Oh boy, I was so wrong about this one.

Hi there guys. You know, I usually blog about something to demonstrate my knowledge and insight in a particular field, but this is one of the few times I am asking you for your insight and help. Something has happened and well, it is probably easiest if I tell you what happened with my family and then I can tell you what I need your advice for. In a recent post, I had reflected on how my mother's attitude towards her maid made me feel extremely uneasy - my mother has a pathological dislike and distrust for every single maid that has ever worked for my family and I suppose growing up, we never had maids. We just couldn't afford the luxury and so my mother never really has gotten used to having a 'stranger' in the house. I wrote about how my mother had made some rather horrendous, baseless accusations at the maid and how my sister was put in a dilemma - well, things have just taken a very dark twist and it completely took me by shock.

The maid got arrested a few days ago. she had been involved in a pretty big criminal ring whereby Indonesian maids stole valuable items from their employers and passed them off to a middleman who would then sell those items off. The maids would get paid some money for stealing but they would usually no idea what price their 'loot' fetched on the black market. I can imagine the middleman would keep the bulk of the profits whilst the maids too most of the risk doing the theft. The maid was trusted to go to the supermarket to get groceries and she would buy items like clothing, cosmetic and other high-value items, hoping that it would go unnoticed. It did for a while, but she then got bolder and bolder, eventually my brother-in-law was the one was the one who noticed something was amiss and he started checking receipts and his credit card bills.She confessed and the matter is now turned over to the police, because it isn't a simple matter of one maid stealing an item from her employers: this involves a major criminal operation which the police are very keen to investigate and catch the ring leaders. This came completely out of the blue and totally took us by shock.

Yes, so there's a huge 'I told you so' moment from my mother who hated this maid from the start and always found fault with everything she did. Nonetheless, we have had other maids come and go before in the past and my mother treated every single one of them with the same disdain and contempt. I would in turn condemn my mother for her attitude - look, compared to my family, I am very left wing and liberal. Of course, I live in London, I'm openly gay, like of course I'm liberal and progressive. When I was in Miami, I asked the lady behind the counter what time she supermarket closes and she replied, "no hablo Ingles". I then had a lovely conversation with her in Spanish and my attitude was like, "thank you for refusing to speak English to me because you just made my life so much more culturally vibrant with that conversation. Muchas gracias!" I think most Americans would be rather upset if they couldn't get a worker in a supermarket to answer a simple question like that in English. Likewise, I got along really well this maid because I would always speak to her in a mishmash of Malay and Indonesian and she would gladly indulge my desire to practice my rather rusty Malay with her.

I am left with so many conflicted feelings.

I suppose I share my sister's shock and indignation, I know my sister well. She has always treated this maid very fairly, with respect but the same couldn't be said about other members of my family I'm afraid. The worst I have seen is when some other members of my extended family have barked orders at her like, "give me the bag" - I suppose it is a cultural thing. I found that extremely rude and I would never ever talk to anyone (maid or otherwise) that way, never. The proper way to express that same sentiment is, "Could you give me the bag please? Thank you very much." But I suppose this is when there's a huge cultural difference between myself and my family: I'm so freaking white I'm like the ultimate banana, I'm yellow on the outside but more white than most white people on the inside. Technically speaking, I'm mixed but that's another story for another day. White people tend to value manners a lot more than Chinese people. Okay so people in my family can be abrupt/rude with her, but that's as bad as it gets and I'm willing to admit that being this hideously rude is normal in Chinese culture because you Chinese people have no manners to begin with. If that makes me racist, well then tough shit, so be it: Chinese people are bloody rude in nature, it is not in your culture to be polite and this maid has had the misfortune of working for a Chinese family rather than a more cultured white family. And if you think Singaporeans can be very rude, well the PRCs take it to a whole new level. Either way, I can only shake my head in utter disgust.

