It's Just Housework,
Say Maids in Asia
Who Do Windows
Janet Nevis Moreno , a maid in Hong Kong, does more than just clean house for her employer. Two months ago she cleaned the Blaster virus off the family computer. It was a little time-consuming, says Ms. Moreno, 32 years old, but easy -- and "more fun than washing dishes."
Ms. Moreno learned Microsoft Office and Power Point at a computer school in Hong Kong whose student body is mostly maids. The first lesson -- on how to turn computers on and off -- was terrifying, says Ms. Moreno, who comes from a farming community in the central Philippines. "I thought I would break it." Now she occasionally fills out Excel spreadsheets for her employers and gives their 9-year-old son computer lessons.
In the modern household, where computers are as common as vacuum cleaners, digital drudgery is becoming just another domestic chore. And since many people have about as much enthusiasm for cleaning out spam as they have for waxing floors, there's a growing demand for maids who do Windows as well as windows.
After staring at a computer at work, says Hong Kong Internet entrepreneur Paul Luciw, "the last thing I want to do is look at it some more when I get home." His maid, Sally Pasuquin Yip, 47, irons shirts, cleans the bathroom and uploads digital photos on Mr. Luciw's computer. She also does data entry he doesn't have time for. "It's just housework," shrugs Mrs. Yip.
Mrs. Yip, a former secretary from the Philippines who came to Hong Kong as a domestic servant 14 years ago, cleans part time for several families. For $7.70 an hour, she'll dust, baby-sit, fill out online forms and print address labels. She sometimes stops typing in order to wipe smudgy screens. "I can't concentrate if things are dirty," she says.
In the U.S., such chores are sometimes filled by technical-support companies that make house calls. "We are like a maid-service company for electronics," says Ted Banucci, who runs the Gadget Helper, in Campbell, Calif. The company gets about 30 calls a week, and while the majority of jobs, such as setting up a home PC network, require technical expertise, demand for menial computer chores is increasing, says Mr. Banucci. "I'm not kidding you. Sometimes we get called on just to flip a switch or two," he says.
But in affluent Asian cities, including Hong Kong and Singapore, where it's common for middle-class families to have full-time domestic help, basic computer tasks are often performed by the same women who dust the furniture.
Computer courses catering specifically to domestics have mushroomed in Hong Kong. The maids-only computer courses offered by the Hong Kong YMCA have been so popular that the Y has increased the number of classes to 11 from one since the program was introduced in 1994. This year it added three new courses taught in the Indonesian language Bahasa, which is the native tongue of many maids in Hong Kong. Many of these students are called on to do spreadsheets for household budgets, design and maintain family Web sites and perform Internet searches for the children's schoolwork, says Moira McPherson, who directs the training courses at the Y.
Demand is so brisk at Innovative Digital Limited, a small computer center that offers chat-room services and Windows XP courses, that the company had to move to larger quarters just three months after it opened, says owner Rick Cabanatan. Most of the students are household help seeking to learn computer skills. Many are just beginners.
In Shenzhen, China, just across the border from Hong Kong, computer-literate domestics can earn $225 a month, about 50% more than the going rate for maids and about what recent university graduates can earn in white-collar jobs. Currently, the Shenzhen Marriage and Family Service Center, an employment agency, has a waiting list of about 30 employers seeking computer-literate maids. "We have more requests than we can fill," says director Zhang Tie Yi. But he says that of the 800 maids who have enrolled at his center, only 20 have had the necessary typing skills or other basics needed to start learning computer tasks.
Some computer-proficient maids hope that their new skills will help them escape their menial jobs. Josclyn Polic, who is 43 and from the Philippines, took a computer course at the Hong Kong YMCA five years ago. She mostly used her skills to order groceries online and download recipes for the frequent dinner parties thrown by her employer, Jeremy Barr. Ms. Polic had a wide repertoire of Chinese and English dishes, and her steak-and-kidney pie, says management consultant Mr. Barr, "was simply lovely."
She left her recipes on a disk as a parting gift for the Barr family before leaving for Canada, where she parlayed her computer skills into a job as a nurse's aide.
