The tale of the lost Christmases

Christmas is like love that defies definition. It evokes a multitude of emotions arising from a breathless anticipation of surprises that wrapped packages and homecomings create. It is the presence of family belongingness, of blood kinship that fills the heart with paramount joy and satisfaction. Because unless Christmas is shared with those you love in abundance, then there is no meaning in the ritual of the Holy Nativity.

Christmas celebrations have changed through the years and for more than half the population of this world, the earlier Christmases were more authentic and family-oriented. It did not matter that the Christmas table was not filled with an array of delicious foods one only sees on such occasions, or that the stockings hanged by the bedside only had a few candies and cookies. Happiness exceeded the poverty of allowable choices.

There is a deep nostalgia among those who remember how Christmases were happier then, because of the children's voices filling the room, their running feet echoing the corridors and their laughters and giggles overwhelming the silence of the night. Santa Claus was real to the children, a beautiful tale told and re-told through the ages.

Today, many of the Christmas tales handed down from generations before have all died. They were killed by the real time powers of the television, the Internet, the mobile phones and the digital cameras. There are no more tales to tell and no more visiting Santa Clauses. Yes, the children have become adults too soon, to care about tales from a distant past they cannot relate to.

These days of highly sophisticated technology, family reunions especially on Christmas eve can easily be replaced by digitalised appearances on the Internet. There is no longer that strong feeling of wanting to be home with parents and siblings because absence can be bridged by a digital presence. This is a reality that parents are trying to understand and accept about their children whose lifestyles have changed dramatically. Probably there are still many who follow the tradition, but in general the old ways of Christmas celebration are dead and gone. #

A Filipino foundation is born in Stockholm

In a world of deepening inequality of resource ownership and distribution, a foundation serves as a channel for humanitarian help to marginalised people, especially in poor countries in Asia and Africa. There are many philantrophic organisations and wealthy donors that have contributed enormous amounts of money into well-deserving causes in the field of research to fight deadly diseases such as AIDS, as well as into economic and educational programmes to fight poverty.

Last Dec. 12th, the Philippine Embassy in Stockholm launched a new foundation to be called Philippine Education Foundation, or PEF with the single purpose of helping well-deserving Filipinos to acquire college or vocational education geared towards job opportunities in Scandinavia. The initiator of the project is the current Phil. Ambassador to Sweden and Denmark, Maria Zeneida Angara Colllinson.

Swedish-Filipino organisation leaders were invited to the launch to agree on the proposed constitution and by-laws. Through several fund-raising events in the past, the Embassy ( along with the Filipino community's participation) have succeeded to raise sixty-five thousand crowns as seed money of the foundation. It is an honest start that hopefully will increase in the near future.

The Filipino community started with a small number of immigrants that settled in Göteborg some 30 years back. They were pioneers who were employed in the shipping companies, who chose to settle down in Sweden. Today, informal sources claim that there are as many as 30,000 Filipinos in Sweden, and the number is increasing. Most of them are family members and relatives of earlier immigrants who came and got married to Swedes. Others arrived as au-pairs employed in Swedish households, and a few are professionals in the nursing and academic fields.

I suppose there is a point in adjusting one's education to qualify in a particular labour market and this seems to be the case behind the foundation's objective. Amb. Collinson announced during the launch that Swedish Labour Minister Billström plans to visit the Philippines. The date and purpose of the visit have not been specified. The Swedish government announced recently that it is granting working visas to qualified professionals who can fill certain needs in the market. It does not seem so optimistic these days when thousands of workers are losing jobs because of the economic crisis. Unemployment in Sweden is expected to hit 6.5 percent next year.

The foundation, if it works properly would be a good project to support. There have been many fund-raising activities in the past by Filipino organisations in Sweden, but they were mostly oriented towards acute disaster assistance. What the foundation should aim for is the involvement and participation of Swedish companies and philantrophic organisations with links to the Philippines and the Filipinos. Funding for education is a mammoth undertaking when one takes into consideration the growing population of young Filipinos getting out of schools and universities with nowhere to go but abroad, in search of job opportunities.#

A tenuous road to peace talks

"Social conflict may be defined as a struggle over values or claims to status, power, and scarce resources, in which the aims of the conflicting parties are not only to gain the desired values but also to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals." (Coser, 1968)

I was in Oslo, Norway in the weekend of Nov. 29-30, this year for private reasons - to meet with old friends Joma and Julie Sison, as well as Fidel Agcaoili, Luis and Connie Jalandoni and Nonoy Palima. The last time we saw one another in person was during the ECOFIL Conference held in The Hague, Netherlands in 2001. Joma and Julie have been family friends from way back university days, long before he founded the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1969.

