This morning I woke up to the horrifying news of the MH17 crash.

The general consensus among the reports (although still not 100% confirmed) is that the plane was brought down by a surface to air missile from a tank that looked like this.

Like many other shocked Malaysians I spent much of my day waiting for more updates on what happened. Everyone that I met in LA and knew I was Malaysian asked me about it too.

For a brief moment I thought about what it must be like to be in that plane when it went down. What was the last seconds or minutes like? How did people in the plane react and most importantly… did the passengers suffer or was death quick for them?

So I went and did some Googling and this is what I found (Note that I’m no aviation or military expert. The following points are based on articles that I found online that I have linked below).

The following articles here,  here and here explains some of the below points:

1) Passenger jets have no way to detect that a missile is heading for them. The only way they could tell if the missile was heading for them is if the pilot saw it launch from the ground some 30,000 feet below.

2) Even if the pilot did see the missile there is low chance they would be able to outmaneuver it since it’s a passenger jet, not a high performance jet and the pilots aren’t trained to avoid missiles.

The rest of what happens depends on what type of missile it was and where the missile hit.

3) If the missile had hit the fuel tank then an explosion would have ripped the plane apart. The plane would come down looking like a fireball.

4) The plane however came down in black smoke instead of a fireball so that’s indicative of the fuel tanks still being in tact. So chances are the plane just hit the ground and fell apart upon impact.

5) Does that mean the passengers were conscious the entire time ?

It depends. If the cabin was breached by the explosion and lost pressure, most passengers will pass out from a lack of oxygen within 15 seconds if they don’t put on a mask.

Right now the reports that are coming in still indicate that the teams on site haven’t seen any sign of survivors. So while I hope that we have many survivors, we know that chances of that are slim.

So my other hope is that whatever the circumstance… that all the passengers on board didn’t suffer. That the whole thing was quick or they all passed out within seconds before they knew what was happening.

My parting thought is not far from what the Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott had to say.

I quote

”As things stand, Madam Speaker, this looks less like an accident than a crime,” he said.

 

That’s my thought exactly. If it is proven that MH17 was shot down by a SAM, this isn’t an accident. It’s murder. 295 people were murdered and I hope justice will be brought to the people responsible.

My heart goes out to the passengers of MH17.

Late last night I saw many tweets about #CDM25. Like many things that viral, I didn’t immediately search what it was about. But after seeing enough people tweet about it I decided to pay attention.

It all came to this one video of a woman throwing her fit of anger at an old uncle while swinging her steering lock around like a baseball bat.

Watching the video brought me through a roller coaster of emotions. I felt sad and angry while watching the poor uncle take the verbal battering. Then I chuckled at the funny memes that people have come up with in this short span of time.

And by the end of it all as I reflected on it, I felt sad. Sad that an incident like that happened at all.

As I thought deeper into it I realized that there were some scary things about this incident that really highlight the world that we live in today. Here’s a list of them.

1) How nobody who witnessed it offered to help the uncle or even pacify the situation

You can tell from the video that there were many witnesses there but none of them did anything to really stop it. Nobody did anything when she cursed at him and nobody did anything when she brought out her steering lock to use as a weapon of sorts. I wondered how far this had to escalate before anyone intervened. Would she have to hit him with the steering rod? Or destroy his car? Or hurt someone?

We often feel safe in public. That bad things won’t happen to us because people around us will protect us. Situations like this remind us that the people around us won’t necessarily help us.

2) In her fit of anger she said “Dia Cina, saya tahu dia Sengaja” (He’s Chinese I know he did it on purpose)

While our country hard on becoming a country that sees Malaysians as Malaysians and not Malaysians as Malays, Chinese and Indians… this one thing reminds us that we’re still far away from the 1Malaysia ideal that we as a country are working towards.

On the bright side, we’ve had Malays speak up against the behaviour of the woman.

Here’s the thing though. The main issue shouldn’t be about race. It’s about a Malaysian woman being very rude towards an older Malaysian man. It goes against our values because one such value (regardless of the race we are) is to have respect for our elders. She showed no such respect.

3) How one wrong thing you do can grab the attention of everyone

In the unconnected pre-social media world incidents like this happened all the time but people got away with it. They got away really because there was often no consequence. Today when everyone has a camera and access to social media platforms that can reach millions of people, we all have to think twice about what we do before we do it. Because for all you know, millions of people could be watching it.

