The Happy Story of our Kak Tun

While we paid tribute to our Lady Diana in Ipoh recently who was always there to help mom with a new baby that came to our family for the first month, we now turn to the Iron Lady who came as a domestic helper from Indonesia right after Ray, our sixth child, was born. She came as a timely aid to help mom with not just being a nanny of our youngest Ray but really became like the big sister of all the children and hence her appropriate name, Kakak Tun or Kak Tun in short! See the pictorial story below that has a happy ending :

She came after Ray was born as seen above in the arms of Lady Diana.
Kak Tun found a way to keep Ray happy while she went about doing house chores.
Everywhere she went, Ray went even on horseback
or in a boat
By day or by night
or simply on the beach

See her on video in our family Sun and Sea adventures in Port Dickson

or high up in the hills
She was Kak Tun of our family and the big box wrapped in brown paper was her gift on Ray's birthday
She waited for her turn to get a visa, then get on a bus later by herself to follow the family to live in Singapore
where she got to care for Ray and the boys studying in Singapore
not forgetting Mom when she had to go to the hospital
12 years passed and Ray was turning to a teen to be in Sec or Form 1 so it was time for Kak Tun to wave good bye to us and move on with her life back in Indonesia.

She would return to her Javanese village and build her own house with all her money saved working with our family. She also found a worthy male to be her husband to be married.

Mom and Ray left on Monday for the long journey to her village, by flight and car, to celebrate the joyous occasion with her family and village folks. Mom will add her story and pics here soon. Getting internet connection to post pics or videos here would probably be difficult so it will take some time to see the wedding photos here.

Meanwhile we Congratulate Kak Tun for her Happy Wedding Day and wish her to have a happy family like ours! Also I have added the google translator tool to this blog so that the Indonesian readers can read it in their own language. Try it! Technology is amazing!

Ahh looks like Mom and Ray got to the wedding safely and found wifi somewhere in the village to post the following pics on the wedding day of 24th Nov 2010 :

Seen here Mom and Ray taking a photo with the bride and her mother

Ray with the Bride and Groom

The Solemnization Ceremony

Doesn't Kak Tun look happy on her wedding day? We are all happy for her too!

We look forward one day when we get to reunite again and maybe by that time we have to call her Mak Tun with her pack of children!

To see the entire album of pics that Mom took in Indonesia, click here.

Post-dated Events

Story shared with a friend on facebook. Click here to see the facebook post. :

Ahmad Fizal Othman

Guys, check up news on CNN today on Modern Human Slavery happening in Malaysia the BoLe land. This should raise more then some eye brows!

 ·  · Share · 4 hours ago via BlackBerry · 

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    Ahmad Fizal Othman News started in Cambodia. Parents looking for their daughter who is working in Penang after being offered a lucrative job in Malaysia. CNN. Managed to traced her working in a Hard Disk factory. Forced to work and cannot return to Cambodia until she pay the money she supposedly owed to the agency who employed them.
    

    4 hours ago · 
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    Ahmad Fizal Othman Just wondering, are the maids we employ working at their free will. Something for us to ponder eh?
    

    4 hours ago · 
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    Sun Fu Chong 
    

    Hi my Friend! I'm in Penang now and nice to catch up with you and to read this post that got me to ponder again. I know CNN is recently highlighting slavery of women and children. When we first hired an Indonesian maid many years ago, I swallowed hard listening to the guidelines/advice the agent told us to manage the maid eg. No Sundays off, no pay for 6 months to pay agency fees, keeping her money for her etc Now I also heard from some friends also how they lost their maid who just ran away. Well, the story goes that we applied the advice given to us and our maid stayed with us voluntarily for 12 years, got to go home several times to bring back lump sum cash kept for her and finally got married and used her savings to be able to build a house in her kampung.
    
    CNN or Western countries always advocate fairness principles to protect the maids while agencies and govts in the East seek ways to protect families from an uneducated work force. My view therefore is each country has their own unique situations under different cultures and different economic stages of development. So an optimal balance must be struck by letting CNN and the West play their role as watchdogs while the East play the role of patriarch or father by imposing reasonable controls in their less developed/educated societies to maintain peace and avoid disorder for their people. Peace and Happiness is really what every human being strives for and we have to work hard and smart to perfect our regulatory and governmental systems.