I have been a renegade in the nationalist movement, a drop-out, according to the regional commander of the New People's Army (NPA) I interviewed in Davao city during my days with Far Eastern Economic Review. In a way, I admit to both after exhausting myself in the media struggle to bring to light the abuses of the Marcos dictatorship. When I moved to Mozambique, Southern Africa in mid-1983, and later to Sweden in 1988, I distanced myself from Philippine politics, and from further disappointments over the deterioration of my birth country's political and economic situation.

I did not anticipate that being in Oslo - in the NDF's working room, for such a brief period would bring back an avalanche of memories I thought were laid to rest. I listened to terminologies creating several interpretations such as ceasefire, which I know is a pre-condition to peace talks and conflict resolution. But ceasefire is simply keeping the status quo where both parties desist from any violent actions and harmful political-military propaganda. It definitely does not mean surrender of arms or "returning to the fold". When one party coerces the other into giving up weapons or territorial gain, then it becomes a suppression technique in conflict resolution.

What I understood from my outsider's seat in Oslo was that, Government of the Philippines (GRP) panel did not even have the mandate to sign a Joint Statement to Resume the Peace Talks in Oslo early next year. And that the purpose of the gathering that weekend was purely "exploratory" and "creative". The proposed Joint Statement is quite clear on the NDF's position - that any conflict resolution is meaningless if arrests, killings and false propaganda are being utilized by one party, in this regard the government as pressure points. How about using USD17 billion in foreign remittances of overseas Filipinos as a more effective pressure point, if only those remitting can persuade their beneficiaries to reject the government that does nothing for them?

I also find it rediculous that the "terrorist" labelling of the Communist Party of the Philippines has not been rectified. As a Swedish journalist wrote: " A terrorist in one country is a freedom fighter in another." If the labelling remains, then why hold peace talks which bestows political legitimacy upon belligerent combatants? And what sort of intermediary role is the Norwegian government performing, aside from footing the bill for trips to Oslo? At some point, and a very crucial point - an intermediary must be able to bring contending actors to accept that "scarce or incompatible values can be managed in ways that are advantageous to both parties."

The Oslo meeting unfortunately was just a prisoner's game, no winners no losers.

"A Motherless Generation"..Indeed!

The latest Time magazine issue of Nov. 24th has featured the Philippines in its Society section with an article titled "The Motherless Generation", in reference to the thousands of Filipino women leaving their homes, family and children for better work opportunities abroad. Around 10 percent of the country's 87 million population are overseas workers and remitting much-needed hard currency back home. Last year alone, the total remittance was USD 17 billion is cash, a hugely significant contribution to an oil-dependent country like the Philippines.

Without the remittances, Philippines will collapse instantly a University of the Philippines professor was quoted as saying and everybody knows this, not just in the country but internationally. The country is surviving at the social cost of 9 million motherless or fatherless Filipino children and even if the Philippine government regularly commends the contribution of the Overseas Filipino Workers or OFWs while it pays lip service to the moral vacuum it creates, the government is powerless to stop the trend. Exporting cheap Filipino labour force has become the country's only viable industry.

It is without forgetting that aside from a growing motherless generation, the trail of broken homes is as long as the distance between Manila and Madrid. The old traditions of family and marriage have been forced aside in favour of job opportunities one can find, anywhere in the world. A majority of Filipinos going abroad for work are women and the untold stories of failures and tragedies outnumber those of success. It is indeed a very high price to pay but the Philippine government is not complaining. It is only the little children who are crying for their mothers, who are growing up with an education in beautiful homes that have all but mother's love."

What Obama's win tells the world

Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States has inspired hearts and minds toward new idealism emerging from the wreckage of a material world buried under its own weight. America needs a leader for a change that will not be ordinary, but one that focuses on ordinary people's hopes and dreams. When the trappings of a modern world have corrupted our ideals, it is time to go back to the basics of the life we want to live.

America found the right person to bring back idealism into the hearts of everyone, at the same time that most of the world re-examines its own set of ideals in a wasteland of economic devastation. One can say that the financial chaos that greeted America, and the rest of the world in mid-September was a crude awakening to our lack of conscience and common sense. We have allowed ourselves to be led by political and economic leaders whose sole motivation is self-interest and preservation of a system built at the expense of ordinary people.

If the Americans can wake up one day and realise that they need real change, and then elect the best person they believe capable of leading them towards change, why can't other nations do the same? The only other historical moment of this magnitude - that awed the world - was when Nelson Mandela after being held in prison for many years, became the first democratically-elected President of South Africa. He led his country towards democracy and freed his people from the politics of racial segregation.

