gave in on was the broom. Fine. Use what you want to sweep. But I'm not giving in on the cleaners, and the mop we use just seems more effective/sanitary to me, so I'd prefer she use it. She's used what I asked, but as far as cleaning goes, I do much better. She puts no elbow grease in when she's cleaning floors or anything, so dirty spots and dingy areas sometimes stay that way, and I've several times seen dishes she's put away that have gunked food and are coated with old fat. These are dishes she's washed by hand, mind you, it's not as though she didn't notice that the dishwasher wasn't working, because we don't have one, remember? And it's like she has this little list in her head of things she does before she skidaddles, and if she happens upon other things that are visibly unclean, it's unlikely that she'll do anything about it. It's fine I guess. The place is still way cleaner after she's been here, I just feel like I have to do the major stuff while she does the light cleaning and I'd hoped it would be the other way around. Maybe I just need someone more than 8 - 10 hours (two days) a week. But I don't even care as much about the cleaning, I need her more for taking care of Regin so I can work on some projects.

In the beginning, I told her I wasn't ready to work on anything because we weren't organized yet. Later, I told her that we'd like her to focus on Regin next time she came. Then when she was still only cleaning, I specifically asked her to watch him, but she'd still bring him into my office so she could do the floors or finish ironing. Again, I said, "I'm not worried about you doing all the cleaning, if you can't clean that's fine, just take care of Regin." This has yet to happen.

She's a dream when she babysits. She takes care of him and if there is anything to clean on top of that, she'll do it. Maybe I just need to fire her and then ask her to come every Wednesday and Friday for babysitting. Or maybe I need to find someone else. She also has more time available in July, but when I asked for two extra days a week, she said she'd give me one, since we're only here another 8 months.

I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm letting her come to clean (or whatever she wants) every week.

Also, I now pretty much suspect there is an ulterior motive for telling me absolutely anything she tells me. That's the way locals supposedly do things, and it did turn out that she was hinting at money donations when she was talking to me about her temple's financial woes. So when she talks about her daughter's dance performances, I have to wonder if there isn't something encoded in there about giving her time off, extra money, or who knows what else. The constant attempt at interpretation is exhausting and now I'd rather not even share chit chat with her anymore. But that wouldn't be better with any other maid, it would probably be worse. Shanti, at the very least, is very used to working with foreigners (she refuses locals), and she did one time ask me to remind her which cleaner was which, when other locals would go on pretending they know how to do everything.