eat, drink and be nannied

D’s birthday (27^th) yesterday and she, the Belgians (J and I) and I drove to Tagaytay (pronounced ta-guy-tie), a town on the rim of the old volcanic crater that rings Lake Taal (in which resides Taal Volcano – i.e., as the Philippine Tourism ad says, a volcano within a lake within a volcano). We ate at Antonio’s, an extraordinarily nice restaurant in an old homestead there, full of cooling breezes and sun-dappled gardens. I had a garden salad with panfried chilli and garlic scallops followed by a cream of cauliflower soup followed by Chilean sea bass (I know I should check whether seafood I eat is overfished...) on truffle mashed spuds followed by a chocolate soufflé. Here are a couple of photos (not of the food, I forgot to capture that):

Note in this second one the woman in navy blue attire (looks black in this...hard to see, I apologise), standing, to the extreme left. She was evidently a nanny (ya-ya in the local lingo) working for the family seated at the table next to her. The family had three young kids and, consequently, three ya-yas. One for each. Of course. And all wearing the same navy-blue uniform.

At a guess, the ya-yas would get around A$100 per month. Child-rearing is therefore a breeze for wealthy Filipinos. No changing nappies, no running around gathering up wayward toddlers, no fights to feed the kiddies food they don’t want to eat…you can have someone else do all that. While I see the attraction, I can’t quite come around to the idea. Many of my be-childrened friends have a single ya-ya to look after the kids while mum and dad are at work. I can handle that idea fine, and would likely do the same if I had kids and lived here. But the idea of a fulltime nanny for each child, as practiced by the truly wealthy here, sticks in my craw somewhat. You hear stories about distant relationships between kids and parents and it’s hard not to think that never actually doing much of the parenting stuff – no matter how mundane – must play a part in this.

After lunch, we took fruit shakes (in the way that the English take tea; “took fruit shakes” raises a staunchly dignified image, no?) at Café Lupa, right on the Taal rim. Lurvely...