I recently spoke to my niece who returned to Manila from Los Angeles.  She decided to go back since she is much happier living there.  She has after all, a luxurious life in the Philippines with several household help and a driver. While I do enjoy vacationing in the land of my birth.  I don't miss having household help at all.  "Not a tiny bit," if you ask me.

I grew up in Manila and we had household help right from the day I was born.  Plenty of them.  I even had two nannies taking care of me at the same time at one point during my childhood.  I also went to school in a chaffeur driven car and back for years.  It was a luxurious life no doubt but having hired help to do all our chores made me lazy and dependent.   I vowed to be self reliant when I left home to study in Spain all by myself.  While it was tough in the beginning having to press my clothes and cook my meals, I loved being independent. 

I will never ever forget the feeling of helplessness my family and I felt each and every time our hired help left for their annual summer vacation or when they got married.  It was not  a nice feeling.  "Who was going to do the household chores?"  I often asked. It didn't take long before I learned to do most of them.  In fact, I cleaned our house so well friends and neighbors told us our home looked much cleaner without our helpers.

I have now lived longer in the US than in the Philippines.  Over here, my family never had domestic helpers and we survived.  With machines and gadgets to do many chores, it's very easy to survive.