But if you were to put the issue of the way they talk to her aside, this maid was treated fairly. In terms of her work load, how she was fed, how she was given time off, it was all fair. Certainly, she wasn't mistreated in a way that would lead to criminal charges being brought against my family. To be fair, whilst being bloody rude is socially unacceptable, it isn't a crime per se. I guess I am shocked because I never expected the maid to do something like that - sure other maids who are treated very badly by their employers would resort to stealing as a form of revenge, I can see that happening. In fact I'm going to share a story here to illustrate why I have some empathy even at this stage: during my NS days, I witnessed a young soldier who was treated very harshly by the system. This young man had been subjected to a brutal scolding and punishment by an officer who was clearly just venting his anger on him, there was a huge element of bullying involved and as a fellow soldier, there was little I could do but observe from a distance. A few hours later, I witnessed this young soldier use a set of keys to scratch a vehicle in the camp - it wasn't the vehicle that belonged to the officer who bullied him, but it was clearly an act of revenge against the system. Again, I chose to keep quiet and pretended that I didn't see anything - sometimes in such situations, it is all too easy to avoid getting involved. But of course, there was a part of me that could empathize with that young soldier and understand why he had scratched that car out of frustration.

Sometimes it is just easier to pretend not to have seen it all...

I suppose the question in my head is whether or not my mother's paranoia and ridiculous behaviour pushed the maid so far that it made her snap and turn evil? My parents are severely autistic, like you wouldn't believe how my parents lack even the most basic social skills for them to function in any social context, including that simple interaction with a maid in the house. My mother had the crazy idea that the maid was desperately trying to sleep with my father, I was literally rolling on the floor with laughter when I heard that accusation as my father is such an old man. Maybe the maid wants to steal his money (and fair enough, that turned out to be true) - but sex? I don't even know where my mother gets such ridiculous ideas, but she was convinced that the maid was some kind of sex-hungry sex maniac desperate to seduce my father. Perhaps the maid is used to people barking orders at her all the time, but I did wonder if my mother's ridiculous accusations played any part in driving her to the dark side? You have to bear in mind the fact that this maid had worked for my sister for many years and had been mostly very hardworking. She had put up with my mother's irrational and crazy behaviour for years. Hence maybe, well, we shouldn't be that shocked after all she had been through then?

But given how wrong I was about completely trusting and liking this maid, the counter argument I suppose is whether or not the maid is as innocent as I thought she was? Maybe I had been too quick to judge my mother, to dismiss her as an autistic, paranoid, silly old woman who doesn't understand even the most basic things in life? Maybe my mother did have a point about the maid, maybe we should have listened to her and given her the benefit of the doubt, even if my mother is the most inarticulate person who often struggles to find the right words to express herself. But on this occasion, yeah, I stand corrected - she was right to have been suspicious of this maid, that this maid was up to no good. I suppose if we follow this through, then I do wonder what other things my mother may have been right but I had unfairly dismissed anything she had to say without even listening to her. But unfortunately, sigh, my mother doesn't make this any easier for me because each time I speak to her, she would say something really stupid which doesn't boost my confidence in her - don't even get me started. To repeat some of the ridiculous things she has said to me recently in this piece would just be downright cruel. I guess this whole episode has rattled my confidence on my ability to judge human character because I simply didn't see this one coming - after all, I make a living in sales, I am supposed to be very good at things like that.

I definitely misjudged my sister's maid. I was wrong.

There's also one more issue which worries me - if this maid is cunning enough to gain my family's trust to be able to steal so many things, then what would she do to try to cut a deal with the police? Would she resort to making some false accusations against someone like my mother or my nephew to try to paint herself as a victim who had been badly treated by my family? To be fair, most of my family had been guilty of no more than being very rude to her, but my mother did cross the line on many occasions - including subjecting the maid to intense, cruel interrogations based on no more than a hunch or feeling and no hard evidence at all. Would the maid allege any mistreatment or abuse when forced into a corner? Or would she merely do something like give the police the ring leader in exchange for something like deportation and a ban from entering Singapore? I don't know - I have no idea what she would do, but as you can imagine, my sister is quite concerned and worried as she no longer knows whom she is dealing with. Her maid had clearly fooled her.

