Yaya Woes

Being a mother is a very demanding yet fulfilling 24/7 job. It is especially stressful when you juggle motherhood and career at the same time. I was a slave to the corporate world for most of the years that Dylan and Dion have been growing up. In fact, I have missed a lot of school activities and milestones in my young kids’ lives. The guilt I felt afterwards. But then I have to work to provide them with a better future. Good thing though that aside from having my mother at home most of the time, I was blessed with a few trustworthy and loyal yayas but that’s about to change now that my kid’s yaya is soon to leave us after three years of serving us.

Anyone who have relied on a yaya must have an idea on how lost I and my family are feeling now. Especially me that we also have a wonderful nine month old baby who is learning to walk to consider. How can one work and keep her sanity intact when she worries about the kids, the household chores, the bills and everything?

Our yaya is a valuable member of our family. We do not consider her as a paid servant but as an extension of our family. We do not ask her to wear a uniform and we bring her anywhere we go even on vacations. We understand that she has to leave us for good to take care of her aging and sick parents….

As parents we all know how difficult it is to trust someone to help us in the daily needs of our kids. There is always the fear that the household help might mistreat the kids or steal from us. But working parents know that we need them in order to work. We need their assistance. Unlike in other countries where the need for household help is at a minimum due to the presence of so many child care centers and the reliability of baby sitters, parents here in the Philippines do no have those options available so we rely on other people to help us with our needs.

What’s your opinion about yayas? Are they really indispensable to parents?

 

What I Miss About Home

My kids have always been and always will be my strongest bond to CDO. There is never a time or a moment that I do not miss them. But aside from that, there are certain things I miss about home. Life for the past month has been pretty lonely for me. I’m just at the house 90% of the time. I only go out when I have to go to certain offices to pass applications, go to church or to malls to buy something. SG’s style of online application can get pretty frustrating at times because I was never great with the waiting part. Patience is a virtue that I never had. I want to just go the offices and do walk-in applications but only blue collared jobs have walk-ins. Plus I do not like the fact that certain companies and offices are discriminating towards hiring foreigners. Urggghhhh…..coming here in mid January was really wrong timing as they have just started their hiring process after Chinese New Year. SO basically, I’ve been here for a month doing nothing and receiving nothing save for the fact that I got the two job offers that I could not accept.

I’ve always been independent but as I grow older, I have become more and more homesick. I truly miss the comforts of home. I’ve listed below the things I have truly missed:

1. Food- they say only Filipinos love Filipino food but I don’t care. I love it. In the house though we cook Filipino food but even though we are using seasonings brought from Filipino store, the taste is not just the same. It’s probably because the rest of the ingredients are not from home. Plus majority of my house mates are Seventh Day Adventists so pork is off limits here. And I’m a pork eater. Lechon, crispy pata, lechon kawali, sinugbang baboy, patatim are just some of my favorites. That means I have a pork less diet for about a month save for a time or two when I had roasted pork at Lucky Plaza and it’s not just the same. I also miss the crabs and the shrimps and the squid. Also the shawarma from Oro Shawarma and the tempura, squid balls and fish balls you can buy near Xavier University. Hmmmmm…what else? The Margherita pizza from Figola’s in Cebu. The manggang hilaw with bagoong that you can buy almost everywhere, the cheap but the sweetest fruits in CDO like the lanzones (actually it’s really from Camiguin), rambutan, siniguelas, and mangosteen. The best tasting banana que that can be bought for P8 or P10 opposite Trinidad Building and the siomai sa Tisa. Ahhhh food…..just thinking about it has my stomach grumbling. hehehe.

photo credit: http://www.lovelyphilippines.com/recipes/pork-and-beef-recipes/filipino-lechon-recipe-or-roasted-pig-ham-or-pork-recipe/

2. Night outs with friends- I do have friends here in SG but they are so busy with their own separate lives that going on night outs has not yet materialized. In Cebu, it’s an SOP that weekends are spent with friends and having a blast with some Mojitos or Tanduay. I miss my favorite hang out places in Cebu like Tonyo’s, where I am a regular customer who’s on a first name basis with most of the waiters, Zux and even Formo. Night life in CDO is not as lively as Cebu but in the rare occasion that I am meeting friends in CDO, it’s almost always in Rosario Arcade and it’s strings of restos and bars.

photo credit: http://www.metro.com.ph/christmas/baskets5″>

3. My favorite restaurants- this is actually in connection to number 1 but I really do miss eating at Panagatan and Tabing Dagat with my family. They always been our restaurants of choice for special occasions. For weekends in CDO, there is always the night cafe which also gives me an excuse to browse and shop for bags and other ukay2x. hehehe. For Cebu, Larsian is our default choice though more special occasions are spent in Ocean Garden, AA’s or Chikaan.

photo credit:http://philippinephototravel.blogspot.com/2010/11/panagatan-sea-side-restaurant-opol.html

4. Booksale- Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I’m a voracious reader and would really spend money to buy books. That’s why Booksale has always been a haven for me as I can buy books from my favorite authors at super low prices. I have yet to find a bookstore here in SG that sells pocketbooks on sale and their regular priced books are ridiculously expensive for a jobless person like me. I miss reading of course. My brother has several books but they’re of a genre not to my liking. hehehe, sorry Stephen King. I’m more of the Jackie Collins and Nora Roberts kind of girl. I can go their library and read to my heart’s content but the nearest library is a bus ride away and I’m too lazy to get out of the house just to go to the library. I’m reading Breaking Dawn on iBooks though but I miss turning pages of an actual book.

photo credit: http://neolle.wordpress.com/

So there you have it. SG is very nice but I miss even the traffic and the pollution associated with the Philippines.