250202, 1745hr, central time.

it's snowing! it's not little wimpy flurries too, i'm seeing huge blobs of snow. wow. it really looks like the sky's dropping cotton wool bits on us, so beautiful. this reminds me of the first time i saw snow fall, in freshman year. i was very very excited. :) of course, right now, i'm sitting by the computer, comfortably out of the snow, so it's all pretty and nice. later, when i have to walk home from work, i'll probably have a completely different perspective on this. haha.

it's interesting reading that article that poach emailed to me though. on people's dependency on their maids in singapore. [i'll repeat the link here.] the timing is also pretty weird, because i actually got into an argument with alvin yesterday about how people are so unappreciative of what they have, and how lucky most singaporeans are, and don't realise it.

i mean, i think i should make it clear though, that i'm not saying singaporeans mistreat their maids, or that we should put a ban on maids. i do think it's economically beneficial for the region, as well as for the singaporeans who have enough money to spare and would like to enjoy the conveniences of having a maid. no, i'm not against people having maids. i'm simply against people having maids, and thinking it's the most natural arrangement ever, or feeling that we're such great benefactors to the poor indonesians/filipino/whathaveyou kampong people who would all die poor and miserable without our employment. have i mentioned how self-centered and "ethnocentric" singaporeans can be?

it pisses me off, when kids say something like, "well, maids should do this and that for me, because they're what they're supposed to do anyway." it irritates me, because i don't feel comfortable with the notion that someone serves only to take care of mundane things that i-the-all-important-one is too busy to take care of. maybe these people don't have the education to be nuclear scientists, but how can they exist solely to clean up after you? yes, they are paid for their services, but it doesn't mean they do not deserve more respect than that. they have their own lives too, they have their own aspirations. maybe you should ask your maid whether she ever had childhood dreams of what she wanted to be. even if it's nothing spectecular, i doubt it's "oh, i always dreamt of coming to singapore to help people cook and clean." there has to be something wrong, with singapore's maid phenomenon, you cannot blame it on high stress and industrialization, because seriously, which other country in the world has a level of maid dependency as high as ours? it becomes ridiculous, when a family of 2 "needs" 2 maids. [oh, one to look after the household chores and one to look after the kids. right.]

when kids say, "oh, i guess we should do chores, but now i'm too busy with school, i can learn later." when does later come? school isn't all that busy if you don't spend so much time bumming at macdonald's, don't bullshit with me. i went through all my life so far not only without a maid, but serving almost like the maid of my family anyway. i did everyone's laundry, i helped my mom do all the cooking [especially during the years when she commuted to and fro from malaysia everyday, i was practically the one cooking dinner everyday.] i folded and ironed all the clothes, my brothers and i did the vacuuming and mopping of the floor every weekend. the only thing i didn't do was the toilets, because that was the job of my brothers. did that make me a lousy student? no way. did i not have any friends or respectable social life? i most certainly hope not. *all of cindy's friends wave hi!* i have complained about the amount of housework i had to do, so it's not like i think everyone should have the responsibilities i had. but how can anyone tell me with a straight face that she has no time to make her own bed? argh. absolutely disgusting.

[i realise i sound like i'm boasting about how much housework i can and had to do, but trust me on it. right now i'm proud of my upbringing in this, of course, but i assure you i didn't feel as proud as a teenager when my friends half-jokingly refered to me as the maid of my family.]

having left home to come here to study, i can continue preaching about the importance of independence and all that. but the funny thing is, i don't cook all that much anymore. yes, i survive on pasta and instant noodles these days. i do laundry, of course, but it's as easy as popping them into the washing machine. nothing like the hand-scrubbing and cloth twisting stuff i had to do at home. indeed, i'm the perfect poster girl for a princess-y girl, the way i live now. in fact, i think alvin thinks i'm a qian jin xiao jie - very apt term for spoilt girls, lit. means the lady that costs a thousand pieces of gold. i was just talking to lynn that day about how alvin doesn't let me do the dishes when we eat together. but anyway, that's not the point at all. the point is, i know that i can do everything, if i wanted to. i know that no one else is responsible for my own well-being, and the only reason i'm not taking better care of myself is because i'm lazy. and not because "i'm too busy." or "that's what my maid is for anyway."

alright. end of rant. phew. the article really pushed all the wrong buttons in me, to make me so agitated. i think it isn't an accurate portrayal of how teenagers really feel about their maids though, it just seems too outrageous to be true. i know of friends who are absolutely attached to their maids, and have no intention of demeaning their worth, i also don't think my family is the only one that absolutely refuses to have maids. furthermore, even in consideration of a probable lack of maturity, i'm not sure the article did not exaggerate, or misrespresent what these teenagers really said. nonetheless, if what the article implied is true, i think it's very sad, for the people who have no sense of shame in who they've become.