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<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">The final versions that will be in the Saipan Tribune</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br>
</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Jaime in Hong Kong</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-size: 13px;"><br>
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-size: 13px;">Dusting off the Year
that Was<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">It started yesterday, the white puffs flurrying down like
feathers from medieval angels molting from the stratosphere. It was not much but enough to make my
foothold on the icy ground a bit shaky while I carried the potted plants from
my classroom after my last class session.
The school shuts off the radiator on the last day of the semester until
the spring semester opens. That’s eight
weeks in the cold that even the sturdy spider plants could not possibly endure.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I carried my plants in one of those oversized shopping bags
that boutiques like to provide. I live
only about four blocks from my classroom so I did not bother to bring plastic
or towel to cover the plants. But after
fifteen minutes outside in between warm rooms, the plants resembled weeklong
leeks in the fridge, or newly harvested kelp from the icy waters, all
desperately crying out to be cooked and consumed, or be thrown away. After two more trips, half of my study/living
room now looks like a solarium of the Chicago botanical garden.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">This dusting-off exercise in our mind is not, however, our
wilting in the Dong Bei cold, a consequence of retirement from the formal
teaching service. Rather, it rehearses my
markings and turning points of the past year.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I am a historical figure, by upbringing and choice. I love history – the facts-based reminiscing of
the past so that the future does not come as too much of a scare nor a surprise. I no longer live the present with fear of the
unknown, cowed and resigned; history gives me the confidence to live each day
like it was the only day of the rest of my life! At every moment, I encounter the past,
present, and the future, all at once!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">But my gray matter is accustomed to the rhythm of a 365-day
trip of the planet around the sun so I dance with the crowd in Gregorian patterns
and come now to the completion of another Gaia revolution around Sol.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I made two trips to Honolulu this year to visit 93-year old
mother diagnosed to be frail of bones to require 24/7 attention at a medical
facility. My fealty was made more
intense by her mothering smile even in the midst of her frailty. She reminded me of the longevity that is
programmed in my genes that I abused with tar and nicotine in my youthful lungs,
so I am prudent in my life’s covenant. I
lopped off almost a decade from my statistical staying power.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">This year, I lived too much at the edge of hoping against
hope, and adjusted my radar accordingly.
Wayward was a word applied to describe personal fidelity in relationships
(playful is my term), and though my monastic <i>mendicare</i> these past years understood that being solitary is not a
lonely journey, I pined too much for a certain company though much more in the
romance of the imagination rather than in the plane of earthy reality. I have since distanced myself from the cuff
and cusp of illusion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">Aging got dramatically demonstrated as the jowl of a second
chin and the sag of a previously firm and rounded <i>heine</i> became more pronounced.
I experienced loss of breath while navigating four flights to my classroom. It had become a federal effort to reach down
and sock my feet warm in the cold. My
hair now blooms like Jack Nickolson's electrified mane on a bad hair day!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">My residence does have an elevator, which thankfully assists
my knees. I live on the eleventh floor, but
some of my students reside in dorms that are above ten floors without elevators.
Just imagining how they strive up and down the stairs daily exhausts my
faculties. So this year, I shifted to
the last scheduled 17-year retirement phase of my life’s odyssey. I no longer protest when a young thing offers
me her seat on the bus!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">The University delivered the <i>coup d'grace</i> when it decided to no longer hire teachers over 65
years old. Approaching the sunset of my
years, I signed loan papers on a dwelling with my host family; I get the use of
a room on a first floor three-bedroom apartment near the University, at a fifth
of cost. This will be home base to treks
to Irkutsk and Tashkent in the next few years.
Friends and family can also visit me should they travel to my northeast
corner of China.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">As the snow flurries drifted down this morning on my way to my
last day in class, I ran into one of the grounds’ maintenance men sweeping the
snow off one of the walkways. Equipped
with dried twigs attached to a pole, a homemade broom, he thoroughly swept the
white cover off the red-bricked pathway.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I stopped to catch his attention, looked him in the eyes, and
said ‘thank you’ in the only Zhongwen I can decently pronounce. He was surprised that I would bother, and recognizing
me as the foreign teacher who does not speak the language, he broke into a
toothless but winsome smile. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I turned around and before entering the building, took a
deep breath, cast a broad look around me including another glance on the bent but
proud worker, and to no one in particular, uttered, <i>xie xie! </i>For his life and
mine this past year, I wrapped it up in Peace!