4) How everything people need to know about us is on the internet

As quick as this video went viral, people wanted to identify who this woman was and they did more than just identify. They found out her full name, what she did for a living and even where she lived.

All this information wasn’t pulled from some secret CIA database. It was pulled from the internet. Today many of us put enough about us on the internet that we leave a huge internet footprint for anyone who wants to know about us to follow. If they look hard enough they can even know where we like to eat, where we go to work, who our friends are… and more.

Citizens of the world are more exposed today than we have ever been in the history of mankind.

5) How Quick We Are To Judge

That’s what we all did when we watched this video. We judged the woman and called her all sorts of names for her bad behaviour. Most of us didn’t bother to wonder what was her side of the story. Why was she angry? Was she having a really bad day? Was she stressed that she wouldn’t be able to pay for repairs? What was it?

Yes chances are whatever her excuse was it still doesn’t justify her behaviour. But perhaps if we knew more it would add another dimension of the story for us to understand her as a character. Instead what we naturally do is judge her for being a bad person and call her names.

6) How People Remember Only The Bad Things

This is related somewhat to my previous entry that people somehow remember only the bad things. The sad thing is that we will always remember Kiki Kamarudin as the angry woman who bullied an old uncle. She won’t be known for any of the good she has done in her life… whether she has helped people less fortunate than her in the past or whether she has made sacrifices for the benefit of other people. We don’t see any of that. We just now see her as a bad person. Nothing more.

——

My parting thought with this is of forgiveness. Many of us have once lost our tempers and done things to hurt people even close to us… things that we often regret. I know I have done so.

Being in that emotional angry state is a state of weakness. It’s when you’re not yourself (like Hulk in a way) and you sometimes become this ugly person you don’t want to know.

I would like to believe that Kiki was just in this angry emotional state and did something she probably regrets now. The only difference with her and us is that her situation went viral and was broadcasted for all to see whereas ours never left the rooms they happened in. So forgive Kiki.

I commend the uncle for handling the situation as well as he did. I have that and more to learn from him.

As for us we can only draw from the lessons we learned from incidents like this. So the next time we want to throw a fit of anger in public, try to think about CDM25.

I’ve been following the World Cup very closely. This morning I woke up and the first thing I did was to open turn on my phone and google the words “Brazil Germany world cup”. That was the prompt that would pull up the score for the World Cup match between two countries.

I saw this.

And I couldn’t believe it. I rubbed my eyes a little and sat up from my bed. Then I looked at my phone one more time and the numbers didn’t change. Germany thrashed Brazil 7-1.

I googled around then for news wondering what could have possibly happened. And then I found this article.

A quote from the article:

Scolari admitted Tuesday was the darkest experience of his career after the remarkable contest at Estadio Mineirao left the host country heartbroken as its dream of clinching the World Cup for the sixth time was destroyed in clinical fashion.

And what got me to think was this quote from the Brazil coach Scolari.

“If I was to think of my life as a football player, coach and teacher, I think it was the worst day of my life,” Scolari said. “I am going to be remembered probably because I lost 7-1 for Brazil but I knew that was a risk when I took this position.

What hit me was that 12 years ago, this was the same coach that brought Brazil to win the World Cup and after today, he’s decided that nobody would remember him for that. Instead everybody would remember him as the coach that led Brazil to a thrashing of 7 goals to 1 at their very own home ground.

The truth is he’s right. But why? Why do people prefer to remember bad things than the good? Maybe that explains why gossip very often covers bad things about a person over a good thing.

So I googled it to find out if there is a scientific explanation to why people remember bad or negative things over the good. And I found this article which completely reaffirms the notion that people remember bad things over the good.

“Some people do have a more positive outlook, but almost everyone remembers negative things more strongly and in more detail.”

Okay so say you’re at work and you have always been doing a good job. When you DO make a mistake though, everyone forgets that you’ve always been doing a good job and just remembers that one mistake.

But why?

The answer is… we’re made like that. It’s evolution. The article states.

As with many other quirks of the human psyche, there may be an evolutionary basis for this. Those who are “more attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased the probability of passing along their genes,” the article states. “Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes but less urgent with regard to good ones.”