How many nations today suffer from political systems that perpetuate corruption and a social cancer that feeds on the ignorance of the people, on their religious beliefs that poverty and over-population are mandated from heaven. The Philippines, has had one shining historical moment of what is now commonly referred to as "People's Revolution" in 1986, and wherein a woman- also historical in itself - became president and replaced a dictator who fled at the height of the popular street uprising. At that moment, there was a singular voice among the people who called for change. The mandate of leadership was given to Corazon Aquino, widow of the slain politician Benigno Aquino. But she faltered, lost the vision for change and in the end, old politics returned with merciless vengeance.

There were other nations that also experienced illustrious historical moments, as did happen in Poland with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity and in Czech Republic with Vaclav Havel. They were social agents that brought about change beyond national borders, change that inspired others to follow a better path for humanity. Many changes took place at the tremendous cost of human lives. However, looking at America just now, the change that is going to make or unmake a great nation rests upon a charismatic young leader with a vision of what the country needs in terms of shared purpose and common goals, the empowerment of ordinary citizens in a world without wars.#

Falling in...and out of love

The cycle of beginnings and endings happens every second, every minute in any part of this planet. There is birth to celebrate and there is death to mourn. When a relationship dies, do we fall apart or feel unshackled from pain, deceit and lies. Deception because we have led ourselves to believe in the fairy tale ending of "living happily ever after", and lies because loving comes with having to lie sometimes, in order to avoid distress and distraction.

Basic truths are however a must in any relationship. It is important to differentiate between falling in love deeply, being strongly attracted (to someone) and just having a fun time while waiting for the right one. In each situation, the degree of pain one suffers with separation varies from mild to tsunami-like aftermath. When love that has deepened with time is corrupted with goals no longer shared in common, separation is a surgical necessity that brings pain during operation but eventually relief with recovery.

Even short-term love affairs are not easy to deal with in terms of endings that shield us from self-loathing and regrets. The time one invests on even short romantic affairs are also precious and tedious as those placed in long-term relationships such as marriages and lifetime companionship. It must be devastating for anyone to go through the process of ending a relationship that has held its ground for many years, only to discover that the foundation is faulty.

There are no wise words to soften the impact of a separation. The heart bleeds and life's motion comes to a stop until a new momentum is found. The healing process differs according to how badly the heart has taken the blow. There are those who never recover from the loss of someone and in most cases, women suffer more than men. There are also those who require a complete change in one's lifestyle and place of living, even a new country in order to avoid running into bad memories. Whatever it is and wherever one takes abode, the important thing is to keep the heart healthy, so that it can give and receive love without the obstruction of a sordid past.#

Winter, a time for spicy stews and bubble baths

Winter has arrived and will stay over the next four to five months. It is hard to guess in these times of unpredictable weather changes caused by global warming, how long or short the zero-to-below zero days will be, particularly in the Nordic region. Even as we brace ourselves against the impact of a worldwide recession, so do we even more against the cold winter days. Winter calls for cozy homemade dinners especially spicy meat stews that warm the body after coming in from the cold. It calls for soft music, a glass or two of wine and a nice bubble bath. Have many candles of different sizes lighted and you'll have an evening to enjoy.

Creative meat stews come in different varieties that one can personalise according to one's mood. The basics are: beef or lamb, or even pork preferably with some fatty parts, cut into cubes and fried to slight brown with generous chopped garlic and onions. Having done that, put the meat to a slow boil and season with salt and pepper. Add beef bouillon, 3 to 4 laurel leaves, a teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon of blended Provence dried herbs and a teaspoon of soy sauce. Boil slow for 1 to 2 hours and start preparing whatever vegetables you wish to have separately on the side. You can have slightly boiled haricot beans with sliced mushrooms, or broccoli, carrots and zucchini. Spicy stews need a neutraliser and the best is marinated thinly sliced cucumber salad with chopped parsley.

Watch the stew that it does not get dry and burned in the bottom. When the meat is soft, choose what you want to include: potatoes, white or black beans, sliced mushroom and before turning off the heat, add sliced red chillies and paprika. You can use fresh chillies, powdered or homemade chili oil. Taste and adjust, according to what is missing, be it salt or a pinch of sugar. To add a variation to this basic stew, use half a cup of red wine and a can of tomato sauce, instead of cumin which is best combined with curry. That's another stew variation that comes closer to curry dishes. If you are in the mood for lamb curry, don't forget hot curry powder, ginger- fresh or ground, cumin and a can of coconut milk. Along with garlic and onions, add one chopped tomato to the lamb pieces you are frying to slight brown.

Choose a good red wine of the Syrah variety. I usually go for the South African red wines - a habit formed after living close to South Africa for five years. While you are cooking, get marinated yourself with the wine you've opened and listen to your favourite music. That will create the right mood for a cozy home dinner, with or without a fireplace. There's always room for two in a fragrant bubble bath with candlelight.#