The other wife
Joyfully, we were walking down the road in Happy Valley discussing how great it was to have hired the nanny (first month) and helper a couple of weeks ago. As we were going through the list of chores that the helper will be responsible for: shoe polishing, cooking dinner, making packed lunches, washing dishes, laundry, ironing, cleaning bathrooms, making beds, etc., we came to the realization that it was like having a wife in the apartment… Wait a minute, I thought I was the WIFE! Modern times must have caught up and I must have become the “new age” wife! A wife who is able to give lots of good advice (career, political, etc.) to the husband and who is extremely independent (almost over the top!). That’s right, the “new age” wife operates in the business professional world and is very well self-groomed, i.e. manicure + pedicure! I’m sure I’ll still have time for a good pedicure when monkey arrives!
In the search for the “perfect” helper, we interviewed 5 people. There is a funny rule here in HK. If your helper has been with you for more than 4 years, you (as an employer) have to pay him/her pension (which is logical) when they leave. This then becomes motivation for employers to terminate the contract at 4 years. How uncivilized and mean is that?! However, to our advantage, these are the helpers who we are looking for. They would be good helpers, since their employer didn’t fire them after the first 2-year contract. We developed our spreadsheets and set out the “Helper selection criteria” analysis (also known as multi-criteria analysis in the business world). Mind you, with weightage to ensure that more emphasis is given to some categories over others (e.g. experience with infant ranks high as supposed to his/her English). Through our analysis, we decided upon the first lady that we interviewed. She had experience with infant caring and seemed very pleasant.
As I am about to become the supervisor of our new helper (who will come to join us middle of September), I set out to find some “house rules” for her to follow. A company will give a handbook to its new employee, so why wouldn’t the Lacy household do the same for the new helper??! So, we set out rules for when to do what and what is & isn’t allowed. I am still making changes to the proposal before presenting it to the board (Ian). But the skeleton is there!
We are also making changes to our storage room, which will be turned into her room when she arrives. More on that in a few weeks!
Otherwise, everything is well at 23 weeks. I am feeling huge, but the picture is not doing any justice in the upper right hand corner!
Much love from Hong Kong.
