Home sweet home

But where is home? As one writer said, "I am like a turtle, my home is on my back". Same with me. Globalization is not just about WTO or what it does to poor countries. You may fret and complain but the awful truth is the world has become a village. The era of a borderless world, multiple passports, instant communication through Internet is already upon us.That is the wider meaning of globalization and unless we attune ourselves to that reality we will be unable to cope with the enormous changes that come with it. If we are falling behind with most of the world, it is because we stubbornly refuse to accept this fact.

Among peoples of the world, Filipinos (our workers, not our leaders) understand it better by making the entire world their workplace. This is not to deny there are no problems – separation of families, abusive employers, racial prejudice – but these will not be solved by denying or stopping Filipinos from going abroad to earn in dollars. Such abuses happen right here at home. To say that we should create more jobs so Filipinos do not have to leave ‘home’ is a pipe dream. Most of those who leave the Philippines have jobs.What we need are consistent policies that address the phenomena of economic migration. Because that is what it is. Instead what we have is an ambivalent attitude about Filipinos who work abroad, pitying them on one hand and depending on them on the other. This ambivalence makes for confused policies that do not enhance the welfare of overseas Filipinos nor the advantages they contribute to the nation. I will not apologize if there are Filipinos in every airport but I am shamed that we have such a backward airport. That is what I mean by ambivalence. Enough.

My route took me from Manila to Hongkong to meet with my daughter, CNN’s anchor Veronica who carried a Philippine passport, her husband, Australian and CNN’s war photographer Mark (who flew in from Baghdad where he covered Saddam Hussein’s trial) and their children who carried British and Australian passports. They all had Hongkong residents’ identity cards. We were off to London to visit another daughter, Marta married to British Simon Welsh. His parents, Oxford mathematics Professor Dominic Welsh and wife Bridget were in Canada for his brother’s wedding to a Thai girl. See what I mean by one world?

While in London, I walked the streets I used to frequent when I lived just off Hyde Park. Had it changed? No. It was as if we had not left – the chemist, the butcher, the florist, the chemist, the laundromat, the little French restaurant and the Bombay Palace were still there. I dropped by my favorite coffee shop, arguably the best in London, still run by the same Indian who made me a blend of coffee beans, perfectly roasted, not so strong or too weak for breakfast. This, too, is ‘home’.

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QUALITY BRITAIN. As editor in chief of Quality Britain, I had to rush ‘home’ to Manila to be in time for its launch at Hotel Intercon. The magazine will put a face to British trade and investments in the Philippines . It was graced by no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. There must be something about her demeanor but she does command authority and belies what Cardinal Sin had once said that "she was only a little girl and could easily be frightened by gun-toting machos." Certainly, the gun-toting actor who preceded her did not command the same respect. She was on the dot when guests were just trickling in. The key ceremonies were to drop the cover from the huge larger than life facsimile of the magazine’s cover and then to hand the President a framed smaller version of the cover – a composite picture of British and Filipinos who were the movers and shakers of British business in the Philippines. Except for Marks and Spencer, there are other companies – banks, (Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, brand names – Lush, Paul Smith) in our midst which we would not have known are British. I thought Hotel Intercon, a major sponsor, was American. Nope. It is British and owned by a subsidiary of Bass and Co., one of the largest manufacturers of British beer and owner of pubs across the UK.

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DEUTERIUM. Deuterium is a more serious topic than an Imelda quip trying to be clever would have it. It is a big topic in overseas Filipinos’ cybermail. A group sent me what seemed a serious and closer study of it. They say it could be the answer to our problems. According to them "Deuterium is heavy water or hydrogen water without oxygen. This is obtained from the deep trenches of the world and the largest deposit of deuterium is in the Philippines. A big deposit of 868 miles long, 52 miles at widest point, and 3 miles at deepest point, replenished by nature 24 hours a day after Deuterium traveled more than 12,000 kilometers from Central America to the Philippines through the span of the Pacific Ocean when Planet Earth turns on its axis from West to East in unending perpetual motion." My husband, an avid reader of science journals says as far as he knows only the Russians so far were successful in capturing pure hydrogen but it had a very short lifespan, mere seconds, not long enough to be used massively as fuel. The technology for that has still to be developed. I confess that I do not know enough of the topic to comment on it and why some Filipinos living abroad should take it up as a cause.

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BATAAN NUCLEAR PLANT, AGAIN. The debate on whether we should revive the nuclear reactor has been with us for ages. I am not surprised it should meet objections from the same forces arrayed against it since 1986. If the moth balled nuclear power plant in Bataan is unsafe, so be it. As far as I know earlier efforts immediately after the 1986 revolution were focused on its conversion into a gas – fired generating plant. The dilemma is to find a solution for a white elephant for which we are paying billions, a major cause of the budget deficit, eating the little money we have for more pressing needs. In other words we either continue paying for it without using it or find a use for it if we have to pay for it anyway. I think most people will admit that the second alternative is the better. The real problem is the lack of will from our leaders. We can debate it to death, but as President Arroyo said in her state of the nation speech, ‘let us just do it.’ I agree. We have to find a use for something we are paying through the nose for thanks to Marcos’s greed and Cory’s ineptness. My French sources tell me that the study for the conversion was sound and there were willing investors. (By the way some of the discussions then were taped). It could have been implemented . I cannot understand Rene Saguisag’s statement that because of the Chenobryl incident "it made no sense just to mention studying its possible use." On the contrary, it makes every sense to use what you are paying $644 million and interests for, loaned to us by Eximbank in 1975. Unless of course we just renege on the loan which gave enough money to Imelda’s cousin, Herman Disini to buy the title of count and a castle in Austria. It’s Catch-22, damn if you do and damn if you don’t.

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