Tuesday in Belgium

Americans on European tours used to say: “It is Tuesday so we must be in Belgium.”

Saipan’s heat slammed into my young Shenyang ward’s comfort at the airport. His labored breathing is challenged by the warm humidity. The old aircon in our unit, retired by CUC’s costs, has been revived into service! I sing: “Summertime, and the sweating is easy; fleas are jumping, and the MJ is high…”

The relatively clean air of the island is a welcome relief from the dense carbon in China’s industrial Dong Bei (northeast) where coal reigns and its carbon canopy is a permanent fixture. In spite of advances in green technology, the coal firing plant tower across my building casts its shadow and exhausts its ash on my 11th floor’s window.

The 15-hour trip from Dalian to Saipan via Incheon left muscles yearning for the comfort of a warm bath. Devoid of such amenities, a hot shower was fine, and that’s when we knew we were definitely in Saipan. The water is salty, everything rusts.

We exhausted Saipan’s aquifers a long time ago. We get downpours but rain catchment is not a promoted technology. Lake Susupe can be transformed into a reservoir if we clean up drained sewage along with the dumped plastics and metals, then plant mangroves on its wetland to resuscitate it back to health. Implementable community-based technology is there but neither the will nor the organized effort is present. Fanatic eco-warriors won’t let us, either.

Friends not yet 50 suffer with smiles from inability to metabolize sugar and alcohol. In public, three on the P.O. queue makes a crowd rather than three thousand at Shenyangbei station. Motorists startle pedestrians and cyclists when they toot their horns. Overripe mangoes smell nice, the typhoon strong winds are familiar, and the amplified percussions on the pickup trucks test our musical sensibilities. A tenant who labors Saturdays past 2am hollers back at the cock to shut up when it starts to “cock-a-doodle” about the same time. My neighbor’s bush cutter gets revved up at dawn on Sunday so he can hustle in clear conscience to the pintakasi with his favored fighting cock. I’m definitely home.

So then, why would anyone want to visit Saipan, let alone live in it? Lucidity that we are but a “strategic military location” to the Pentagon is a good start. The grunts and salts who R&R here come not for our historic landmarks, charming smiles, fruit and flower scents, spicy cuisine, nor good looks. Rest is a fleeting pleasure by increments of time with pounds of Sino-Russo human flesh. Expats admit that they left the urban rat race elsewhere so they can soak on CNMI’s equanimity. Tourism does not excite them, preferring the virtues of remoteness and inaccessibility.

Casino proponents continue to spout PR. Macao (Aomen) of our acquaintance is a release valve profiting from Zhongguo’s vulnerabilities. It is a crime-infested jewel. Singapore has a captive audience lured to gamble. Casinos market illusions. It is no coincidence Vegas is mesmerized by the Mirage!

Again, why are we here? It boils down to just having decided to do so. Period. “Just do it!” is how Nike puts it. Native residents I’ve encountered say that they do not leave nor return because of historical memory or pristine condition of geography, not even the presence of extended family. They leave or come back because they create their lives and make their living here. It is not handed to them. They live to live it!

Perhaps, if we stop thinking about living off visitors and investors, the Pentagon’s dole, or cease heaping blame on Uncles Ben/Eloy’s shortcomings, and shift our fears into enthusiastic creation on how we want to live our lives, we might actually do something about it. Survival and quality of existence are what’s at stake. Real estate and calories are negotiable, labor is expendable, credit ratings rise and fall, but “happy” is self-generated. It is priceless. It is created. There lies our choice.

As a peripatetic pedagogue, PSS contained my passion but I developed spondylosis and I took matters into my own hands. We are eight quarters short of SS. Kinai Salas at SVES was kind enough to suggest that I look into medical leave and/or retirement. However, the Fund’s liabilities were more than its assets; we exercised patience of a saint just withdrawing retirement contribution! Adding burden to their incompetence would have been unconscionable.

We are HQT to the rafters. PSS HR is friendly and HQT short, but the principals make the call. I alerted MS-HS principals on all three islands of my availability but so far, there are no takers. One comic colleague observed: “You’re almost at the top of the income chain, so why would we want you back when we can hire two entry levels at your rate?” Fair enough. China beckoned our vocational resolve.

An African student has difficulties about his career choice. “What do you see are three contradictions of our time,” I asked. He told me. I said, “If your life is not about addressing those three, then you haven’t got a career!”

I am now home on Saipan so it must be July. How long Saipan remains home simply awaits my own nod or nay. Welcome to realistic living!