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<div><b>Vee, Valentines, and Vie Day</b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">By my announcement, it
is my last day at Shenyang Aerospace University Friendship Villa, so I am
calling it my <i>valedictory</i> day. I was given my walking papers when the China’s
Foreign Affairs Department decided not to extend my working visa to fulfill existing
age regulations. However, I was told that the International
Education Center will continue to use my services after I declared that I was an
asset available to them living in the neighborhood. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I suggested an <i>emeritus </i>relationship, which does not
obligate the University to put me on the payroll but could easily justify
retaining my residence at its facility.
I asked to retain my quarters. I
had not heard from the head honcho on whether I could stay, but I was advised
by a Chinese colleague that if I wanted to play the game on who is going to
wink first, in the absence of a definite “NO,” I should remain in my quarters
until advised to do otherwise. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">“Take the absence of a
response as a tacit ‘Yes’”, she said. I understand
the cultural reluctance to say “No”, but perhaps, in this instance, since I am
a foreigner with a different context, I should at least have the benefit of a
response to my request, one way or the other.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Not to be ornery, but
the garden apartment that I and my host family bought, signing my soul on the
bank’s dotted lines, will not be handed over until July, and with the interior
still to be constructed, I do not foresee a welcome mat on the door until late in
October. We also purchased on the understanding
that we cannot dispose of the property for another five years. This was the developer’s guarantee that the
units were bought not as objects of speculative investment that could easily destabilize
the cost, but availed by serious dwellers.
Anyway, I shall pack.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Decent rentals require
a one-year contract, so I hope to continue my residency on campus until the
apartment is available and ready. This
is hardly comparable to the dilemma of CNMI home owners and their mortgage
repayments in the current economic difficulties of many families, but my
standard of living is lower than theirs, so I may be less anxiety-prone than
they are.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">It is also <i>votive</i> candles’ day as members of my age
group increasingly are fast fading away into the sunset. Two succumb to cancer last year, and three breath their last in the last three months from natural causes. They were well beyond the average life age
expectancy of our time, and given my host culture’s penchant for honoring
deeply and most respectfully the memory of the dead, particularly elders, I
have held a votive candle vigil on behalf of acquaintances who are battling “terminal”
diseases, and for at least a month, those who have departed. I have six candles on the green gardem on my
window ledge at the moment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>Valentines</i><span style="vertical-align: baseline"> Day is observed second only to Halloween but ahead of Santa Claus’
Christmas as the most promoted western holiday in the Chinese calendar. It is also the celebration of the romantic
love projected by Hollywood, exploited without mercy by the masters and
mistresses of trade and commerce in China’s malls. This, in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Valentines comes too
close to the recently concluded Lunar New Year and the Spring Festival, but the
market stalls are full of the “I heart (for love) you”, “I dove (for peace)
you”, and “I Mickey Mouse ears you” (don’t know what that means) images and
motifs in objects and toys, and are also common symbols in t-shirts and other
attire meant for the young generation. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Debunked in recent
years from its religious moorings in the martyrology of the saintly Roman
Valentinus, persecuted before Constantine took the Byzantine throne for
consecrating the marriages of Roman soldiers to Christian women, Valentines Day,
nevertheless, remains a potent come-on for the marketers of chocolate and candy,
red and pink roses, fuchsias and peonies, tulips and the acer palmatums, the
later gracing verandas in Saipan especially among the local <i>nikkeijin.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">But it is my <i>vie</i> day, the French word for “life”
adopted into my signature of <i>j’aime la
vie, </i>“I love life”. Among my repertoire
of short courses, I voraciously celebrate the given-ness of life thus: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ">“Like me, you are a <i>nobody.</i>
In the scheme of things, the planet at 4.5 billion years old expected to
be around for another 4.5 billion years, in a universe 14.3 billion years already
in its swirl, your ideal 80-some years of existence is hardly an earth speck on
the sun’s ray. However, those 80-some years,
even possibly ninety or a hundred, are all yours for the taking. Putting a face into it is solely your choice
and response-ability. Not unequaled but
unique, unrepeatable but leaving your signature on the mold, you are one
special creature, one of a kind in the whole universe. Like me, you are definitely a <i>somebody.</i>”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:">As nobodies, status and achievement are to naught; as
somebodies, we explode in engagement, encounter, and expenditure in that one
moment in time, 80-some years of a human journey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:">Have a full-filling vie day!</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13px; clear: both;">Jaime Vergara<br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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