操作Windows就像擦窗户
在香港打工的女佣珍妮特?莫雷诺(Janet Nevis Moreno)为雇主做的不仅仅是打扫房间。两个月前，她从家里的电脑上清除了冲击波(Blaster)病毒。32岁的莫雷诺说，这件活儿有点费时间，但很简单，而且“比洗盘子有趣得多”。
莫雷诺在香港一家电脑学校学习过微软(Microsoft)的Office和PowerPoint，那里的学员绝大多数是女佣。莫雷诺说，所上的第一课就是学习如何开关机，这让来自菲律宾中部农场的她感到恐惧。她说：“我怕弄坏机器。”现在，她偶尔为雇主制作Excel电子表格，并且能教雇主9岁的儿子使用电脑。
在电脑像吸尘器一样普及的现代家庭，操作电脑已经成为一种寻常的家务。而且，由于许多人对清除垃圾邮件的热衷程度不亚于对给地板打蜡，因此要求女工像擦窗户一样熟练操作视窗(Windows)系统的雇主日益增加。
香港互联网企业家Paul Luciw表示，在班上盯了一天的电脑之后，到家最不愿做的事就是再面对电脑屏幕。他的女佣，47岁的萨莉(Sally Pasuquin Yip)不仅熨衣服，清洁浴室，而且还在雇主家的电脑中上传数码图片，替雇主输入他无暇顾及的数据。萨莉耸耸肩说：“这不过是家务活。”
萨莉是菲律宾人，曾做过秘书，14年前来到香港从事家政服务，为几家兼职打扫卫生。按照每小时7.70美元的酬金标准，她的职责是擦桌扫地，照看孩子，上网填写表格，打印地址签。有时她在打字时会停下来，擦去显示器上的灰尘。她说：“如果使用的东西不清洁，我无法集中精力。”
在美国，这一类工作是由上门服务的技术支持公司承担的。加州坎贝尔的Gadget Helper公司的特德?巴努奇(Ted Banucci)说：“我们就像是电器方面的家政服务公司。”他表示，该公司每周会接到约30个电话，尽管大部份是诸如安装家用电脑网络等专业技术性很强的工作，但对于电脑方面杂活的需求也在增加。巴努奇说：“不骗你，有时我们接到的电话，只是请我们去按一两个开关。”
但是，在香港和新加坡等富裕的亚洲城市，中产阶级家庭普遍雇佣了全职女佣，简单的电脑操作任务通常就由负责打扫房间的同一人承担了。
在香港，专门以家政服务为目标的电脑课程快速发展起来。香港基督教男青年会(Hong Kong YMCA)专门为女佣开设的电脑课程大受欢迎，已从1994年最初开设时的1个班扩充到了11个班。由于香港许多女佣来自印度尼西亚语国家，今年该校新增设了3项用印尼语授课的课程。该校负责此类培训课程的莫伊拉?麦克弗森(Moira McPherson)说，其中许多学员在这里学习制作用于家庭预算的电子表格，设计并维护家庭网站，上网为孩子搜索作业材料。
在与香港相距不远的深圳，掌握电脑操作的佣人月薪达到225美元，比目前市场水平高出约50%，与刚毕业的大学生在白领岗位上的薪水大致相当。目前，深圳婚姻和家政服务中心约有30名雇主在寻找会操作电脑的女佣。该中心主任张铁义(音译)说：“我们提供的服务无法满足客户的要求。”但他表示，在该中心登记的800名女佣中，只有20人具备打字或其他学习电脑的基本技能。
一些能熟练使用电脑的女佣希望能靠这些新技能摆脱目前的佣人工作。43岁的菲律宾女佣乔斯林?波立克(Josclyn Polic)五年前参加了香港基督教男青年会的电脑课程。她主要将这些技能应用于网上购买杂货，并为准备雇主杰里米?巴尔(Jeremy Barr)的晚餐聚会下载食谱。波立克掌握了大量的中西餐常备菜肴，身为管理咨询顾问的巴尔先生说，波立克做的牛排腰子派“十分可口”。
波立克成功利用所学的电脑技能在加拿大谋到了一份护士助手的工作。临走前她将自己的食谱刻成一张盘，作为礼物送给了巴尔先生一家。
