Tripoli e Manila non sono cosi’ lontane

27 March 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

 

Fa uno strano effetto leggere delle vicende in Libia e di quanto queste tocchino le Filippine, nonostante i 10.754 Km che separano Manila da Tripoli.

Il Dipartimento per gli Affari esteri ha diramato un comunicato nel quale dichiara di avere evacuato fino ad ora 1.327 lavoratori filippini. Il numero dei filippini residenti in Libia pare sia di 30.000. A Tripoli la comunita’ filippina e’ numerosa ed esiste persino un scuola privata Filippina.

Il Segretario agli Affari Esteri (Albert F. Del Rosario), si e’ recato a Tripoli e dall’Ambasciata filippina ha personalemnte gestito l’organizzazione di un convoglio di 55 autobus che hanno raccolto i cittadini filippini che si erano rifugiati nella scuola privata e nell’Ambasciata per portarli a Djerba, in Tunisia.

Si calcola che nel mondo ci siano 8 – 11 milioni di filippini residenti/emigrati all’estero, l’11% della popolazione del paese. In Siria sono 19.000, in Giordania sono 25.000, in Bahrain 46.000, in Qatar 230.000, fino a piu’ di 1 millione in Arabia Saudita.

Il Governo segue qunidi con grande attenzione lo sviluppo della situazione in Medio Oriente. Nel caso della Libia, la maggiore fonte di preoccupazione e’ che dei 30.000 filippini che si trovano o trovavano nel paese, solo 13.000 lavorano o lavoravano per multinazioni o societa’ che avevavno preparato dei piani di evacuazione. Il Dipartimento delgi AffariEsteri sta lavorando a stretto contatto con l’Ambasciata filippina a Tripoli per mettersi in contatto con tutte le societa’ e datori di lavoro affinche’ provvedano immediatamente alla evacuazione dei dipendneti filippini senza attendere speciali instruzioni dall’Ambasciata. Il Dipartimento afferma che tutti i datori di lavoro hanno l’obbligo di evacuare lavoratori stranieri nel caso di rivolte e emergenze.

Non so come questa convenzione possa venire eseguita  in una situazione di crisi come quella esplosa in Libia, specialmente per i  filippini che lavorano come personale domestico e quindi non dipendenti di multinazionali e societa’ internazionali.

Moving or not moving?

6 March 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

The usual question of a consultant weekend are: read or not read? finish the paper or not finish the paper? review the sent last week or not? write a blog or not write  a blog? go for a walk in town or not? eat in a restaurant alone or not? These question accompany the hours of the weekend and more often than not I am surprised to see that all of a sudden outside the window is dark.

This is what happened yesterday where I also learned something new about Vietnam talking to Tuy while sipping Japanese green tea.

More and more people are thinking about moving out form Ha Noi and settle in some other parts of Vietnam. Roads are more and more congested. This will only get worse. Ha Noi is the city of lakes. Tens of them dot the map of the city and limit the roads’ expansion. The population of 6.5 million is growing rapidly. The cost of properties in the city has increased to European levels pushing young families to buy a flat at the outskirts of the city. This requires more time for commuting to the offices in the centre and in turn greater traffic congestion during peak hours.

Da Nang, in Central Vietnam in a favourite destination for the ones who decide to move. Less traffic, on the seaside, warmer weather, and improved facilities and services as demand for housing is increasing.

Tuy explained to me all this. She has also been thinking about moving there, though there were some impediments. Her kids are still at school and she did not know whether in Da Nang schools were as good as in Ha Noi. More importantly, she did not know yet whom of her kids would continue to live in Ha Noi.  In a family with only girls, changing province and town would not be an issues, but if there are male kids the family can move only if they make sure that one of the boys will remain in town and keep the link with the ancestors. If all boys leave the house for work or studies, the parents have to stay so to respect this old tradition.  So, Da Nang has to wait for Tuy.

