Two lists

Where is the best place to live?
The United Nation just published the 2007/2008 Human Development Index rankings, the index used 2005 figures for life expectancy, educational levels and real per capita income to rank 175 nations of the world. For better understanding the index, go to their website.

How rotten is your country?
Another list is of my interest also, since much is debated as to how much corruption is going on in the Philippines, check out The 2006 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Well, if you have any sense of what corruption does to a country, you will find that the more corrupted a country is, the harder it is for anything to work at all, I mean anything! We have experienced it first hand in the Philippines.

2007/2008 Human Development Index rankings

Iceland Norway Australia Canada Ireland Sweden Switzerland Japan Netherlands France Finland United States Spain Denmark Austria United Kingdom Belgium Luxembourg New Zealand Italy Hong Kong, China (SAR) Germany Israel Greece Singapore Korea (Rep. of) Slovenia Cyprus Portugal Brunei Darussalam Barbados Czech Republic Kuwait Malta Qatar Hungary Poland Argentina United Arab Emirates Chile Bahrain Slovakia Lithuania Estonia Latvia Uruguay Croatia Costa Rica Bahamas Seychelles Cuba Mexico Bulgaria Saint Kitts and Nevis Tonga Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Antigua and Barbuda Oman Trinidad and Tobago

Romania Saudi Arabia Panama Malaysia Belarus Mauritius Bosnia and Herzegovina Russian Federation Albania Macedonia, TFYR Brazil Dominica Saint Lucia Kazakhstan Venezuela, RB Colombia Ukraine Samoa (Western) Thailand Dominican Republic Belize China Grenada Armenia Turkey Suriname Jordan Peru Lebanon Ecuador Philippines Tunisia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Fiji Iran, Islamic Rep. of Paraguay Georgia Guyana Azerbaijan Sri Lanka Maldives Jamaica Cape Verde El Salvador Algeria Viet Nam Occupied Palestinian Territories Indonesia Syrian Arab Republic Turkmenistan Nicaragua Moldova Egypt Uzbekistan Mongolia Honduras Kyrgyzstan Bolivia Guatemala

Gabon Vanuatu South Africa Tajikistan São Tomé and Principe Botswana Namibia Morocco Equatorial Guinea India Solomon Islands Lao People's Dem. Rep. Cambodia Myanmar Bhutan Comoros Ghana Pakistan Mauritania Lesotho Congo Bangladesh Swaziland Nepal Madagascar Cameroon Papua New Guinea Haiti Sudan Kenya Djibouti Timor-Leste Zimbabwe Togo Yemen Uganda Gambia Senegal Eritrea Nigeria Tanzania (U. Rep. of) Guinea Rwanda Angola Benin Malawi Zambia Côte d'Ivoire Burundi Congo (Dem. Rep. of the) Ethiopia Chad Central African Republic Mozambique Mali Niger Guinea-Bissau Burkina Faso Sierra Leone

Bombarded

We have been bombarded by loud pop music day and night for months now. It is not just the karaoke that I mentioned in my previous post, there is also someone who plays his music with a loud strong bass all day long. Last night the music was still going at midnight when we went to bed, this morning, I was awaken by the same music at 7:00am sharp.

We feel oppressed by this music, I actually prefer the karaoke to this constant booming in my head, it occupies my head every waking minute of the day. The worse part is that there is nothing we can do about it, calling the police is not going to help.

In the video below, you can hear the music going, but the bass sound is lost because the microphone of the camera does not pick up the booming very well. In reality it is at least three times louder. I took this video standing in our kitchen door. The music does not come out from our next door neighbour's house, which you see in the video, rather, it is from somewhere beyond.

Please pray for us, we have been bombarded by this music and the karaoke since we moved in, it has been very difficult and it is grinding on our spirits. Some types of music lift our spirits and nurture our souls, my choice will be Bach, Mozart and the like, but the booming music break us down, grind us into pulp, it has been very hard.

Dan is 34!

Dan is 34! We went out for a great dinner in a nearby Spanish/Mexican restaurant. We bought a wonderful chocolate cake from 10 Dove Street, one of our favourite restaurants. Kioni is always excited around candles. It is a simple celebration, but a warm and happy one.

Aftermath

When the typhoon passed through, the sky turned almost completely dark.

The tree in the front of our house was blown down by the wind, we heard it came down in the middle of the night, but didn't know what it was. Thankfully, it didn't bring down any wires that were hanging just over the fence.

Worry about the squatters

2006 Leyte Mudslide


If you look out of the window in this video, and listen carefully, you can hear the strong wind pounding on the trees and the rain pouring down.

It has been raining for a week, and in the past 24 hours, the sky just opened up and have been dumping rain non-stop. Looking out of the window, there are squatter houses all over our neighbourhood, in fact, our helper's family live in a squatter house just about 10 minutes walking distance from us. Above those squatter houses is a big hill, where the government has started about a year ago digging away the dirt to make a road. Though we haven't see much activities for a while, they still claim that they are working on the road.

Sitting in our office room, we can see clearing a big area with red dirt that was dug out with no vegetation on it. With the rain coming down like this, it won't take long until the soil is saturated and comes sliding down.

A huge mudslide in Leyte, Philippines in 2006 that buried the whole village was still fresh in my memories. The causes for that mudslide were a 10 day period of heavy rains and a minor earthquake. 12 days ago, we experienced a small earthquake here in Cebu. It seems like the ground underneath us is not that stable.

If anything happen, we will be fine, it is the squatters that I am worry about. Lord, please protect them from another Leyte disaster.

Inspired

"The secret of my success over the 400m is that I run the first 200m as fast as I can.
Then, for the second 200m, with God's help I run faster."

