Talking about work, I’m under a different department now. The company thinks it can manage without a sales and marketing department as seen that I’m the last woman standing since Big Daddy then Muffy left at the end of 2007. My new boss, Darry’s Bro, is yet another different personality at the workplace. He’s brilliant with persuasion, places emphasis on bling-bling presentations, and unlike Big Daddy, he has no qualms about spending… that is, I found after a week working for him, unless he’s tagged to finance the project (hee). I do know I’m still in the company because he thought I’m OK with blinged documents, presentations and other marketing materials, and agreed to absorb me into the department. However, this department is not familiar with how creatives work – sometimes they hand me tasks like calculating quantities to put into pallet containers! – and me vice versa — the engineers mostly sit and talk about the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies or how they can lobby for a larger allowance from the company. Even before, other departments have discussed that advancement in this department’s ranks depends on getting along with the top guns and accompanying them to bars and extolling their bursts of genius, so I’m not expecting much. I’m not sure how much longer this arrangement will hold, anyway.
A month and a half into the deal and I want to officially state my job sucks — but I can’t. This year’s outlook isn’t looking too good, companies are not hiring, and we want to save all income we can manage. I chat with Big Daddy and Muffy sometimes to see how they’re doing. Jean-Luc Picard has been hired by Darry’s Bro for part-time stuff. DSTS suggest we focus on supporting plans not dependent on employment.
The only perk these days for us seem to be the boon of an apartment DSTS found near my office, and that we get to spend after work hours with our son. Again, we know this is a temporary arrangement — China is now way going to give out prolonged visas to Philippine nationals, among others — but it’s a comfort to see the Little Spud every day, waiting at home. However, not every thing’s peachy here either.
We have the visa woes.
For reasons personal and after asking Mainland friends for advice, we decided to bring the Little Spud’s nanny to China instead of hiring a local one. It’s not the issue of wages; if you count fees for processing passports, plane tickets and visas, money spent is more or less the same. It’s actually less hassle to hire a Mainland Chinese nanny, and that’s the Chinese government’s intention all along — they have more than enough manpower qualified for this kind of work, after all. But we wanted someone used to the way of child-rearing we were used to; the China way is something we don’t want to deal with for now, being first-time parents.
And so the nanny. She’s a reference from DSTS’s neighbors on a short notice and has been working for us for us a month after the Little Spud was born. Being from the province, she had a bit of a problem with her papers (wrong birth date, birth not determined if legitimate or no, missing school records — these turned out to be a big deal because she also didn’t bother getting valid IDs before). We sorted this out by writing letters to her municipality and school. At one point, I said maybe we should look for another nanny; DSTS thought to stick with this nanny, because at least she had a character reference, three years’ service under the employer before us, and we got hold of her complete records.
We knew what we were getting into, but we decided to try anyway. We registered at the area’s police bureau to apply for residency visas. We were accompanied by Pixie Chick, who handled our visa requirements (Little Spud decided to like her on the spot and granted her a rare first-meeting smile). Then we went to customs. It was a bit of a long wait; Pixie Chick said these days are even more difficult to swing officers because of the upcoming Beijing Olympics (incoming people and resource control; no extended stays).
We got held up with lunch period, and we retired to a noodle house with a friendly but little bit creepy proprietess — she looks like Blanche DuBois with black Shirley Temple ringlets and a red flower tucked in one ear — who insisted Little Spud eat a mantou. He nibbled on a bit just to be polite, then when the lady had to mind the cash register, he promptly spit the mantou bits out.
To know more about her as well as test her aptitude for factual consistency, I’ve been engaging the nanny in casual conversations about things not necessarily related to her tasks. Among some tidbits, I found back home they ate a lot of vegetables and fish. I haven’t noticed before because I’m not in charge of the kitchen when we’re staying with my mother or my mother-in-law, but I now know she refuses to eat much when I cook just veggies. And today, the nanny insists on having chicken for lunch. She eyes the noodles many people in the shop ordered. And rice, she adds. We noticed she insists on a lot of things, like she claims, when she was still with her old employer, she’s more one of the gang than a hired nanny, and that they went out to go to the mall every weekend. I told her I have priorities, and mall outings aren’t one of them. What I know is her employers were husband and wife working in Taiwan, and they sent their daughter to live with her Taimah, and was in this nanny’s charge for three years. DSTS knows the little girl’s aunts, and they said they don’t go out with the child and the nanny very often.
We order curry chicken and rice for her. I had mapo tofu mien, and Pixie Chick orders chicken noodles. The waitress serves the nanny and hands her a pair of chopsticks. She eyes them warily. I ask for a spoon, and the waitress obliges. Little Spud had a couple of Gerber’s vegetable beef stuff. He’s popular with waitresses and the people who passed by to pay their bills (touch cheek here, ruffled hair there), but he didn’t like the mantou woman because when she asked to carry him, he kept pushing at her shoulders. Maybe her makeup or perfume put him off. He likes Pixie Chick a lot and by now babbles conversational gibberish her way.
Back at the customs office, we wait some more — at least there’s air conditioning — and the Little Spud downs a bottle of milk and gets nappy-changed. The nanny is nervous about probably needing to answerinterview questions in English. So our turn finally comes. There were three male customs officers and one female manning the booths; Pixie Chick hoped we’d get the lady, maybe she’d be a bit more sympathetic to a mother’s plight. Yay, we get the lady. The Little Spud doesn’t have problem, because I, his mother, hold a working visa. Then we launch the script we rehearsed about the nanny. We showed the letter that Cross-stitching Lindseyphile helped check translations for us. The lady became quite scary with a final “Bu xing!” They’re not cutting the nanny any slack. Well, Pixie Chick did say not to hope too much. They did say that if I’m to get “direct relatives” — that means just parents, kids and spouse — they’d get the same visa validity that I have, like the Little Spud did. Unfortunately my mother can’t stay long in China; she has her things to run at her place.
Thus we were deflated. So after two months the nanny needs to exit. We could look into exiting, getting another visa at the Shekou border then stay the duration. Then we may need to alternate visits from my mother-in-law, or my mother. Or we may need to get adjusted and hire a local nanny by then.
Meanwhile, Little Spud waved his legs in the stroller and his shoes, the pair Pixie Chick gave him even before he was born, kept falling off. He was very happy with this outing.