I am thinking about our conversation while walking along the sellotape road and then the flower road in the old city centre. How long can these tradition last? How many of the people who work in these small shops and travel agencies manage to keep up the tradition? I do not know. Certainly for Tuy was very strange to hear that my home is now in the Philippines and that I do not own one in Italy.

Crisis and ideas

5 March 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

I started my round of interviews for the study I am conducting here in Ha Noi for the World Bank. I am working with two young researchers of an independent research institute which has been established just few years ago. It was nice to hear that Hoang on of the two colleagues, has studied for one year in Pavia which is les than hundred kilometres from my hometown. It is now possible to have English language taught courses in an Italian university, which is nice to know.

I interviewed the young director of another young independent research institute established just one year ago but well connected and pursuing interesting research with important donor organisations in various provinces of the country.

All these organisation were not there when i arrived in Ha Noi in early 2007. It is as if the financial crisis that started to hit Vietnam in the second part of 2008 has opened the door to demand for research from the government and international organisations at an unprecedented level. Traditional research institutes in Vietnam could and cannot cope with this demand and that has opened opportunities for research entrepreneurs.

While the financial crisis has created opportunities, the rapid growth and development achieved by Vietnam during the last 20 years has also provide greater opportunities for these young researchers to study overseas, gain Masters and PhDs, feel at ease when working with the English language. These skills and experiences, added to the knowledge of the policy making environment in the country, are contributing to the creating the foundations for a greater evidence-based development in Vietnam.

Street view barber shop

4 March 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

I am in Doi Can, the street that goes from Lieu Giai to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. If is later afternoon. People are rushing out from their offices to go home. The street gets busy. I am sitting on a typical narrow plastic chair. Knees above the waist line. Motorbikes parked one the sidewalk, pushing people to walk on the street. Shops accompany this busy and lively street up to the mausoleum. Lights are being switched.

I have to wait my turn here at the barber shop I used to come when I was living not far form here, in Lang Thuy Dien.  I want to test the number of motorbikes. This is not yet full swing rush hour and the traffic is relatively fluid. In an hour or so, it will get completely stuck with the street unable to cope with the amount of motorbikes.

I start my stop watch. In one minute 56 motorbikes pass in front of me in the direction of the mausoleum. If I take this as an average number and double it for the two directions it makes 112 motorbikes that have passed in front of me in just one minutes, almost two every second.

It is my turn. I explain with gestures that I want my beard trimmed with the N.1 in shaving in the hair trimmer. I relax. The barber shop looks directly on the road. No glass door.  It is 3 m* 3m and has just one red barber chair. No sink. The water is take from a microscopic bathroom under the stair that leads up to the mezzanine where the barber (whose name I do not know0 lives with his young wife). He wears a surgeon mask and works very fast but with precision. I look around and see various photos glued at the top of the large mirror. Their colours fading into the past. In one of them a young boy is sitting on this very chair having his hairs trimmed. A barber stands next to him and look at the camera, while holding scissors over the head of the boys as if he would have been take by surprise.  This barber could have been that boy and this could have been his father barber shop. The shop and skills transferred to a new generation as time would be immutable while indeed it produces a lot of changes, like the motorbike stream that cna be observed form this street view barber shop.

Back in Ha Noi

2 March 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Let’s see if I manage to keep a diary of my stay in Ha Noi this time. It is the very first time I am here and will not do work for the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. It seems to me a sign of the passing of time, as well as the new route that the taxi took frorm Noi Bai airport to the hotel where I stay, the Horison.  It took a narrow road along the West Lake which looked like a shortcut but was very congested with motorbike traffic.

My luggage is still in Honk Kong and it was funny to fill three different forms at the Lost&Found desk and the be approached by a staff who took a thick pile of green 100.000 Dong notes from his the inner pocket of his jacket and told me in a almost conspirator whisper: ‘Vietnam Airlines give you 600.000Dong and very sorry for making you trouble.’

I asked him if the money was his or from the company and he assured me that was the company money.

I have now been in this hotel maybe 10 times. So I get always a nice welcome form the staff who recognizes me (and vice versa). I am at the 8th floor, have a nice view of the night over Ha Noi, listen music of Adrien Aubrun.

