Missed sending in the Friday column. Early stages of senility, I am afraid! Friday's was China's comback kids: Jesus, Mao and the Buddha. Will have to recycle. -Original Message----- From: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com> Sent: Fri, Sep 19, 2014 7:38 am Subject: Jaime for Monday ST, September 22 I merrily opened the online edition this morning and decided the techies were late again until I saw your email. Dang. Friday is still in the "to send" folder. Need to have a wall check list! Will have to recycle. Meanwhile, here's Monday's! End of summer August 7 began autumn in China when the temperature at dusk anddawn in the northeast got tolerable though it remained scorching at mid-day. North China really did not feel like autumnbut since Xi Jinping took his state visit to Mongolia late August, the warmth(though one could not tell by the way people were attired) remained a welcomedstate of the ambience. The first Monday of September in the United States isconsidered the end of the summer though this is really more symbolic. It is the day before school kicked off so thefeel for the end of summer is existentially real as families secure theircamping gears in the garage, and the enterprising young boys and girls resumenewspaper delivery routes. The autumnal equinox does not occur until September 22, butthat is neither here nor there since the day is simply, more or less, theclosest to equal time between daylight and nighttime at the equator when thesun looks like it is headed south; in fact, the earth's rotation just tiltsthat way. The Labor Day beat is also America's response to theworldwide observance of May Day, the latter of "socialist" originfrom the labor unions at Chicago's pre-Ferguson riot of police at McCormick's! End of summer is experienced more as the time when we setaside the white and light colored clothes for the darker ones that eventuallyends up with the solid dark come sun-deprived winter. Mainland US and western Canada (a colleaguesent me a picture of accumulated snow) drenched and soaked as fierce stormswith hail and snow hit certain Midwest and Atlantic east coast regions. In Saipan, we worked on our last BBQ for the year by thelagoon quaffing our ice-cold beer in the breeze, got the big screen for the NFLand college football seasons, and gathering chicken feathers and located the pumpkinpie recipe, cotton balls for snow, noted the gifts and lights to be shopped, locateda real fir tree, caught a Pinoy to make real parol, and grabbed a crazy willing to be decked-out as Santa inshorts to ride a water buffalo in December! But we're ahead of the season of the winter solstice whenthe earth hits the longest night, and the shortest day starts getting longeragain, appropriated conveniently by the patriarchs to celebrate the Body ofChrist (Christ Mass). Endless summer wasa movie when I was young of guys who went around the world chasing after thebig wave to surf. Being a resident ofHawaii, I am familiar with the surfing culture, more so because my brother livedin Waianae before he moved to the new city of Kapolei, both locations of whichare only a hop and a skip towards the north shore where the real aficionadoswait it out for the big one. For lookingfashionably comfortable, of course, one heads out for Waikiki with sun glasses,an occasional touch of sand but from the shore, not from wading in the wave andthe water. Serious surfers inhabit thewindward side of Oahu. Ours is a profession that goes by a "beginning-less summer",or more accurately, "hardly any summer" at all. I spent summers in Saipan with peers aroundmeeting tables charting out the design of the incoming year in conferences toofull to stretch the leg during deliberations, which was before we discoveredthat being aerobically fit also cleaned out the cobwebs of our minds leavingbrain cells to work efficiently and well. Summer was what other people had before I got to lasso theminto the "productive" activities of the fall. This is the anti-fun component of myVictorian heritage as a second generation Methodist in a Church parsonage. I already knew myself to have been born "beautifullybrown" with the skin sheen akin and seen in Madagascar to Tahiti acrossthe Indian Ocean, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, from body surfing thewaves and wild night dancing around the bone fire. The end of summer in China came early this year as did the autumnrains that were too abundant in places not normally known to be wet, scarce in otherplaces where dampness sweltered and aridity wilted the peonies, followed by thequakes and the monsoon-turn-violent typhoons; we had a sure fire formula for tragedy. The season came with the view of my neighbors from mysolarium and my kitchen back window more rosy than bleak. My immediate community has the oldest set oftenement houses (1995) in the old Shenbei Center, now dwarfed by thesurrounding high rises of apartment units for urban professionals. A retiree across the street opens hisnon-performing repair shop to keep busy since it obviously does not add incometo his retirement benefit. Younger men and women walk under my sunroom through thecommons equipped with cellphones or tablets, locked in to their own digitaluniverses, ignoring each other's presence. They adore at the altar of the renminbiattending to the next sales' appointment and market deal. The summer has not come to an end. Many just shut it down. Funny that I should just be discovering thepleasure of mine! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jayvee Vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com> To: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> Sent: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 2:18 pm Subject: Re: Speaking in Tongues Jaime, Do you have anything for me for Friday? Jayvee From: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014 at 1:38 AM To: Jayvee VAllejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>, <sapuro.rayphand@gmail.com> Subject: Fwd: Speaking in Tongues Marc used to teach at MHS before I got to Saipan. Sapuro, did you know him? j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Marc Wathen <kismarc@gmail.com> To: Jaime R. Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> Sent: Wed, Sep 17, 2014 10:02 am Subject: Speaking in Tongues Hi Jaime, Enjoyed your column today as I am an English teacher at a local high school in the New Territories. I teach mostly oral English, so I try to make my classes as welcoming as possible. Interesting comment about Pimsleur's. When I first came to Hong Kong in 1995, I bought Pimsleur's Cantonese cassette tapes and listened to them on my Sony Walkman. English is the third language of my half-Chinese son Thomas. He went to local schools where Cantonese was the medium of instruction. His mother spoke to him in Putonghua at home, and I spoke in English. Thomas is now studying Japanese at East Los Angeles College. I spent five years in Osaka, Japan in the 1980s, so I am very happy about this. It seems that the Filipinos that I have met in my travels are natural linguists. The Filipino domestic helpers here have much better spoken English than the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. That is something that the Chinese here do not like to hear. Hope all is well. Best, Marc