Vee, Valentines, and Vie Day By my announcement, itis my last day at Shenyang Aerospace University Friendship Villa, so I amcalling it my valedictory day. I was given my walking papers when the China’sForeign Affairs Department decided not to extend my working visa to fulfill existingage regulations. However, I was told that the InternationalEducation Center will continue to use my services after I declared that I was anasset available to them living in the neighborhood. I suggested an emeritus relationship, which does notobligate the University to put me on the payroll but could easily justifyretaining my residence at its facility. I asked to retain my quarters. Ihad not heard from the head honcho on whether I could stay, but I was advisedby a Chinese colleague that if I wanted to play the game on who is going towink first, in the absence of a definite “NO,” I should remain in my quartersuntil advised to do otherwise. “Take the absence of aresponse as a tacit ‘Yes’”, she said. I understandthe cultural reluctance to say “No”, but perhaps, in this instance, since I ama foreigner with a different context, I should at least have the benefit of aresponse to my request, one way or the other. Not to be ornery, butthe garden apartment that I and my host family bought, signing my soul on thebank’s dotted lines, will not be handed over until July, and with the interiorstill to be constructed, I do not foresee a welcome mat on the door until late inOctober. We also purchased on the understandingthat we cannot dispose of the property for another five years. This was the developer’s guarantee that theunits were bought not as objects of speculative investment that could easily destabilizethe cost, but availed by serious dwellers. Anyway, I shall pack. Decent rentals requirea one-year contract, so I hope to continue my residency on campus until theapartment is available and ready. Thisis hardly comparable to the dilemma of CNMI home owners and their mortgagerepayments in the current economic difficulties of many families, but mystandard of living is lower than theirs, so I may be less anxiety-prone thanthey are. It is also votive candles’ day as members of my agegroup 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 ageexpectancy of our time, and given my host culture’s penchant for honoringdeeply and most respectfully the memory of the dead, particularly elders, Ihave 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 mywindow ledge at the moment. Valentines 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 romanticlove projected by Hollywood, exploited without mercy by the masters andmistresses of trade and commerce in China’s malls. This, in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. Valentines comes tooclose to the recently concluded Lunar New Year and the Spring Festival, but themarket 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 andmotifs in objects and toys, and are also common symbols in t-shirts and otherattire meant for the young generation. Debunked in recentyears from its religious moorings in the martyrology of the saintly RomanValentinus, persecuted before Constantine took the Byzantine throne forconsecrating 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, thelater gracing verandas in Saipan especially among the local nikkeijin. But it is my vie day, the French word for “life”adopted into my signature of j’aime lavie, “I love life”. Among my repertoireof short courses, I voraciously celebrate the given-ness of life thus: “Like me, you are a nobody. In the scheme of things, the planet at 4.5 billion years old expected tobe around for another 4.5 billion years, in a universe 14.3 billion years alreadyin its swirl, your ideal 80-some years of existence is hardly an earth speck onthe 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 choiceand response-ability. Not unequaled butunique, unrepeatable but leaving your signature on the mold, you are onespecial creature, one of a kind in the whole universe. Like me, you are definitely a somebody.” As nobodies, status and achievement are to naught; assomebodies, we explode in engagement, encounter, and expenditure in that onemoment in time, 80-some years of a human journey. Have a full-filling vie day! Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!