We’re hardwired like that.

The good news though is that there is hope. Knowing this tendency for our human nature to remember the bad things over the good, we could make a more conscious effort to remember the good.

So when you look at someone who has done something bad or made a mistake…. perhaps try to look at the good he has done. It’s harder to do… but it’ll make the world a more positive and happy place.

Every now and then I give talks at universities or conferences. Often people ask me what my one motto in life is and I tell them… it’s a simple one.

It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters.

That’s it. 14 of the most powerful words I live by today (and I covered it in my previous entry too). Then people ask me why and I tell them this story.

I was born with a slight disability called an eye ptosis. It’s when the eyelid muscles of one eye is too weak to hold an eye up that it droops down so much that my weak eye looks almost closed. The doctors told my parents I had to be operated on by the age of 3. If I didn’t fix it, I might lose my eyesight. So at the young tender age of 3 I underwent my first surgery.

After my surgery the doctor told my parents that my eyes will be okay… apart from one slight problem. My weak eye will still looked half close all the time. If you want to know how someone with an eye ptosis looks like, click here.

I didn’t have too much of a problem at home because my parents treated me like I was perfectly normal. Like my eyes were both equally wide opened like any other little boy growing up.

All that was soon to change. As I started going to school, it became immediately obvious to my classmates that I was different. I got called all sorts of names. From “cock-eye boy” (even though I wasn’t technically cock-eyed to well… a whole long list. I felt like some people treated me poorly because of how I looked. When they looked at me, they sometimes naturally distanced themselves from me because they didn’t know how to react around me.

It hurt me and I went through a rebellious phase. I blamed my parents for giving birth to me with such a defect, I blamed God, I blamed the people around me, I blamed everything and anyone I could put blame to. I blamed everyone but myself because I only saw myself as the victim.

I went through a turbulent number of years in primary school and it was only midway through secondary school that I decided to do something about it. At age 15, I went to see a doctor about what I would do with my drooping eye. Surgery was the obvious solution… but one doctor told me there was something I could do that might theoretically cure it. That is if I patch up my strong eye and use my weak eye for as much as I could each day. I did exactly that and after 1 year my eyes seemed to have improved. They looked a lot more normal than they ever did.

Two years later I went to see the same doctor that operated on me when I was a child. She did a number of tests on my eyes and said my eyes were perfect. That there was nothing she could do to make them anymore normal than they already were. Well there was one thing but she admitted that was more a cosmetic surgery than anything else.

When I reflect back on this one incident, it hit me. There I was at two points in my life facing the exact same challenge. One I chose to react by blaming everyone around me but myself making myself a very unhappy and negative person and distancing the people close to me. The second time (years later) I decided to blame no one but to do something about it. The day I chose to do something about it, was the day I stopped being a victim and started becoming an enabler.

That’s the simple rule I live by today. Whenever bad things happen to us, we curse our bad luck or blame the person responsible but what we forget to see is that whatever happened to us doesn’t matter as much as how we choose to react to it. When we lay the two paths we could take in reacting, we often see very very different outcomes. Just like I did many years ago.

I’ve been trying to keep my blog as a positive place and spread positive energy. I don’t know what inspired me to do that lately but I guess maybe it’s because reading the daily news in Malaysia lately seem to give us some things to be negative about. Inflation, GST coming, not winning the Thomas Cup, crime…. (and don’t let me get started on the other stuff).

On the flip side I think there’s plenty to be positive about too. Looking at my son laugh one day I just thought to myself about how nice it would be if I could always be happy like him.

So I sat down and thought about this, read many articles online (there are lots of literature on this topic) for inspiration about things that make us happy and this is what I personally felt resonated with me.

1) Be Generous

This is actually something I learned from my business partner Ming. When I say be generous I don’t mean just to everyone else around you but also to yourself. Sometimes we often guard too closely the money we have. Understandably so because the money we have is really finite but by doing so we forget to live life a little.

Forget that sometimes it’s okay to spoil ourselves. Forget that it’s okay to buy your friends a good steamboat dinner because what you get in return is their good company. And that it’s okay to spend a bit on a new experience be it traveling or even jumping out of a plane.

