Monday, May 31, 2010

Our soon to be new helper, M, has finished her contract of employment with her other employer and will leave Hong Kong to go back to The Philippines later this week. She has to exit the country to await the processing of her new visa. Her new visa will be sponsored by us as her new employer.

So she is working for us this week until she leaves. It's beyond interesting to have someone in my house who is familiarizing herself with every nuance of how we do things. From what's in all the dresser drawers to where we keep the soy sauce. And she's watching to see how I deal with my kids and what I expect from them. My kids were terrible this morning so at least no one is pretending any fake behavior around here.

She has been coming over once a week for a few hours to do general house cleaning for us but has not had the time to really integrate and go beyond the bigger chores of house keeping. I know this sounds so crazy you guys. Believe me I do. But it's just a different life style over here. It's much busier in every way. And the climate requires so much more attention to cleaning than you would ever believe. You can't let things get away from you or you will be dealing with so much laundry that you'll honestly never catch it up. Or mold. Or both.

I know plenty of you understand the culture but for the rest of you I couldn't write enough to single handedly explain it all myself. There's too many information gaps and cultural gaps--even for me.

This is kind of an alternate parallel world over here. B and I dropped the kids off at school today and headed to get a coffee. There was not a single free table available in the whole coffee shop. At 1:40pm on a Monday. We were like "don't these people have jobs?" But then we caught ourselves. If we were out for coffee why can't everyone else be? And they all have helpers at home to make sure the house is in order. Why not go out for coffee?

B went for a mountain bike ride this morning. With 8 other guys. Don't these people have jobs? But pilots don't really count. They spend enough time completely away from home that they deserve to enjoy all their time off.

Around here among the expats it's a very Euro-Californian vibe. People take their leisure time and they take it very seriously. They work hard. They wouldn't have been given the position to be here living abroad if they didn't work hard. But they play hard too. If you move abroad to a busy crazy city like Hong Kong I think you're pre-wired with a sense of adventure.

Whenever I fill out a form there's always a spot for my occupation. With an asterisk so it's not optional--they need to know or else the form isn't complete and won't be accepted. In the USA "they" would never demand to know your ethnicity (--here it's your nationality) or your job. Here you have to fill it out or they won't take the form. I'm American. And I'm a "housewife". And I have a University degree. On every form I must declare this. Library card, grocery saver card, school forms for the kids. Everybody needs to know.

I was involved in a discussion recently with a few other Americans that are fairly new here too. We all agreed that the obvious class separation and frank talk in public places about cultural stereotypes (by non Americans) had made us all squirm. American's are so politically correct! We have all been brought up to think that everyone should be equal. You know, equal rights, equal opportunity. It's so ingrained in how we think. People from other countries don't seem to think that way. And it's really hard for me to wrap my mind around that. I just have to keep my mouth shut sometimes to keep my jaw from hitting the floor.

It's not always comfortable. Always fascinating. But often uncomfortable.

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