(Warning. This is 4am writing but it has it’s own charm, so I am not going to edit too much!)
And what I wrote just now, how amazing sometimes I feel my life can be, is the reason I get so pissed off at the way the world is.
Like why can’t EVERYBODY gets the same opportunities? We have all the infrastructure, we have all the phone lines, roads, airplanes.
Then why can’t my friend who I met in Sri Lanka, India, Laos whereever come visit me and then go off the US for a month? Like why is it that the family I stayed with in Guatemala don’t have enough money to go to the sea? Just once to see what the ocean looks like, and I get to go through the whole of Central America. We are just people, the same everywhere.
So, when i am visiting somewhere else I wonder why do foreigners like me get to go see something people in their OWN country can’t afford? Whatever it is, the sea or the mountain or an ancient ruin, is so much closer to their homes than where I am from.
But I get to do do all those things and they can’t because I come from a rich city, and my parents were well off and afforded me so much. So like what is that? Just because I am born into it I am supposed to think I should want to keep all these oppotunities for myself, and lucky for me?
I really wanted to pay for the family to go to the Ocean, even if I cut short my own trip. I mean, I miss out a week in Central America, but they get to see the thing I think is the most beautiful thing, the ocean. How can someone not have a chance to see the ocean?? I didn’t offer because I was afraid the father might think that was rude….
And like, I don’t understand people with privilage and power and always want to keep it to themselves, it is so selfish. Because what makes any of us who live in the first world so special that only we get to do that?
I just think we can all be more compassionate in the way we live, and make it more equal. I understand this is the tenants of communism, but it didn’t work out that way, not in terms of reality… so I don’t believe in communism, in terms of the way it’s been done.
Free Speech…
And the saddest part for me is that I feel fear when I write, ” I don’t believe in communism” because I don’t really know if someone is in the Chinese Central government is reading, and I will be termed a cyber dissident… but i am in Hong Kong, which means I still have the law that protects me to say what I want, which is the tenants of free speech. That is why it was so important that article 23 NEVER passes.
Because if it did, then by saying that, I could be put in jail for ”inciting anti-communist’ activities. And the thing is, the people who live in China doing the same thing as me is already in jail. We live in the same country.
To me, as idealistic this is, it not right. And everyone has to work harder on these issues and care more about it otherwise who’s going to do the job? I mean, people keep thinking OTHER people are working on this, but there aren’t that many of them….
Must go.. I am being called by my friends to go out on the balcony and look at the moon because it’s turned orange and is very beautiful…
Yan
This Weekend
Friday: Cops, Lifts, and Alarms: It was Definately Time to Go Home
Saturday: The amazing thing of telephones, air travel and internet
Later Saturday: Why Can’t My Friends in Poor Countries Come Visit Me? Plus a little on article 23 and fear of saying what i think.
Sunday: The Difference Between Blink & Wink and how it link to the idea of ONE COUNTRY…. Somehow…
Stupid Sunday at SCMP: Education, Crocs and Safest Building in the World..
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
When I stayed in the UK – I met several people who had never left their home town. There was one guy who had never stepped outside of London in all his 23 years of life. It amazed me and I used to think it was all really unfair that poverty prevented them from seeing more of the world.
Then one day, I met a guy who was brought up in Middlesborough; a rough, poor, industrial, coastal town in the North of England. His parents had very little money and when he and his brother were teenagers they used to hang out at boathangers doing odd jobs in order to earn extra cash. During this time they learnt a lot about boats. When they reached their early twenties, they decided to build their own boat out of bits and pieces found around the place and sail to America. Their first trip out of UK.
I was told many stories of that first journey – it amazed me that not only did they have the courage and motivation to do it in the first place – but also that they continued the journey to the end even though there were many setbacks, disasters (mainly from their inexperience) as well as near death experiences. In addition, they ended up sailing to USA two more times on boats they had built.
It made me realise that there are people out there who will go out and get what they really want, no matter their circumstances.
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UK? First world country. Talking about third world countries where people earn like US$10 a day, amster… people who live in Birmingham and never seen the sea are kinda pathetic. My friends in Laos will NEVER earn enough to come visit me.
Yan
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For some reason your article just made me think of those guys. I was well aware that you were talking about people from Third World Countries.
I was just highlighting the fact that it doesn’t matter what country, there are always people who will never be able to earn enough to be able to afford to visit the sea…let alone leave the country they are in. You can choose to label the poor in a First World Country as pathetic but I disagree. Yeah, they may have better opportunities than those in say, Laos, however at the same time, they are still poor.
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Firstly, I did not label the poor in the first world country pathetic. You don’t label a poor person pathetic in the first place.
I said. “Yeah. People in Birmingham who have never seen the sea is kinda pathetic.”
Now I put money on the fact that 99.9% of the people in B has seen the sea.
Why?
Coz it’s an hour away and probably 5 pounds away. It’s absolutely within reach. Even if you are in a third world country and you live and hour and a half away from the coast line, it’s also affordable and within reach.
The guy I talked to who never seen the see had a car for god’s sake. He could drive there!! He didn’t coz he didn’t think to get out of the place ever. I guess he drove to the supermarket and that’s it.
But poverty on Third World Level and a First World Level is incompariable.
The earning power, the exchange rates, make it impossible for most with the exception of the top escholeons of society to travel out of country.
Close to anyone in the first world can save enough money to go and live or visit a third world city because of the above factors.
While most third world inhabitants are often in subsistence living mode, many are farmers.
Even if they save all thier lives they would not be able to afford a plane ticket. In fact it may take then ten years to be able to earn as much as a plane ticket. Some a lifetime. Some never will.
When a professor earns US$10 a day, which in say, Guatemala is the case. Let’s factor into all those who are not middle class.
I totally disagree that if someone has the mind to do it they can when it comes to a global level.
If someone is born in an AIDS torn village in Somalia, they may not even have the oppotunity to an education. They may never seen a globe. They will never have the oppotunity to see the sea. It will never factor in thier minds they even need to go see it. Okay, that’s hypothetical..
Here…
I have met people in the highlands of Vietnam. They barter for goods rather than use money. They walk down a massive mountain twice a week to the market, and then have to walk up the moutain for four hours before they reach thier villages. The rest of thier days are spent farming or drunk. That’s there lives. They live in the same village, they die in the same village.
There were no paved roads.
Don’t ask me how I got there. I am still not sure how or why I did, as I nearly got killed. But anyway….
You can’t even compare the oppotunities people in the first world can afford to developing world realities.
Yan
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