2) Just “Chiong”

I tend to overthink things. When I have important decisions to make I sometimes analyse the pros and cons in my head over and over again and that stresses me out. The worst part is that sometimes I spend 80% of my time worrying about a decision that would only impact my life at most 20%. And no matter how hard I think about it, there is no right or wrong answer. There is just what your heart tells you.

So to borrow a quote from my friend James… “Just Chiong”.  Which is really a Hokkien version of Nike’s “Just Do It”.

The good news is that I haven’t actually regretted many decisions in life. Why? Partly because we move on regardless of these decisions that may be bad and partly because we never know what we’re missing anyway…. if anything.

3) Have an Optimum Amount of Money (and know when it’s enough).

Money makes us happy but there is an optimum amount. Surveys like this one say that optimum number for a person living in the USA is $75,000. Anything more doesn’t really add to happiness and in fact I think too much money causes stress and unhappiness too.

Look at what happened to these lottery winners once they won millions. But sure there are probably lottery winners out there who are perfectly happy too.

The thing about having too much money though is having to make decisions as to where to put it? Do you put it all in a bank? But that’s not the best way to get the best return for your money? You can invest it in the stock market but then you could lose money and then brings you stress. You could invest in property but that gives you a whole other level of stress having to manage that property.

Not to mention the dangers that come with too much money. Fears of being kidnapped, robbed, cheated… or even having long lost friends suddenly appear and ask to borrow money from you.

So to me there is an optimum amount of money. The actual number I believe is quite personal. Each of us would have a different optimum amount. So figure what that is and just get it.

4) Working out regularly

Studies have shown that exercise releases endorphins. I’ve never experienced this before in my life to be honest. In spite of all the time i’ve spent in the gym I’ve never felt a surge of happiness or a high of any sort after.

I did however start feeling it this year. When I go for my long distance cycling rides where I burn some 1,500-2,000 calories… I’m normally very very happy right after. Like I’m on some kind of high.

5) Have family, friends or a partner to have deep conversations with.

People have social needs. Some of us crave more social interaction, some less but we all need it at some point. Friends, family members, a girlfriend or a wife… all these things help fulfil our social needs.

What’s more important though is having deep conversations with these people. Share your joy with them or your problems… whichever applicable because life is all up and down and family and good friends are there to stay throughout.

Shorty gives me a lot of joy. She’s this really happy bubbly person that makes the silliest jokes sometimes but that all makes me laugh.

I also always talk to her about my problems and she always seems to know how to give me new perspective and I immediately get less stressed. Shorty is a source of my happiness and so is the rest of my family.

6) Knowing it’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters

I remember watching this movie last year called “About Time”. It’s about this guy who can travel back in time.

My favourite part of this movie is when he lived a normal work day that turned out to be a really stressful day. By the end of the day he was exhausted and really unhappy.

Then he went back in time and relived the exact same day where the exact same circumstances happened. This time he decided to take it more positively. He made jokes and laughed and made the best out of it. By the end of that day, he went to bed feeling tired but very very happy. When people say life is what we make of it… that’s exactly what this is about.

7) Forgive people

In life people do things to hurt us and we remember them for it. The truth is though that whether intentionally or unintentionally, we’ve all been responsible for hurting someone else at one point or another in our lives. It could be shouting at the Unifi customer service person about why you don’t have internet to saying something behind a friend’s back who we may not think would be hurtful but actually was.

That’s life. We hurt people and we get hurt. If we hurt people, we apologise. If we get hurt by people, we have to forgive. If we don’t forgive we will never ever move on.

BUT

Forgiving however is very different from forgetting. So forgive a person for hurting you or cheating you or causing any harm to you… but never ever forget.

8) Have no expectations

Expectations is the root of all disappointment. Yes there are good reasons to have high expectations, so we drive ourselves harder to achieve more.

But many times we forget that having expectations are the cause of disappointment. Which then leads to us being sad. The happiest people I know have the lowest expectations of anything they experience. I once went for a holiday with a friend and asked him what he was looking forward to.

He said “I have no expectations whatsoever. Lets just wing it”.

By the end of that holiday he was telling me that was the best holiday of his life. I said “You probably have many holidays right?” and he said “That’s true. Okay this is the best holiday of TODAY!”.