At dinner read of the measures take by the government for securing the safety of the boats in Halong Bay, read that inflation is at a worring 12.5%, devaluation has made life more expensive, a new and very criticised tourism slogan and log have been selected: Vietnam the Different Orient. Different how? From what? Orient or Asia?

In Delhi, old Delhi

18 January 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Delhi, 21 years later

16 January 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

It is July 1990. It is hot. I am jet legged and travelled for 24 hours. First by train from Cremona to Roma. Then with an Air Jordan flight to Amman and connection to Delhi. I am with a group of four other friends and for me is the first time outside Europe. I am 23. My blue Invicta rucksack is the first to be delivered by the belts so I am sent out of the airport to check the bus situation. We are on a shoestring budget and a taxi is out of the question. I remember walking towards the sliding doors of the old international airport. Thinking that Rossignol, the character of the short story Notturno Indiano by Antonio Tabucchi that made us be here now, may have done the same (although he arrived in Mumbay). So I am walking, pass the nothing to declare desk. Few more steps and the sliding doors open. I remember hitting a heat wall when I stepped out. The rest is quite blurred an stereotyped: flies, an (imaginary I think) cow in the parking lot, old Ashok Leyland busses waiting for passengers, bajaj, many many taxi drivers jumping on me and the an overwhelming sense of too much taking control of me, making me turn around to re-enter the arrival terminal. Then I see me imploring the police officer to allow me in the exit door which in the end he allowed me to do. After that a long bus ride to the centre where I could barely keep my eyes open. The main railway station where me bought the India rail pass and the crazy and the incredibly long trip by train to Varanasi.

Today I landed in the new Terminal 3. Modern. Efficient. Silent. Carpeted corridors and huge Buddha hands decorating the passport control area. large parking lot. Skyways junctions. Large roundabout and three lanes roads to and from the airport. All is so modern. However as soon as with the hotel car we left the main road we entered the busy streets I remembered. Tiny shops and food stall with a single 100W bulb providing a trembling light. Bajaj, new aircon busses, traffic jams, people walking home wrapped in winter clothes and scarf covering their heads. Few metres from my modern hotel a tiny parking lot with a single dusty old Indian taxi which looks lost and abandoned. Next to it a small shack made of few bricks and wooden planks. Covered by a fragile plastic foil. Next to the door a child is warming up next to a fire where a pot is boiling water for the tea or rice. The same old Delhi 21 years later.

President Wulffs unconventional Christmas address 2011 | Video of the day

1 January 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Quotes

Nice speech about people, solidarity, and respect. In my opinion it tells about the attempt by a country like Germany to recognize its multi-ethnic nature and the ways its shapes its society. We are all on the same journey here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8O5fvmnHgM?fs=1&w=480&h=295

When do you leave? Quando parti?

1 January 2011
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

When do you leave?. The question, when asked in English, has a broader meaning than the Italian: Quando parti?, which clearly refers to a trip, a travel, a rucksack which is being lifted on the shoulders to go to a railway station or an airport.
I think that Quando parti? (both in English and Italian) has been the question I have been asked the most after: How are you? Is this good? Is this bad? What does it mean?

I do not know why, but I thought about this yesterday, while wandering around the large mosque of Masjid Bandaraya (or City Mosque) here in Kota Kinabalu (in Eastern Malaysia). I enjoyed its silence. The large space that can accommodate up to 10.000 people. The view of the few people praying. Two friends talking to each other. A man sleeping on the carpeted floor. The noise of drops from the line of water taps taps in the room where the men wash their feet and hands before entering the prayers room. The soft wind blowing in gentle waves the white cotton fabric that defines the mysterious border of the area where women are allowed to pray. Hidden from other peoples eyes as it would be an unknown country where a different language is spoken.

