It gets worse than that however. She finally got the job down and was able to navigate through websites with ease. I’ve even come across some of her listings by doing a basic search in google. I wanted to show her my appreciation and I wrote out a letter telling her she was doing a good job because I found her online advertisement on myadmonster.com. My dad called me back to the office and asked me what is it that I want her to do. I looked at the email they were looking at and I told him I didn’t want her to do anything new and that it was simply a letter letting her know she was on the right track. He seemed surprised, he said “Really? Because it says that she did something big online and you just saw a monster.” I couldn’t help but laugh because … well, it was funny.
Brittany has this habit of saying “Hella good” and my dad overheard this. I don’t think he honestly heard it right because I was eating these Japanese Noodle Snacks that were “Hella Good” but he wanted me to try something different. He walked in the door with this cheese wafer type thing and when I was about to say I was full he interrupted me with “What the hell good!” I thought he was mad at first and ate it real fast before he said, “That’s what you guys say. It’s what the hell good.” I had thought he was angry and took it out on me by making me eat this weird cheese stick, which actually was, “What the hell good!”
There have been other not so great examples of bad communications and the struggle against language barriers. For example, I am learning plenty of Bahasa and Hokkien but that doesn’t matter because I am far from fluent. So I told Brittany that when she needs something from the maids to use body language. I wanted her to tell the maid to spray her room for mosquitoes but she didn’t know how. I instructed her to make a little fly with a finger, buzzing around merrily, and with the other hand use it as a spray. Motion as though the finger that is the mosquito is now falling to the floor after the spray motion. I added sound effects as well so they could hear the obvious change in buzzing. She tried this, but they ended up getting confused and brought her a needle and thread.
When Mike took his mother to Bali, I stayed behind with Ian and Iniya. I just cannot part with my babies while they are so young. Anyway, one day I was on the computer and I noticed a mouse running through my bedroom. I couldn’t believe it and I thought for certain it would chew up the wires behind the television. Ian and Stefany, my sister, were with me. I drew up a photo of me, sitting on my laptop, drew a mouse, and then drew me, Ian and Stefany screaming. I took it down to one of the maids. She said, “Ohhh!” Ran into a room then came back out and said no. I figured she just didn’t want to help with the issue so I went back upstairs and sat, doing nothing for quite some time. After a while I got the attention of another maid and she saw the mouse too. She came back with a broom, seen it, struck the wall, screamed and backed off and repeated this until someone else arrived. Unfortunately, a young man came in, my dad’s store clerk and he did something fatal to the mouse. It was sad and I almost regretted mentioning I seen it in the first place. Well the first maid came back upstairs and finally realized what was going on. Apparently, she thought I was complaining about a toy and she had told me she had not seen it.
This is just an outline of the communication challenges we meet here each day. Super fun! As you can see, I’ve included some recent pictures of us here in Batam for the last month and a half.
