(1116) Adjusting to a new country and diet

In between my literary efforts: reading, translating, editing, blogging... and meals, I chatted with the new maid.

It is eye-opening to hear about things from the maid's perspective. This a household that runs with one full-time maid, one part-time gardener and one part-time window cleaner who happened to be a Filipina married to a local man.

Even though the two female maids are from two countries and speak different languages, the Filipina has learnt enough local dialect to communicate with the new comer. The former has worked for this household a long time and has befriended every maid employed for more than twelve years.

Interestingly the last maid used to ask the part-timer to purchase food she likes but have no access to. I casually asked what food, most of the items mentioned were desserts made with carbohydrates from roots, in other words tropical common street food in South East Asia.

I find it amazing as I could find more than enough things to eat in the fridge and the cupboards. Later as I thought about it more, I realized that forty years or so ago, even though the college cafeteria boasted of a wide selection of food round the week, I missed rice desperately. Once a week white rice was served, I would eat like five little bowls and pile on plates of other selection of meat and vegetables until tiny me could not carry the loaded tray back to the window of the washing place. The servers were huge black ladies who shook their heads at my slender waistline, wondering how I could burn such a lot of calories daily. On International day once in three months, I would chalk up four servings of Chinese fried rice or Japanese rice and meat, decent helpings that came on dinner plates. So I suppose a person from another culture would definitely miss something or other in the new country. Here the maids are from rural area, of lower socio-economic background, they could not easily hop into our urban sophisticated upper-middle class way of consuming lots of meat  and vegetables and little carbohydrates.