Two happy news

I've been receiving glad tidings lately.

First is my brother's run-in with his employment agency.

He was asked to pay the agency $1000 as he wished to back out from the contract after just one week.

He actually smsed me to borrow $1600 so that he could quit his job immediately - $600 in lieu of 2 weeks' notice for immediate resignation and $1000 for breaching the contract.

I decided to look through his contract and enquired from MOM on whether it's a valid and fair contract. It actually just happened last week.

I called up MOM and went down personally to MOM to enquire about the particular clause on having to pay $1000 as 'part of the training cost' if he terminated the contract and they gave the same answer that he needed to follow the contract. However, I had my doubts that these counter staff may not have the adequate legal and employment terms knowledge to give me sufficient advice and I refused to leave it at that.

I went online to make an e-appointment for a 30-minute consultation about the contract. However, after several threats from the agency to add on interest to the $1000 and pressuring my brother to pay up immediately on last Friday, the lady agent called again yesterday to tell my brother that the agency decided not to recover $1000 from him.

Yeh!

Actually, I wasn't very optimistic about the situation and was exploring the possibility of negotiating for a lower compensation rate since my brother did sign the contract. We were relieved that eventually, the agency gave in and decided not to pursue the matter. Probably we brought in MOM and they didn't want to complicate matters, or perhaps they have other matters that infringe on labour laws that they didn't want MOM to find out.

My innocent and ignorant brother! He was so afraid to get too involved in the matter just to find out for himself, to his great disappointment, that he still needed to pay after all the trouble he's been through.

I wanted to show him that no matter what we do, we need to try different routes and not wait there till we die.

I wanted him to learn that nothing is impossible, even if it's written in black and white that he had to do something.

I wanted him to know that if you're too kind, people in the working world will not be nice to you. They will bully you, and take advantage of you as and when they can.

I wanted him to learn to stand up for himself and not let others lead him by the nose.

I wanted him to realise that there's a way out in the most difficult situation.

I wanted him to learn flexibility, resilience and perseverance, even if it takes alot of trouble to complete a task. And I wanted him to know that these attributes do pay off.

Even while we waited for the outcome over the weekend, I shared with him my story of how I stood up for myself and refused to be bullied by a bitch ... in fact, two bitches, while I was in NIE.

I told him no matter what, we should try. If it doesn't work out, we'll pay. If it works out, he gets to save $1000. Not that I don't have or don't want to lend him the money, but I don't want him to give up so readily, easily.

I'm so glad all's well ends well.

The other piece of news that makes me so happy is the kid that I co-trained with another teacher for a storytelling competition made into the Semi Final!

It's the first time I trained anyone for a storytelling competition. And she got in!

I've committed a lot of time on her, and put in alot of effort to edit her story, do up her props, coordinated with her parents, teachers and the organiser.

I'm so glad it paid off.

However, the Semi Final is just 2 weeks away and I doubt she can make it into the Final since she's primarily a Mandarin-speaking kid with nil support at home. Her parents are non-English speakers. And as it is, we took months to train her. With just 2 weeks, I doubt we can perform miracles.

But I'm already very satisfied that she made it into the Semi Final. :)