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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Thanks for your continuing inspiration. You have been one of my favorite saints since we first met that evening most of half a century ago in Manila. And your closing is perfect: “</span><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, celebrate!</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>” If that’s not the ChristWord, then I don’t know what is.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Grace & peace,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Ben<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Support separation of wealth and state.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Brush Script MT";color:#1F497D'><img width=180 height=113 id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image003.jpg@01CF2691.D15FBEA0" alt=Corporatehood></span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><a href="http://www.movetoamend.org/">www.MoveToAmend.org</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> wangzhimu2031@aol.com [mailto:wangzhimu2031@aol.com] <br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, February 10, 2014 12:56 AM<br><b>To:</b> nafaum@yahoogroups.com; oe@lists.wedgeblade.net<br><b>Cc:</b> pinoypanda2031@aol.com<br><b>Subject:</b> Jaime for Feb. 13 Thursday<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div id="AOLMsgPart_1_959f31ab-ccfc-4663-887e-6bbd57011210"><div><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Vee, Valentines, and Vie Day</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>“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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Valentines</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> 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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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: “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>”<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Have a full-filling vie day!<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Jaime Vergara<br><a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>