The difference between professional and 1/2-past-six management

Regulars may have read my earlier post on the “no dad ruling” in The Curve’s baby room. Well, someone else is obviously as peeved as myself over such a short-sighted policy. Upon reading her letter in The Star, I decided to write in as well. My letter to the editor here.

My original letter was not as polite as the sanitised published version. It basically slammed the really, shall I dare say, stupid decision to  ban men from the baby room, ESPECIALLY when their immediate neighbour, Ikano Power Centre, is setting the standards in baby rooms for all other Malaysian malls to follow. If The Curve was located on Petaling Steet, ok fine, but their short-sightedness is made more glaringly obvious by Ikano next door.

On the same day my letter was published, the Operations Manager of Ikano called me to ask for my feedback on whether they should have a separate area in their mall for breastfeeding mothers. Now that is what I call “impressive and professional customer service”. Must have gotten my details from the Yellow Pages.

The next day, the Centre Manager of The Curve wrote a letter to me (must  be the Yellow Pages again!) stating the following key points:

1. That I should have written directly to them instead of the newspapers because our company has business dealings with them. They are disappointed that I did not inform them first.
2. Letter was also copied for the attention of the Head of Leasing (of which I thought was pointless)

I wrote back informing the Centre Manager that my letter to The Star was a personal letter and as such, it did not concern my company (if boss finds out then kena sack). I saw no need to have to copy the Leasing Head unless they wanted to blacklist my company. I also informed them that I DID IN FACT write to them via their website but they did not acknowledge or reply my feedback.

The Centre Manager replied saying that they have checked all their website emails in 2006 and 2007 and there were none from me but he/she still believes that I did send it but it somehow did not reach them. You know what I should do after this…send another feedback email to test them. Maybe everyone should visit The Curve’s website and send them feedback. I guarantee it doesn’t work.

Blardy hell, here I am spending time and previous effort to provide FOC feedback on their facilities and they get so defensive. On the other hand, their pro-active neighbour takes initiative to commence the construction of a dedicated breastfeeding room. That is the difference between the professionals and the not-so-professionals.

I love cold drinks

Yes, its starting already. Braedyn is now DEMANDING to sample EVERYTHING his parents are taking, cold drinks included. In this picture he was drinking a cold fruit tea and he probably finished a third of the cup before we stopped him.

Why I married Daddykhong?

Another long overdue tag….from a good baker!

1. Coincidence. We got to know each other through the Net. At that time, both of us were so miserable and upset over broken relationships so we just decided to get together (rebound relationship horror stories and all)
2. Although he is a KL-lang, his dad’s hometown is very close to mine so he can relate to my childhood stories. I always like a listening ear. That’s why he can marry a kampung girl like me and can blend in well with my kampung relatives!
3. He wouldn’t take NO for an answer when he proposed to me!
4. He is much, much better than my ex.
5. He looks slightly better than Patrick Teoh! Hahahaaaaa……
6. He can yak…and yak….and yak…non-stop! When he comes home from work, he MUST tell me what happened while he was out. Lucky for him that I am a good listener, sometimes.
7. He is the Finance Minister in the house. I learnt how to SAVE money from him. With daddykhong, money can really grow on trees!
8. He is also known as handyman-Khong besides daddykhong because he will do everything by himself at home. He is the carer for the kids, a plumber, a technician, an accountant and a slave for the wife .
9. He has a very good sense of direction…..definitely won’t get lost when he is the driver or navigator.
10. Before I met him, the only cars I have experienced were local crap Protons and not-so-crap Peroduas. He introduced the joy of continental motoring to me. I tell you, damn shiok lah so to ensure that I continue to get fun rides, I had to marry him. But most unfortunately, after the kids arrived, the continental cars disappeared.

The most important thing is that he LOVES me and the 2 little terrors!!! Thank you so much for everything, dear.

Long time never tag ppl already. Let me see who is the lucky person….here we go:-

• Irene: My first tag to you.
• Vien: Not sure whether you’ve done this tag before.
• Jessie: Homework for you to do…..hehehe.

Wow! Maids are a real big help…..

……so this mother at Braedyn’s Kindermusik class has proven.

Last week’s class had 3 guest kids who were there for the FOC trial class. The 1st 2 had the usual parent participating with the other parent watching from the sidelines (usually only 1 parent is allowed into the class but for trials, both are allowed).

The 3rd baby (4-month old) has a real champion mum with an even more champion maid. They were late so I can relate what happened very clearly. The mum bursts into the class with 2 kids and a maid. She instructs the maid to accompany the 4-month old baby during class (looked and sounded odd to me but I assumed (wrongly) that she had to look after the elder kid who is about 3 years old). How wrong I was! She then instructed the elder kid to watch the class from the sidelines which he didn’t mind at all. She then disappears outside (which I assumed was to get something, visit the ladies, or make an important phone call (wrong again!)).