The word 'inspired' does not even start to describe how I felt after I watched 'Chariots of Fire' for about the 8th time tonight. The stories of Harold Abrahams (the U.S. athlete) and Eric Liddell (the U.K. athlete) were interesting, but what stopped me on my track was my after movie search on the internet about Eric Liddell. He owes much of his fame more to a race he didn't run than any he did.

I always knew he was born in Tianjin, China to missionary parents, I knew he died in China, but

1) I didn't know though he was born to missionary parents, he didn't see Jesus as his savior and Lord until he was 20 years old.

2) I didn't know it was only a year after he won the 400 yards gold medal in the 1924 Paris Olympics that he decided to go back to China to serve there.

3) I didn't know he sent his wife (born of Canadian missionary parents) and three young daughters back to Canada when the Japanese invaded, but decided to stay in China himself.

4) I didn't know that when Winston Churchill arranged to have a prisoner exchange with the Japanese, Eric Liddell was, of course, on the list, but gave up his place to a pregnant woman.

5) I didn't know about the stories of the many lives he has touched and changed while he suffered with them in war-torn China.

5) I didn't know that when he died of a brain tumor while a prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp in Weifang in 1945, just 5 months before the Japanese was defeated, his last words were, "It's complete surrender."

Eric Liddell surrender his all, he is a true missionary. And I am ashamed to call myself one when I read about his total obedience. He is my hero.

Another type of sharing

A lot of people find Filipinos are happy go lucky people, that they are always smiling and not caring too much about the misery around them.

In a sense it is right, however, we also found that the seemingly happy disposition stems from the fact that there might not be much for them to hope for, therefore, they just deal with it in a "happy" way. It is a defense mechanism. They refuse to be melancholy, rather they spice up their lives with little things that makes them feel better.

One of the examples will be music. Anyone who has been to the Philippines will notice that Filipinos love music. They particularly like music from the 80s, or any type of feel-good music with heavy beats, like rave or rap type music. They play them loudly in restaurants, in fiestas, at home, at church and anywhere they can get a hold of a stereo system and a pair of speakers. Often when we walk into a restaurant, the employees would quickly walk over to the stereo system and crank up the volume, and they crank it up so high that many times, we couldn't hear each other talking, we even had a hard time ordering food! After a while, we decided that if we are the only customers in a restaurant, we would ask them to turn it down, or sometimes even turning it off.

Old-timer missionaries explained to us that Filipinos have big hearts and they love to share. Not everyone can afford to play music in their homes, so those who can, share their music. While there is some truth in it, I still find that the loudness of the music hurts my ears. Or take today as an example, we went to a "high-class" coffee shop for breakfast, after a while, Dan had to go and ask them to turn off their music because they were playing rave music with swearing words in it, Kioni was right there moving her little body along with the strong beats, even though she doesn't understand the swearing words, that did it for Dan and I, we couldn't handle those words.

Someone outside of our subdivision has a karaoke machine. Our helper said for 5 pesos (10 cents US), you can go sing a song. Our house is directly in the path of the super loud speakers, so whenever someone sings, we hear it loud and clear. Recently, a male voice has come through our door and windows often. He is known as the "bad-singing" guy to Kioni. He has quite a bit of money, because he sings the same songs over and over and over, and he sings very badly.

So for months now, we are forced to listen to quite a number of people singing in that karaoke joint, sometimes, it has gotten to me quite badly that I have to tell Dan we need to go out to eat, I need a break from listening to that music. (The joint opens at around 8:00am and closes at around 10:30pm, weekends they will extend the time to around midnight.) At least in a restaurant, if we are the only customers, we could ask them to turn it down!

Earthquake

After having left Taiwan 20 years ago, I have not experienced another earthquake until today in Cebu.

It was 12:12pm, Kioni and I were in her school room just finishing up her Kumon Reading. Suddenly, our chairs moved, and when I looked at the fan, which was turned off, it was moving also. I was pretty sure it was an earthquake by then. I pointed the fan out to Kioni, and she said, "It is an earthquake, mommy, we have to run outside."

At that time, Dan came into our room asking if that was an earthquake. That was his first experience with earthquake, and it was also Kioni's first.

I was about to agree with her, but then it all stopped, it lasted only for about 4-5 seconds. I told her we didn't have to run outside, because the earthquake was small, "See, the ostriches are still sitting on the shelf, they haven't fallen down."

After my reassurance that it was OK, she finished up with the last page of Kumon, and ran out to talk about the earthquake with daddy. It was quite fun.

11 years later

Amy, Johnny Mak (the CEO), Johnny Yun (the small business owner), Richard Lee (the PhD) and Patrick Chan (the designer-lecturer)

We had a great time last night meeting with really old friends from church. I have not seen these friends for over 10 years, except Patrick, whom I see almost every time I come back to Hong Kong. All of us have gained some weight (except Patrick) and lost some hair (all of us), but most of us (except me) have become "someone" in their area of expertise.

We started out at the new high-end mall the Elements, well, for an average person like me, everything in this mall is way over my budget. We ended up having dinner at an Arabian restaurant, we ordered four dishes, but I don't think any of the guys went away with a full stomach, however, their wallets have become quite thin. They were very nice to treat me to this very special meal.

We were just starting to catch up with old times and talk a bit about the future when the meal ended, so the CEO Johnny Mak suggested that we catch a taxi to the night scene of Tsim Sha Tsui to continue on our conversation. We ended up in a lounge in a hotel, sitting in those big comfy chairs, we had lots of laughs.

Even after all these years, it seems like our friendships have not changed one bit, we are still as at ease with each other as before and laughed just as loud.

What a great privilege to have this opportunity to meet and chat. I hope we will be able to do this more often. We see each other so little that next time we meet, it might be in one of our memorial services. (quote Richard)