I suppose the disappointment also reminds me of what happened to me in Indonesia on two occasions. I got into a car accident near Borobudur in Java some years back: my partner had stopped the car because the car in front had stopped. Two girls on a moped didn't stop in time and slammed into the back of our car: it was clearly their fault not to have braked in time, but they alleged that it was our fault because we had stopped suddenly. Pretty soon, the whole village came out to watch the argument between me and the growing crowd of locals - I had naively imagined that because I speak Malay rather well, I could overcome the language barrier and reason with these people. But no, regardless of my language ability, it boiled down to the fact that I was a rich foreigner and they were either going to get me to give them money or I would get lynched by the local mob who had gathered. The second incident was in Bintan ferry terminal, where the local custom officer subjected me to a really long interrogation and refused me entry into Indonesia because I couldn't show him my return ticket from Singapore to London - that was of course, a ridiculous claim because where I chose to go after I depart Indonesia is none of his business; he just wanted me to pay him a bribe of course. I refused to speak English with him and tortured him with my mishmash of Hokkien and pidgin Malay until I totally wore him down. My tour guide was amazed I managed to get into Indonesia without paying a bribe when most would have handed over some money.

Why is there so much tension between Singapore and Indonesia?

Those two incidents did taint my opinions of Indonesians and let me assure you, there are plenty of other examples of predatory behaviour on the part of Indonesians that I have experienced in my travels in Indonesia. To be fair, this happens when any rich traveler visits a poor country, I had experienced the same thing in the Tunisia and the Dominican Republic: different culture, different language, different country, same bullshit. I am wary of this rather predatory approach, like "you're richer than me, so give me your money!"  But I trusted my sister's maid. I thought she wasn't like the other Indonesians who were dishonest and corrupt - I couldn't understand why she would turn to crime like that when the middleman handling the stolen goods couldn't have paid her enough to justify the kinds of risks she had to take to procure those items. Now she is in jail - was it worth it for that little bit of money she was paid whilst the middlemen kept most of the profits? It was such a bad deal as far as she was concerned: she took most of the risks whilst seeing so little of the reward. Did the years of working for my sister mean absolutely nothing to her? Did it boil down to "I'm poor, you're rich, so I will rob you as that's only fair"? Or is it something much darker and more antagonistic, more racist going on?

I'm not sure what will happen to the maid now, I suppose her fate lies in the hands of the police and law enforcement authorities in Singapore. Do I feel sorry for her? I don't know, a part of me does but a part of me doesn't. I'm quite conflicted. I did try to persuade my sister to switch to getting a cleaner/carer who will come in during the day but not actually live with you - I live in a big house and I have a cleaner who comes in once a fortnight to scrub down my kitchen, clean my toilets and do the mopping and vacuuming. I just pay him for 3 hours of hard work and I don't ever have to worry about the feeling of living with a stranger in my house, gosh I value my privacy, it would just feel weird. I am quite happy to do the housework but then again, I work about 30 - 35 hours a week whilst my sister easily works 80 to 90 hours a week, so I guess I have a lot more free time on my hands to cook a meal or go see my friends at the gym. As my parents get older, they are also going to be increasingly reliant on a maid to do the housework - but the irony is that the more they need the maid, the more my mother has become paranoid about maids and after this incident, oh boy. I'm not quite sure where this leaves us. So for now, I'm just going to take a step back and wait for the dust to settle a bit first.

Perhaps my family will be better off without a maid?

So that's it from me on this topic. What do you think please? Are such crimes committed by maids common in Singapore? Are you surprised to hear of such a well organized crime ring involving many Indonesian maids in Singapore? Have you heard about other similar incidents happening? What have been your experiences working with Indonesians? What can I do about my parents' deep distrust of maids? Leave a comment below, thanks for reading.