Posts in category "Random"

Having It Maid

It’s the maid­’s day off.

To be hon­est, her brief absence has shown that I already got used to hav­ing her around.

But then again, it’s not hard to get used to such a lux­u­ry. You wake up and feel like eat­ing some­thing, and she’ll have it ready by the time you’re dressed and fin­ished brush­ing your teeth. She draws your bath water. She irons your clothes while you wait. She picks up the gro­ceries for din­ner when you decide what to eat. Some of the dish­es are so com­pli­cat­ed that she begins cook­ing the night before, and has her niece (my aunt and uncle’s maid) come over to help.

Nothing needs to be said when it comes to chores around the house. When a meal is fin­ished, every­one gets up and heads to the liv­ing room. The next time you come back, the dish­es are gone and the table wiped clean1. I fold my sheets before leav­ing the house, and when I get back they’re refold­ed, only neater.

My grand­moth­er has a his­to­ry of live-in ser­vants, although there haven’t been any wet nurs­es, gar­den­ers, or chauf­feurs for a while. Ever since her chil­dren grew up and left the house (or coun­try), she’s only need­ed one maid at a time. It seems to be a great rela­tion­ship, as there’s a respect that goes both ways; the maid is extreme­ly good at her job, and we treat her like fam­i­ly. When the last maid died after 30 years of ser­vice, all her funer­al arrange­ments were tak­en care of. In the last years of her life she had gone blind from dia­betes, and was then served her­self. That’s how we found the cur­rent maid, who’s been with my grand­ma ever since.

One of my favourite rit­u­als2 is the way the maid is giv­en din­ner. After all the food is cooked, the maid lays the dish­es out on the din­ner table, but does­n’t take any for her­self. So my grand­ma will take a plate, pile food onto it, and bring it to her.

  1. Admittedly, this was the hard­est thing for me to get used to. Something in me would keep scream­ing, “PUT THE DISHES IN THE SINK”. [↩]
  2. And as a Taoist, I’m gen­er­al­ly deri­sive of rit­u­als. [↩]

Hong Kong Humidity

Difference in Hong Kong and Ottawa weather

One of the notable dif­fer­ences here is the humid­i­ty. The pages of my book are begin­ning to wrin­kle. Towels don’t dry when they’re hung on a line. Even though it’s 20°C out­side, it feels more like 15°C because it’s so damp. Humidity is some­thing that Hong Kong is known for, as it’s sur­round­ed by water and filled with tall build­ings. It makes me won­der how peo­ple deal with mold in their hous­es.

Ironically, it “rained” two days in a row, but the rain was so weak that I had to ask oth­ers if they felt the droplets. Very dif­fer­ent from Ottawa, where rain­fall goes beyond obvi­ous, and can last for days on end.

Being Strong For My Grandmother

The can­cer has spread to her bones and sev­er­al major organs now. We asked the doc­tor not to tell her, but we can’t do any­thing against his moral oblig­a­tion to inform the patient. Either way, she does­n’t know how seri­ous it is, whether it’s from shock and denial, or mem­o­ry loss.

But she’s awake, and aware, and feel­ing no pain, which is good enough for me. The most we can do now is to try to make the rest of her life as enjoy­able as pos­si­ble.

She thinks she’s going to be fine. Keeps telling me that she’ll take me to a near­by park when she’s bet­ter. As much as it hurts me to know this won’t be pos­si­ble any­more, it’s reliev­ing to know she’s so obliv­i­ous. We don’t let our­selves cry around her, for fear that she may real­ize how bad it is.

Her face is more sal­low, her fin­gers and legs ema­ci­at­ed, but she still has her thick, black hair1. Aside from a dis­tend­ed stom­ach, it’s hard to tell that she has such a grim prog­no­sis.

But by far the hard­est part is hav­ing to cod­dle her like a child to take her med­ica­tion. Telling her she’s a good girl if she swal­lows her pills and reward­ing her with ice-cream. That we’re only strict because we care about her. It tears me in half when she gives such a painful look of dis­taste with every pill we hand her, 18 a day.

She used to be so strong. Now we have to be strong for her.

  1. “I used to have even more”, she tells me. [↩]