Side Effects

One of the defining features of expat life in Hong Kong is the Filipina amah. Favored for their ability to speak English, and the fact that they will work for very little (compared to western standards), Filipinas make up a huge percentage of the service industry catering to foreigners. One coworkers pays his "helper" the equivalent of USD 450 per month for cleaning his apartment 5 times a week, cooking his lunches and dinners, doing his laundry and ironing, and doing all the shopping. These amahs also walk dogs, take care of children and the elderly, and whatever else needs doing, all for the right price.

From my balcony today, I could see across the street a woman taking the sheets off a bed, undoubtedly to get it laundered. Perhaps it's a serviced apartment, like mine, and she's a Hong Kong native, but it's very likely that she isn't, that she is an overseas worker from the Phillipines, working for her wages by cleaning other people's houses and sending much of that money back home to her own family.

My aunt was a woman like this. She left school in Korea when she was in 8th grade, and she has taken care of other people's children, cooked for other people, cleaned other people's houses. She has lived selflessly in many ways.

I am home today due to an odd feeling of utter exhaustion, which I chalk up to not enough sleep this weekend and a tough hike yesterday. I almost forgot to call my aunt and uncle this morning, as I have been doing the past several weeks, but at around noon, I finally recalled that they would probably be expecting my call.

Because my uncle was there, my aunt spoke with me in Korean for half an hour, and it was clear she was suffering. In the midst of a delusion, she told me that she had discovered my uncle stealing her jewelry. That she knew he was hiding it at his office. That she knew he was a kind man, but that she had lost feelings for him and was afraid. That she was considering going to his office and talking to his supervisor, or going to the doctor and asking for advice, because there was no other explanation for his stealing her jewelry except that he was mentally ill.

Over and over, the same story for 30 minutes, because she forgot that she had said the same thing not 3 minutes earlier.

The recent literature on Alzheimers advises those around the patient to go with the flow. Not to disturb the sick person but to accept their version of events and make them calm. So I did not reject her version of events. I said that my uncle clearly loved her, that he was a good person, that it made no sense, that there was no reason why he would steal her jewelry. I agreed that it must be a sickness. I agreed that she should talk with my mother about it (my mother has also been the target of my aunt's suspicions, but my aunt seems to have forgotten this). I urged her not to go to my uncle's office, not to speak to his supervisor, but to instead go to the doctor and ask his advice instead.

I don't want to encourage her paranoia, but I also don't think that rejecting her point of view would do anyone any good. In fact, I am worried that I too will become an object of suspicion, and god help me, I want to put that day off for as long as I can. To help her feel that she has someone to talk to, yes, but of course to put off the day when she also withdraws from me, mistrusts me, loses love for me, and becomes afraid of me.

If you wondered, as I have, why I am apparently in the midst of starting an affair here, wonder further why I didn't see it before. Yes, it's a little lonely here, and yes, it's been a while since anyone sparked my interest. But it seems very obvious to me now that the thing with the dude here did a wonderful thing for me this week, and that was to completely free my mind from thinking about my aunt and my uncle and the lonely, sad house in the suburbs of Seattle.