According to my ever-faithful spy outside the class (mummykhong), our real champion mum was relaxing outside reading the papers while inside class, the maid was participating in our activities!!!

Talk about getting more value for your ringgit and putting in more effort for your rupiah. I think a few swear words under my breath are in order.

Ok lah, give her the benefit of doubt. Maybe she has a bad back or maybe she has weak arms. Or perhaps she just had lots of garlic bread for breakfast and didn’t want the rest of us to have to resort to gas masks to stay alive. Then again, maybe she’s anti-social. I leave it to you to decide yourselves.

How we handle 2 kids in our lives

It is actually quite tough looking after 2 babies without any external help. Perhaps things MAY be slightly better if Braedyn and Shayanne were spaced further apart but I don’t think it would be THAT MUCH easier anyway.

A peek into our daily routine and the extraordinary things we do to cope

Good morning (or bad depending on how you see it)
The children wake up at around 10-ish. We both wake up about 1/2 an hour to an hour earlier depending on how much sleep we had the night before and whether daddykhong woke up in the wee hours of the morning to get his office work done (yes, he usually works late once or twice a week). Whoever wakes up first has to; cook for Braedyn (mum’s job exclusively, don’t want daddykhong to give the boy food poisoning), hang the clothes to dry (we wash every alternate day), feed the dog (who hasn’t been given a bath for months!), change the water in the dog’s water bowl, light joss sticks for the altar, prepare the car for the drive to the neighbourhood shops for brunch (daddy’s job exclusively), boil water, etc…..

Brunch

There aren’t that many restaurants in our 5-year old neighbourhood and fortunately we aren’t fussy eaters. We frequent this nearby Chinese coffee shop that has decent noodle stalls, chicken rice, a chee cheong fun stall, and economy rice. Before Shayanne arrived, we took turns to eat the different types of food but ever since she was born we have been eating economy rice all the time (we both don’t fancy chicken rice). Why rice? Because it is the only thing you can eat with one hand (with the other either patting Shayanne to calm her down or to grab on to Braedyn when he tries to jump off his highchair!). Also, there have been occasions when we had to stop eating for a while to tend to the kids and you know what happens to noodles when they are not eaten immediately…..

We are so regular at the coffee shop that all the stall owners and staff know what we want the minute we walk in. A highchair will be whisked to the table, we could probably tell the Myanmarese staff “the usual” and they’d know. We feed Braedyn his food before ordering ours because he won’t eat his food once he sees other food on the table.

While daddykhong is out of the house

No sleep for mummy as she has to run after a speed-crawler (who is on the verge of walking) while pacifying a 2-month old who prefers to be carried around. Mummy usually confines herself to the upper floor of the house with the safety gate locked at the top of the stairs. On good days when both kids are sleeping, she would make her way downstairs to access the Net or to bring in the clothes (if any).

Braedyn would watch his usual 1/2 an hour of Barney or Baby Einstein and accompany mummy to watch an hour of Chinese serial (fortunately we don’t have Phoenix or Dynasty else mummy will be watching Astro non-stop).

Shayanne gets her bath during the day when kor-kor is asleep. IF he wakes up during her bath, mummy will make him sit at the door to the bathroom and watch. Sometimes he obeys, sometimes he crawls in and sits right next to the shower cubicle and watches.

Tea time at around 4pm for Braedyn and mummy.

Dinner time

On good days, daddykhong will get home at 730pm to 8pm but most of the time he is back at 9pm with the usual excuse of bad jam, lots of work, meeting took too long so had no time for paperwork, etc. Things should not improve as his company is expanding (thanks daddykhong….more work = more pay = more allowance!)

We usually have dinner at a nice place – “nice” being defined as someplace which accepts credit card, and is air-conditioned (the later daddykhong comes home, the nicer the restaurant is – it is his way of compensating me for a tiring day with the kids). Heck, no complains there. I do need a break. We try to eat a some place new each time although we do default to our usual favourites.

We get home after dinner. Sometimes we visit the nearby hypermarket to buy groceries (can’t wait till they open 24 hours). Braedyn gets his shower then (don’t tell our parents this – they will go mental and lecture us on the “dangers’ of taking late baths)

Night-night

We usually hit the sack at midnight after Braedyn has his night milk (during which time, daddykhong will take a very quick shower). After which he will read a bedtime story to both kids at the same time while mum is in the shower.

It’s all 4 of us on the bed. Whoever wakes up in the middle of the night will transfer Braedyn to his bed.

Couple time

Forget it. Sleep comes first!