Job Discussion Forums

guruengerish · Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 424 Location: Australia

It's been a good few weeks since I haunted these pages, but this topic caught my attention.

Firstly, on the subject of 10yo maids, I was surprised to find a Chinese family who asked me to stay over with them (they'd studied in Australia) employing a lass who was about 12yo, and one slightly older to act as 'nanny' to a new arrival.

They certainly treated her nicely, and although she didn't seem to do anything directly affecting me, I made a point of giving her Rp20,000 for her kindness, as I left.

I felt as if I should have given this to my hosts, as they had put me into a nice room with air conditioning, but not a sheet or pillow to be found. I know most folk take their own towels, but sheets? I had a choice of near-freezing (no controls) or just enjoying good ol' Jakarta humidity.

Another crazy but true story comes from Makassar, where we had an extremely efficient Torajan lady as our pembantu for two years, and she brought in cousins and nieces if we had a crowd.

When we left, there was a race amongst the expats to employ her.

A year later, I returned to catch up on old friends, to be told that my former pembantu was back in Rantepao; the story was that she and her boss fell out, and she was sacked. As she left, she put a curse on the house, and as a result, no-one would work there. Word gets around it seems.

So my friend employed a local dukun, who inspected the house, and declared that he could excorsize (sp?) the curse, but the owner had to make a contribution that would make him sad.

Friend couldn't think of a thing, until the dukum spied a near-new bottle of duty-free Scotch. He pounced on this, and then liberally sprinkled it around each room, followed by some urine and declared the house 'curse free'.

It was - and new maids came back. My friend still hurts from seeing his Scotch tipped over the floor.

gugelhupf · Joined: 24 Jan 2004 Posts: 575 Location: Jabotabek

For some time now I have provided sweet mangos to all the domestic staff in the neighbourhood, as well as to quite a few tight-fisted wealthy chinese who can easily afford to buy fruit but find it cheaper to pilfer mine.

All this may be history, however, as some old lady in the neighbourhood has started a rumour that my tree is haunted by a spirit presence which she swears she saw one morning. She really should take more water with her Cap Tikus - but I expect to keep much more of my crop in future.

Now... how can I persuade people that a local warung is haunted? We have one that causes a lot of nuisance to the rest of the estate. Anyone know any movie special effects technicians?

guruengerish · Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 424 Location: Australia

Just continue your good work and supply more of your hooch to the owner of the warung.

With a bit of luck, the same rumour can be spread. Very Happy

nasigoreng · Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:43 pm Post subject:

sorry for entering the conversation late.

I would recommend buying educational materials for the kid and making it part of her daily duties to study for a couple of hours. Give her a 'bonus' for each book completed. maybe even incorporate English into her daily routine.

-3E- · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:57 pm Post subject:

I had put a bottle of coca cola in the freezer and forgetten about it. Turns out it exploded and the maid ended up cleaning it out. She took the frozen soda and put it into some glasses.... Of course there were shards of glass in the frozen soda... She was a bright one...

TEAM_PAPUA · Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 1679 Location: HOLE

Maybe she used a really thin straw.

Michael_Indonesia · Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 9:31 am Post subject:

Gado gado should like this one. There are several employees of my current school who are convinced that the building is haunted. Of course, they don't listen to reason, even when I explain that I'm almost always the last person out the door at night and have seen or heard nothing 'paranormal' in almost two years here.

One of the office girls once swore she saw a snake just outside, so our center manager, a well-educated, 40-something year-old Muslim lady, hired a dukun (for about Rp 1 million, I heard) to spend the night and erase the curse. When I asked her about it, she said she had to so the staff wouldn't be scared to come to work.

Now, some of our local teachers and office boys swear one of our classrooms is haunted because it's never used anymore. So, one of my local colleagues (also well-educated, but Catholic) has gotten into the habit of moving her classes into that room so the spirits will go away.

Just goes to show that the superstitious in this country go well beyond any confines of education, religion, or age.