Equanimity and tranquility to all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><br>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><b>Facing the Year that
Will Be<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">As all moving forward entails, one often engages in the
activity of deconstruction to clear the debris from previous engagements. So we do so on this sunny day off Kowloon Bay
in the now Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, called <i>Xianggang </i>in Mandarin, and <i>Hoeng Gong Zai</i> in Cantonese.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">We are bit early for a 50th year anniversary of an August
landing in Kowloon in 1965. I just
turned 20 when I waved my mother goodbye while she stood on Manila South
Harbor's wharf while I sailed out on board SS President Wilson for a 20-day
journey to San Francisco across the Pacific, on to a three-year theology stint
in Kentucky. Kowloon was first stop and
my first viewing of Sinoland, then we overnighted in famed Yokohama lights that
offered a rail trip to Ginza. A few
waves later, we got lei'd without getting Maui'd in Honolulu, and a few
foghorns later, I rose early at dawn to weather the bay's morning mist for a
view of the Golden Gate bridge.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">HK's Victoria Peak then was shrouded on low-lying clouds
while Kowloon teamed with coolies pulling their rickshaws, the living
embodiment of many Hollywood views. I
can now add Susie Wong of <i>Wan chai</i>
but at the time, our prurient interest was not whetted yet. We just barely crossed over from the terrain
of innocence, if not the blissful world of ignorance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">But yesterday is best left to John Lennon's lyrics. Tomorrow is where I focus my gaze. A colleague from Canada decided to do a
couple of touring days in HK headed for Pea Eye. I am the designated guide. I was forthright about HK's tongue primarily
Cantonese (not that I have any Mandarin comprehension to brag about) but I am
the local security blanket and I am only too willing to play the role.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I booked a leisurely 36-hour train ride from Shenyang
earlier before retirement was hurriedly announced so I reluctantly cancelled
after shifting quickly to the hassle mode. My colleague would not take
"no" for an answer. A plane
ticket showed up in my email so now I am basking on Kowloon's sunshine for a
couple of days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">We will skip the seat with the view on famed double-decker
buses. World class city HK is no
different from London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and New York. It is the Year-that-Will-Be of 2014 that
grabs my attention and pulls my mind before I watch the night's fireworks
holding a <i>mai tai</i> listening to the
twitter of Ilonggo and Iloko sounds. My
tourist was Davao raised.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">The awe and wonder about tomorrow (that's my next 17 years)
is its openness. One is free to decide
to give it form and shape without feeling determined by the lingering luggage
of the past. Given our sudden transition
state, this reality has gotten more stark than usual. I am in fact wobbly on the dance floor of
transparent nothingness <i>sans </i>the
familiar lingering steam of choices previously made. I used the term <i>tabula rasa</i> before but I did not fully understand its existential
meaning until now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">There is the matter of economic tyranny of which retirement
is supposed to be salve, a balsam and a balm, an appeasing cream and
lotion. We know of but do not share the
anxiety of its anticipation nor the despair that characterizes its
uncertainties; I just hunker down to chart a new course in the direction of an
unknown but unsurprisingly welcoming future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I cosigned a hefty bank loan back in Shenyang to pay for a
dwelling under construction scheduled to be turned over in June/July and to be
habitable for October occupancy. Many
friends quake with regrets over the limits imposed by similar situations. I explore its possibilities. That is what's so inviting about tomorrow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">Having been Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and midland prairie
focused in the last 50-years, I now bellow "westward ho" from China's
northeast, like the way American wagon train pioneers used to holler. There is that inviting boat ride from Dalian
via NoKor Chongjin port to Vladivostok, then traverse on a trans Siberian train
ride through the Far East's <i>khrebets </i>via
Mongolian Ulan Ude and interracial Irkutsk onward to Europe's Moscow and St.
Petersburg before grabbing a 15-30 day Euro pass from Scandinavia to south
inland heading Turkey and Greece, across the southern shores of the
Mediterranean back up north of Atlantic coast EU that can easily terminate in
the British Isles, spending a day or two at each stop. Or, the trek to Kasgar and Tashkent! The good thing about dreaming is that it is
free, and one can always change one's mind!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">How to pay for the gig?
Yo, you still in that rot!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">Many are stuck in their recriminations against the past and
fearful acquiescence to the fashionable modes of the future, manipulated and
promoted by the guys and dolls who inhabit the penthouses of HK's skyline and
their cousins in other world cities. We
shall refrain from sashaying to their tune!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">For now, it is the din of nitrate bangers (HK-banned but
tell that to the Chinese) initially meant to tame wild dragons (the Chiang
Jiang/Yangtze and the Huanghe/Yellow mighty rivers are depicted as dragons)
that will accompany our vigil tonight.
My guest brought a familiar Glenfiddich of the Scottish highland. Two downs from a three-finger tumbler will do
me just right. Happy New Year!</div>
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