My father, his neck and the 21 housemaids

Professional training

I did not mind paying high amounts of money as long as those I was paying were conscientious in their work. However, I feel none of them was satisfied with what they got and gave little thought to what they needed to do to merit it. Few of the women had had any professional training in caring for elderly people either.

Once when I asked one of the ayi whether she had any such experience she replied:

"It's an easy job; I just do exactly what I do at home."

Many of them promised to treat my parents as though they were their own, but of course I knew that was not only an exaggeration, but almost an impossibility. In fact I generally gave short shrift to such talk and said that all they needed to do was follow instructions and work to the best of their ability.

The skills needed to be an ayi should not be underestimated. They include knowing how to behave appropriately, how to cook and how to communicate with elderly people, many of whom can be very set in their ways. To do these things you need training, and for things to work properly I think there needs to be a certain distance between employer and employee, notwithstanding the mutual respect required.

Some of my friends say that after four years of choosing and observing ayi I must have developed an ability to quickly spot the best and the worst. There is some truth to that, and I essentially developed some rules of thumb for reaching such conclusions. Honesty was the most important thing I looked for, and I reckon I can discern that from the eyes.

For me the ideal age range was 40 to 55. Early on I reckoned that women of that age are generally more stable, but it eventually became clear that this is not always so.

Next came physical condition, including the candidate's weight and face, and her family circumstances.

The look was also highly important to me, someone who was neither pretty nor ugly.

The candidate needed to be neither too skinny nor too fat, and at least strong enough to help my father practice walking. I felt that in the interests of finding a stable candidate it was best to avoid single women.

After eventually plumping for someone, all I could do was pray that I had made the right choice.

There is a Chinese saying that wherever there are people there is trouble, which means that the more people there are under one roof the more conflicts there will be. My role was akin to that of a United Nations peacekeeper. I would have to monitor the relationship between my father and the ayi and between my mother and the ayi, and keep an eye out for any hostilities between my father and mother engendered by the ayi's presence. On top of that I needed to field any queries from the ayi and go into crisis management mode when she suddenly announced she was quitting.