9) Surround yourself with Positive People

There are two things I like to believe. We are what we eat… and we are who we mix with. Birds of the same feather flock together. So if you hang out with very optimistic and positive people then you’ll be a really positive person yourself. If you hang out with negative people then that’s exactly how you’ll probably end up.

Of course how do you tell if someone is positive or negative. The truth is… it’s not too easy but there are some signs:

Positive people generally have these characteristics

– Often talk about how lucky they are and how grateful they are for what they have.

– Talk about positive things about the people they know. Sometimes refuse to see the negative things.

Negative people on the other hand generally have these characteristics:

– Often complain about their circumstances and how they deserve better but aren’t getting it.

– Generally complain or talk bad about people they know. Sometimes refuse to see the positive things.

—–

These are things I could come up with. What else do you think makes you happy?

A few days ago I wrote a story about the sacrifices my Filipino babysitter/domestic helper (“Geraldine”) makes. It was really one of those things I wrote off the top of my head right after having a conversation with her.

My hope was really just to spread the word among us in Malaysia or Singapore who are fortunate enough to be able to employ domestic helpers from overseas. But the extent of the virality of my article has surpassed all that. From first being viral among us in Malaysia and Singapore, it now seems to be shared a lot in the Philippines.

As of this noon today, that article seems to have been shared on Facebook some 23,000 times and still rising. To give you an idea, my previous post about The Story of a Mercedes Salesman which also went viral had like over 12,000 shares.

The one other wonderful thing that came along with the article going viral was the great stories or opinions that the people who read that article shared in the comments. At least count there are over 450 comments on that entry and I read every single one. I decided though to pick out some a little bit of a very diverse group of stories or comments that I was left in that article.

There were the comments from the Overseas Foreign Workers who shared their experience of working overseas.

Some didn’t have great employers.

But many had wonderful ones.

Some worked for families that grew to mean so much to them.

and some were from the perspective of the kids who had to stay in the Philippines when their mothers went overseas to earn a living.

Some from the perspective of the kids (who are now grown up) that the helpers and nannies took care of in the countries they worked in.

Some felt that this restored their faith in humanity.

Some just really wanted to know what channel they could watch some good Filipino movies.

And some were from the perspective of family members of the domestic helpers that had to work overseas.

Some of course had opinions on things that we could do better.

But most importantly, many had great hopes for a better future.

In the end I felt that I got back a lot more than what I shared. Thank you for sharing all your stories.

I’ll end this article with something my father always told me. He said “Whether it’s domestic helpers, baby sitters, drivers or anyone who sees and takes care of your family every day. Treat them well and be good to them for they help take care of what’s most important to you in life”.

I resonate with that. If we can’t be good to the people who take care of our families then who can we be good to in life?

We’ve all been there. At some point of our life, somebody somewhere will ask if they could borrow some money. I’m not talking about the small “Hey I don’t have any small change to pay for parking, can you spot me a dollar?”.

I’m talking about “I need to borrow RM500 because… <insert reason here>”. Sometimes it’s RM500, sometimes it’s RM200 or sometimes it’s RM10,000. Whatever the amount is, it’s significant enough for you to go “Woah”.

The question I thought about tonight is how do you know if you should do it? Well after some thought I managed to narrow it down to this,

1) How important is this friend to you?

Very often the person who asks to borrow money from you is someone you haven’t seen in a long time. An old friend I haven’t seen in years one day called me up and asked me outright if he could borrow RM15,000 from me. He needed it as a bridge loan to do something and that he had money coming in from a sale of another property and would be able to pay me back in a month.

If it’s a friend you haven’t seen in a really long time and suddenly calls you up for the sole purpose of borrowing money from you, I’d say maybe not.

But if it’s a friend who you see all the time and matters a lot to you. Then I would consider the next question…

2) Do you want to help this person?

If your answer is no then you have your answer there.

If your answer here is yes, I’m assuming this person matters enough to you that you do want to help him/her or is a good friend.

My father always told me that if you want to help a friend, don’t lend him money. Give it to him. Why? Because the minute you lend money you stop being friends and start being debtor and creditor. Debtors and creditors don’t hang out. They don’t share completely transparent friendships anymore because there is often an unspoken tension of that money owed in between.

