THE Spice Trader and his wife once adopted a homeless Filipina secretary, who lived with us for a year. She was rather shy and sat watching television, while we pottered around the flat, cooked dinner and so on.
The word soon got around Tin Hau that there was a lunatic foreign couple who did all the cooking and cleaning while their maid lived a life of indolent luxury.
This neatly reinforced the prevailing prejudice that foreigners are too soft on domestic helpers, while local Hong Kong people are too strict. This, of course, is rubbish.
A fascinating document has come into my possession. It is an eight-page, desktop-published list of instructions given to one domestic helper by her employer, a Westerner who is, or was recently, working at Standard Chartered Bank.
The day starts early, with breakfast served at 6.45am, and finishes late - taking the dog for a toilet walk at 9.30pm.
In between are a stunningly detailed list of instructions. For breakfast, she has to set the table with knife, fork, spoon and water glass. Serve one banana, half a Japanese apple cut into four sections, one slice of rock melon for sir, one larger portion of rock melon for madam - plus one small section of papaya, one slice of toast each (must be lightly buttered, and must be muesli bread from the bakery at the Furama Hotel).
There are individual instructions for the care of every pot plant in the apartment and a page-and-a-half of details about the dog, including the name, phone number, pager number and portable phone number of 'the dog's doctor'.