Despite Google’s mangling of the translation from bahasa Indonesian, the essence of the mother’s best hope in a Whatsapp remains here:
Please pray so that I can pay for my life and school, right, Angeli, until she becomes a smart person and is useful for many people, Amen
From Era the Minangkabau, central Sumatra, currently living on Batam Island.
SINGAPORE: A domestic worker who used her employer's facial products as well as filled the family's water jug with toilet bowl water was sentenced to four weeks' jail on Monday (Sep 27), according to a report by TODAY.
Gozar Rose Magtanong, who claimed she had been mistreated by her employer, pleaded guilty to one charge each of mischief and dishonest misappropriation of property.
The 32-year-old Filipino had worked for a Singapore permanent resident, her husband and their two-year-old son in a condominium unit around Marine Parade, TODAY reported.
CCTV CAUGHT MAID USING FACIAL PRODUCTS 28 TIMES
In June last year, Gozar’s employer noticed that her cosmetic creams in the master bedroom were depleting faster than usual.
She also noticed finger impressions in the creams when she herself would only lightly swipe through the product, according to TODAY.
The employer proceeded to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras overlooking her kitchen and the bedroom’s walk-in wardrobe.
The CCTV footage showed Gozar using the creams on 28 occasions from Jul 29 to Sep 8 last year, TODAY reported.
The affected products were: Revive facial serum, Etude House facial cream and La Prairie anti-wrinkle cream valued at a total of S$797.
Gozar's employers then took her to a maid agency - JPB Employment Agency - on Sep 10 with the intention of terminating her employment.
During an interview by the agency’s customer service officer, TODAY reported that Gozar admitted to spitting her saliva into a jug that the family drank water from.
She also confessed that she had filled the jug with water from the toilet bowl on many occasions.
Gozar said she would do so by dipping a rag, which she used to wipe the television and tables, inside the toilet bowl. She then wrung the rag into a pail, before transferring the water into the jug, said TODAY.
A few days after the interview, Gozar's employer reviewed footage from the CCTV and saw that Gozar had spat into the water jug on Aug 31.
The employer, her husband and son had unwittingly drank from it afterwards, according to TODAY.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Teo told the court that Gozar began doing all this in September 2019, with no reason for doing so.
ALLEGED MISTREATMENT DURING EMPLOYMENT
In mitigation, Gozar’s lawyer Kevin Liew said that she had been put under "a less than favourable environment".
"This is not to absolve herself of her mistake, but she urges the court to take cognisance of the stressors she was facing," said Mr Liew.
"These were not actively provided by Gozar but it came out when we questioned her on why she did it."
Detailing some of the alleged mistreatment that Gozar experienced during her employment, Mr Liew said Gozar would sleep at midnight and wake up around dawn.
Her employer also purportedly kept her mobile phone so Gozar could not contact her family, TODAY reported.
Regarding Gozar's diet, Mr Liew said that what she ate would be considered by a reasonable person to be "poor". This included bread and coffee in the morning, porridge in the afternoon and leftovers in the evening.
“She was reprimanded for eating eggs in the residence. She weighed nearly 40kg when employed there. When she made mistakes, she would be scolded with language such as being stupid," Mr Liew added, according to TODAY.
The domestic worker also claimed that she is owed two months and 10 days’ of salary. The prosecutor clarified that the Ministry of Manpower is investigating the matter.
Mr Liew said that Gozar had asked on numerous occasions to be transferred. She had also told the maid agency that she wanted to run away, but was convinced to stay to provide for her three children back home in the Philippines, the report said.
The prosecutor said that these complaints should have no mitigating weight on the sentence to be imposed as they were not borne out by present investigations, adding that Gozar did not need to commit the offences.
According to TODAY, District Judge Ng Peng Hong agreed and said that it was "something that cannot be condoned".
“If you have any grievances, there are legitimate channels for you to (air them) but it’s not right to do it the way you’ve done,” he added.
For both offences of mischief and misappropriation, Gozar could have been jailed for up to two years or fined, or both.
Source: CNA/TODAY
You wouldn't want a camera trained on that mooning, the goatee scratching, scanning of walls & ceilings, piano fingers stretched and poised over the pad. Crazy, but you do indeed twitch a little when the gaze falls on the darkened window downstairs. Might someone possibly peer in from the garden, spying the behaviour? Combing moustaches either side with thumb and forefinger; lost staring. Would be every bit as bad as being caught straining on the throne, with the bathroom door open perfectly visible from the kitchen window. Circling of the floor had started, classic pacing like in the cells in books & movies, minimising the creaking so the neighbour wouldn’t hear. You couldn't fight your way outta a brown paper bag—the schoolyard taunt given a whole new meaning now. No end in sight either, other than the inescapable. Talking on the phone out of the void needed more serious effort again; luckily few persisted with it, the messaging and mailing regime more or less accepted. And all that within the raked ceilings, wood grained walls (albeit particle laminate), a pair of roof windows and others looking front & back onto leafy green. The bicycle remained the saviour, bringing down by the glassworks to the river, from where the bay, the mangroves and then up along the creek. Inland the garden or park options would offer far less. This afternoon a young magpie had come down onto a post on the dock at the fishing village and stood a few minutes almost within touching distance, casting over the water. Twitching its head one way and the other. Not really the domain of the maggie there; perhaps it had become confused somehow and lost its way. As it continued the challenge arose to catch the instant before the taking wing. Prior to flight there ought have come a short visible spasm, an intake of breath beneath the feathers, if nothing else; flexing of feet or pulse in the breast. One minute, followed by a second of close observation from the post one side, and the bench the other. There was nothing, birdie simply rising up a little way and letting the wind carry it back over the top of the fisherman's shed toward the upper creek. Before the last set of pushes in the evening prior to supper it was always with a pang that the front window onto the lemon was swung shut. Low cloud behind the houses, the darkened street less dreary than usual and a light stir of air shuttered away. Every fortnight the woman adjacent struggled getting the glass recycle out onto the street for collection. They would wonder about their neighbour doing without these many months. Luckily they appeared not to be nosy parker types.