Now that’s all fine and dandy if the borrower (debtor) pays you back on time as promised but most of the time that doesn’t happen. So as my dad tells me, if you lend money to a friend.. prepare to lose a friend.

If you’re rich enough to help… then give. Don’t lend. You don’t have to feel obligated to give everything. If someone needs to borrow RM500, maybe you could say I can’t lend you RM500 but I can give you RM100 or RM200.

In the past I’ve taken steps to give money rather than lend (though the amounts aren’t too significant) and I’ve maintained friends with those people I helped.

3) What’s the money for?

Half the time you don’t really know what the money is for. Even if you were told what the money is for, chances are your gut tells you that’s not the truth.

As for the other half of the time you would know. If it’s for gambling you know that’s a big NONO. If the money is for a business then hey instead of lending money why don’t you analyze that business and invest in it rather than lend. That way you and your friend form an investor and entrepreneur relationship rather than a creditor and debtor.

If that money is to help someone who is sick in that family… then I’d say that’s a good reason. This reason however is often abused. I’ve had someone wanting to borrow money from me to fund treatment for his mom’s cancer… only for me to learn later his mom didn’t actually have cancer.

4) How much does this money matter to you?

If you have a RM10,000 in your bank, lending someone RM5,000 is something that would really put you in a difficult financial position.

If however you have RM1,000,000 in a bank and can afford to lose that RM5,000 without losing sleep then by all means go ahead.

The thing about this is that everyone has different thresholds on how much money is a lot relative to the total wealth they have. But the key here really is to ask yourself… how much money can I afford to lose (assuming I don’t get paid back) without losing any sleep at night?

5) Has this friend helped you before in the past?

One thing I tend to have (don’t know if it’s a strength or weakness) is that I have a lot of loyalty for people who have helped me in significant ways in the past at some point of my life. If someone helped me before and now needed help in return I would seriously consider this.

This of course can sometimes be used as a motivating factor by the friend who wants to borrow money from you. He can say “I helped you before when you did this…”…. even though he didn’t really. So it’s really up to your heart to decide if someone really helped you. We can’t lie to ourselves about these things.

6) How sincere is this person in repaying you?

I know. When you see this question the first thing that comes into your mind is “How the heck am I supposed to know this? I don’t have a magic crystal ball!”.

There really is no way to tell if someone’s really sincere in repaying you. But there are signs. Like if someone came to you and said “I want to borrow RM5,000 from you…” and doesn’t offer any security or collateral, that’s a sign to me that the person really isn’t thinking about your own concerns.

If however someone came to you and said “I need to borrow RM5,000 from you and I promise I’ll pay you back and I’ll let you hold on to this expensive watch my father gave me until I do”. That’s someone who seems more considerate of your situation and I’d say has a higher chance of paying you back.

Now obviously this isn’t a universal rule. Heck nothing is a universal rule… but to me personally it just adds points to the decision in favor of lending someone money.

7) Is this person financially able to pay me back?

Well this is a basic question we all consciously or sub-consciously ask ourselves. Does this person have the means to pay us back? Heck it’s the questions banks ask themselves too before they give us loans. That’s why they ask for our salary slips and anything that helps them assess how much money we have or will have.

But one thing we often overlook is that most of the time people don’t pay you back for many many reasons… but not having enough money isn’t one of them. I know many very rich people who owe lots of money but refuse to pay a cent. Heck there are many rich businessmen who would rather be declared bankrupt than pay the bank back for their business loans.

So don’t make the mistake into thinking that rich people won’t not pay you back. Very often they really don’t.

8) What are the odds?

Well everyone has a different experience so I can share only my own personal experience. In the past I have lent money to many friends in my life. I have only ever got paid back once. Only ONCE was the person who I lent money to sincere in paying me back. In fact he was so sincere that when he paid me back, he paid me back with an additional 10% interest per annum. I refused to take it but he insisted.

So just one. Those are the odds.

——————

All in all, like I said earlier… there is no universal rule to whether or not you should lend someone money. In fact my hope is that if you do decide to lend a friend money, that your friend will repay you against all odds and you’ll be even better friends after. To me and just to me personally… these are the things I consider.

Good luck!

For the past 2 years I’ve had the honour and luxury of having a wonderful Filipino maid. I won’t say her name her but lets call her Geraldine.