All this gave me much peace inside. It reminded me of the same feeling in large cathedrals in the north of Europe, or the large mosque in Kuala Lumpur, or the great stupa of Boudnhat in Kathmandu. It also made me think that in order to feel that, it is necessary to travel, to leave, partire. Fill the rucksack, lift it on the shoulders, catch a plane and land in an unknown place and, inevitably, leave something behind.

Home, no home

4 October 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

“Welcome,Sir”. “Good evening,Sir”. I take a deep breath. End of today’s trip. I am home. But is it home? No, but these greetings are reassuring and familiar by now. They remind me of the country where I live now when I enter the lobby of the Marriot airport hotel in Manila. I recognise some of the staff as I have been here a few times now. Always arriving in the evening and leaving very early in the morning to catch the flight to Dumaguete. Yes, maybe this is a kind of home with its a/c controlled temperature, background music, people sitting at the bar sipping a beer, the studied politeness results of trainings of the staff of these high end hotels. Yet, there is something typical Filipino in the way the staff seem to take their job. Artificial or not, who cares, it is just good to be here and on the way home. Still, a faint inner voice voice tells me that I am just fooling myself. I do not belong to places like this. I am not the one for marble floors hotel’ lobby and lounge bars. A quick check and I cannot decide whether that voice is from the old me who once was backpacking and sleeping in hostels and who is trying to tell me that too much time has passed since the last REAL trip. Or the other hand it may be a much deeper voice, a me which has  been shaped by events, words, character traits that along generations have reached me through genes and various types of influence. A deep rooted imprint of feeling less than others. I ask myself if the lady queuing at the reception desk next to me and who seems completely at easy with the atmosphere of this lobby has these thoughts as well. Her name maybe Mari An, born in Puerto Princesa, got good grades in school while her parents wanted her to start working in the family tailor shop. One brother and an older sister had done so. But she did not give up, git a scholarship, went to collage, had some boy friends but did not make herself distract by a love story. Finished among the top 5 of her management course and is now working and travelling for Unilever. I guess she feels she deserves this hotel and her status in society. “Checking in, Sir?”, the voice of the pretty young lady at the reception counter brings me back to the business: passport, credit card, signature, wi-fi code, key cards, thank you smiles.

I climb up to the fourth floor with the large elevator. A bellboy of the hotel is with me. In his twenties, pushing the cart with my two pieces of luggage. “From where did you come today, Sir?” “Saigon, from Saigon” “That is in Vietnam, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is.” We exit the elevator and walk long corridors, dim lights, soft carpet that absorbs the footsteps, an endless number of wooden doors. Some have the ‘Do not disturb’ sign hanging from the knob. As it is still quite early I imagine adventures and passion erupting behind those doors. “How is Saigon?” As I hear his question, my mind goes to the perpendicular streets junctions nearby the hotel where I stayed, the incessant flow of motorbikes, the gate of the Reunification palace, the catholic cathedral, the opera house, the Japanese K Cafe where I ate dinner. “Saigon is busy”, I say, aware that my answer is a poor translation of the images that are in my mind. So I try in another way. “How many people live in Manila?”, I ask. “Maybe 10 million”, he answers. “Saigon has 7 million and probably 5 million motorbikes. Try to imagine Manila full of motorbikes instead of cars. That is how Saigon is.” He pause as if would be imagining a different Manila, maybe seeing himself riding a motorbike instead of jumping on a Jeepney on the way to his small flat in Quezon City. We reach the room. He opens the door and takes the bags inside. I walk in, see the bed with its pillows and the Asian silk fabric with its soft colour rest on the white bed sheets. The room looks exactly like the book I am reading, Alain de Botton’s A Week at the Airport. A Heathrow Diary. The same bed. The Same glass desk. The same halogen lamps. The same contemporary modern design. Alain de Botton (whom, I admit, has inspired the style lf this blog) stayed in his week as resident writer at Heathrow stayed the Sofitel next to T5. Similar hotel, similar airport atmosphere. For a moment my mind travel to London where I will be next week. Do not know the name of the bellboy, but I wonder whether his mind is in the street to of Saigon, trying to imagine how they are.