SINGAPORE — After being caught lighting up outside a designated smoking area along Orchard Road, Chee Kam Fah and Koh Lee Yen lashed out at an enforcement officer, asking her to “talk to rich people nicely” and calling her a “crazy girl”.
The Singaporean women, both aged 50, were each fined S$3,000 on Wednesday (Sept 8) after pleading guilty to harassing a public servant.
The court heard that the two friends were smoking outside Lucky Plaza mall on the morning of Sept 21 last year.
Ms Asyikah Suri Kamsari, an auxiliary police officer appointed by the National Environment Agency as an enforcement officer, was carrying out her duties with a colleague when she spotted Chee and Koh smoking outside the designated area.
The officers approached them and asked for their particulars in order to issue a summons.
When Ms Asyikah was keying Chee’s details into an electronic handheld terminal, Chee retorted: “Your salary how much? One thousand only one month, I think.”
She also said: “Talk to rich people nicely, you’re a poor girl”, “I tell you, you careful walk, fall down… don’t bang to the car” and “So what, pay only what, I got money (expletive)”.
Koh followed suit, saying: “You shut up and ask for IC” and “You poor forever, you know or not.”
She also accused Ms Asyikah of being a” crazy girl” who did not earn enough to buy a pillow to cry into, and told her in Cantonese that she had no upbringing.
Chee then took out a S$1,000 note and waved it in front of the officer’s face, while Koh said that the officer should just shut up and take the money.
Their actions were captured on Ms Asyikah’s body-worn camera.
State Prosecuting Officer Nasri Haron asked for a fine of between S$3,000 and S$4,000 for each woman. He told the court that the verbal abuse was “prolonged and calculated to insult and degrade the victim”, who was merely doing her job.
Chee said through an interpreter that Ms Asyikah had “suddenly walked towards me, so at that point of time, my mind couldn’t get adjusted to the whole situation”.
She added that she was a businesswoman and the Covid-19 pandemic had been a stressful period for her.
When District Judge Jasbendar Kaur questioned Koh on why her friend had waved a S$1,000 note around, Koh said that they had thought they could pay the summons on the spot.
She claimed that she had been caught discarding a cigarette before and paid a S$300 fine then.
She further alleged that there were two other men smoking outside the designated area but Ms Asyikah “let them go like that”.
“That’s why I used this type of language. I don’t like to use this type of language as well.”
The judge told them that stress did not excuse their behaviour.
They could have been fined up to S$5,000 or jailed for up to a year, or both.
CNA online, 08/09/2021
That was something a bit more like it, the large body of water risen up and lapping against the little skiff at the dock. Even a day or two before the sight had been a dreary one, a falling away toward the horizon, where the trickery of low cloud had a container ship standing up out of the water. There was no guessing the sandbank now beneath the line of tractor tyres laid as a break for the fishing shed. The pelicans had returned to roost on the tyres; the gulls and swans departed. The last few days the northerly had run the surface water around in swift whirls and eddies; today the wind from the south had joined with the tide, running the waves onward. In three or four days the entry to the bench on the little dock might be impassable again. A few nights ago the waxing moon it must have been was caught in the bathroom window going down for a pee, a backward step needed to take it properly. For some reason crows had appeared, a murder of five or six that recalled Greg’s story of the old sailors. If the released birds failed to return to ship the course for land was clear; hence the sense of the crows-nest in the old riggers. Fittingly, once again the pelicans on the water appeared as if properly equipped with their masked beaks. The regular old canoeist who had a shed further down sent the birds scattering when he made a pass, even in the overcast the man needing his sunnies for his turn there. Pedalling out the light wind had given little resistance; from the dock the industrial kind of churning out in the deeper bay suggested something entirely different, that strangely didn’t make it onto the shore. High tide rising, the far distance closing and that uncanny muted roar all together.
In a 1965 live concert such a young, slim and fresh-faced lad, with something of the features of cousin Velo. What was noticeable again, apart from a voice which in this untutored listener’s opinion was still unformed and not come into its full power, is the almost perfect rigidity of body throughout. Only at one point at a moment of a swelling note do the arms rise almost imperceptibly from the side for the flight. Otherwise the whole of the being is concentrated in the controlled breath and its emissions. All this in what at that age must still have been an uncomfortable monkey suit for the baker’s boy. The artist completely and utterly immersed. Beauty, grace and order of the highest human possibility exemplified. In his manner too at the end modestly bowing at the warm reception from the audience, taking the hand of the conductor respectfully, getting himself off briskly afterward, all finest measure, marvellously attained. Ko pjeva zlo ne misli, they held up in our Montenegrin hills. Who sings bears no evil. Even at those heights and in their huts shared with the animals, with only their single stringed gusle, they knew something of these matters.
https://youtu.be/mEptCT9rf-o