Geraldine first started working with my wife and I two years ago. I remember her first few days with us. She was very shy and quiet. Sometimes I couldn’t help but feel that she might even be afraid of us but I guess having to live for the first time under a stranger’s roof far far away from home can make anyone scared.

In the first few weeks I often found her in her room looking out the window. When she looked at me I could see the tears in her eyes that would immediately prompt me to ask her what’s wrong. But she always just brushed it off and said nothing.

We thought that perhaps to add to the anxiety of being away from home alone, she probably missed her family too. So my wife and I arranged for her to call home as often as we could. She would give me a phone number with a +63 prefix on it written on a small torn piece of paper with pen.

When I dialed the number I could see her eagerly waiting….. sometimes nobody would pick up the phone on the other side. Then I would see her turn away disappointed.

At the times when someone did pick-up though, I left her with the privacy of my room to talk and I could always hear her excitedly talking to her family in Tagalog. I never knew what she said but I could sense nothing but happiness in her tone. It was like the only thing she looked forward to each day.

Two years passed and things changed.

– We got to know more about Geraldine. How she had 5 kids back in Philippines. The eldest being 17 and the youngest being 4. years old.

– She had gotten a lot more comfortable with us so she talked and joked more with us. She smiled a lot more too and I never saw her again with teary eyes.

– She had discovered other things to look forward to. After dinner she would watch American Idol or The Voice on Astro. Or sometimes she would watch some Filipino drama on TV.

– She had become family… so much that I almost don’t like referring to her as our maid. I prefer the word “babysitter” since she now helps take care of my newborn son.

Then as the two years came to an end, she had a decision to make. She could either go home for good with whatever money she earned, or she could extend her stay with us. She decided to extend her stay… but to go back to the Philippines for a month before she returned to continue work for another two years.

Geraldine returned from her month off yesterday with a new hairstyle and looking happy. I don’t know if it was happy to see my son FIghter or happy to see us again but she was happy nevertheless. I asked her loads of questions. Like what she did at home during her month off (she said she spent most of it doing housework, washing clothes and doing laundry for her family… we joked that even at home she had to work).

One of the stories she told me got me a little teary. When she left the Philippines to work in Malaysia, her youngest daughter was 2 years old. By the time she returned, her daughter was 4.

Geraldine’s daughter didn’t recognize her as her mom but spent a month to get to know her. She would bring her daughter around and her daughter would often call out to her “Hoi hoi… buy me candy”.

Finally the month came to an end and it was time for Geraldine to head back to Malaysia. As she said bye, her 4-year old daughter asked her not to go.

Geraldine said to her 4-year old “I need to go so I can earn money and buy you more candy”.

Her daughter disappeared for a few minutes and then came back with something in her fist. She announced “I have money. Don’t go…”.

Then she opened her fist to reveal a few coins.

Geraldine smiled.

This story made me remember the sacrifice that Overseas Filipino Workers (or workers from any country for that matter) make day in and day out. The cost isn’t just being away from their country. It’s being away and not being able to see their kids grow up. Geraldine would never know what her 4 year old daughter was like when she was 3…. and there are many many more overseas workers just like her.

We often talk about how hard we work. The long hours, the stress we face. But compare it to the sacrifice Geraldine and workers like her make and it’s really nothing. Suddenly the fact that I could see my son every day after work was a luxury beyond anything else I could ever ask for.

Society has us admire people who work hard and become successful businessmen or artists or actors or any of these things. But what can be harder than having to leave your kids for two years at a time and miss watching them grow up?

The worst part is that we sometimes forget. Heck we sometimes even forget that our maids or helpers are mothers to some kids some thousands of miles away. So my hope of this article is that whoever reads this is reminded of the people our maids are and the monumental sacrifice they make. And that they are mothers to kids back home who really really miss them.

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Update: Wow I’m amazed at how this article has gone viral and reached so many people from all over. I spent a full half hour reading all the 450 comments you guys left me and I found them really inspiring and enlightening. I realized that these stories are from people from different perspectives. Some from the helpers who worked overseas and some from the perspective of the kids they helped take care of. I’ve made a small compilation of some of them here. Stories of Overseas Filipino Workers from Different Perspectives.