Maid to Order

A few weeks ago, our cleaning lady Ah Chuan announced she had to go home to Malaysia for her mother’s funeral. The news was greeted with surprise, not least because we never imagined Ah Chuan to have a mother in the first place.

            “Hah?” Sharyn said. “What you mean?”

            “Well, we know she must have had a mother,” Saffy said, her bosom rising defensively, “but we just never really thought about it. Plus, Ah Luan must be at least 60, so how old must the mother be?”

            “Where got sick-tee? What year she born?”

            Saffy paused. “I don’t know. No, wait, she’s a dragon! That’s right, she said it’s why she’s a huge fan of Lee Hsien Loong!”

            “Year of dragon…year of dragon…” Sharyn stared hard at the ceiling as her mouth moved. “That mean she was born nineteen fee-tee-tree…No, cannot be, too old, must be nineteen sick-tee-fie, so she is…fee-tee two, lor! Fee-tee two, where got old?”

            Saffy stared at Sharyn. “How did you do all that in your head?”

            Sharyn’s face was the picture of innocence. “Very hard, meh?”

            That night at home, it was all Saffy could talk about. “She’s like a human Siri! It’s not enough that she must have memorized all the years of all the animals, but she can do four digit calculations in her head! How amazing is that?”

            Amanda sniffed. “Big deal! Ayeesha over at Club 21 can do discounts in her head on five digits! Now, that’s impressive!”

            “Wait, you buy clothes with five digit price tags?” Saffy asked, looking both affronted and envious.

            “My point is, I’d be more impressed if she can work out how we’re going to survive two weeks without Ah Chuan! Because let me tell you now that I’m not cleaning the toilet!”

            “This flat is filthy and she just came yesterday!” Saffy moaned, looking at our dining table with deep dissatisfaction.

            “How much longer can next door’s renovations take?” Amanda asked. “It’s been ages!”

            For the past few weeks, our neighbours have been doing major renovations involving a lot of hacking and drilling. The result is thick waves of dust seep into our flat and cover everything.

            “It’s like living in a desert!” Saffy told the contractor when she bumped into him one day. “Why is there so much dust?”

            The contractor lifted his eyes from Saffy’s formidable bosom and looked at her with a reassuring smile. “Sorry, lah, miss, but the owner want to change all the kitchen tile and put in new sink in bathroom, so must hack every-ting out! Bo-pian, lah!”

            Saffy opened her mouth to say something tart in reply, but as she later told us, her heart just wasn’t in it. “He’s got this massive cyst in the middle of his forehead and I was dying to tell him he should watch Dr Sandra Lee!”

            Meanwhile, the dust continues to accumulate each day, even though we keep all the doors and windows closed.

            “How is it getting in here?” Amanda complained last night as she wiped down our dining table. “Look at this! I just wiped this in the morning and the cloth is grey!”

            Saffy emerged from the bathroom where she’d spent the past half hour scrubbing the grouting in the shower stall, and the toilet bowl. “This is ridiculous! I cannot imagine Victoria Beckham has to clean her own toilet when the cleaning lady goes on holiday!”

            “Maybe David Beckham does it?” Amanda suggested.

            “I doubt it. He’s probably too busy getting another tattoo to be spraying Harpic into a toilet bowl!”

            By the time we finished scrubbing, wiping, moping and vacuuming, it was almost midnight. It had taken us three hours to clean the same space that Ah Chuan does in two and a half.

            “That’s not bad!” said Amanda. Our sense of accomplishment was soon punctured when Sharyn came over the next night with fried kway teow she’d da-powed from Old Airport Road.

            “Hah? The tree of you took tree hour to clean?”

Saffy puffed up. “That’s only half an hour more than it takes Ah Chuan!”

“Where got? Tree of you take tree hour…dat mean is total of nine hour, you know! Tree time tree, mah!”

            Amanda frowned as she stared into the distance. “Three times three…Wait, how…oh…”

            It took a few minutes of Sharyn patiently diagramming the maths on a piece of paper before Saffy got it.        “Nine hours? We wasted nine hours?” she moaned.

            The next day, Amanda booked a professional cleaning service for the rest of Ah Chuan’s leave. “Don’t tell Sharyn how much it costs,” she instructed.