A Day in the Life of Chaos

Trinoma Mall I have traveled around the planet but I have found no place on earth that hosts more massive shopping malls then Manila, Philippines.  Even the names speak of enormity.  Mega Mall, Mall of Asia, Power Plant, Shangri-la, the list goes on and on.  It seems like no matter where you are, there is an enormous mall near by.  They seem to sprout like mushrooms in a lawn sometimes seemingly quite out of place.  Around them areas of extreme poverty cower in their shadows.  Massive parking garages often abut the main buildings typically bursting at the seams with cars.   The garages themselves are virtual palaces with parking floors coated in shiny epoxy and lights over the head of every space turning green when vacant, red when full.  Women dressed in bellhop type uniforms with white gloves spend their days in the elevators pushing the button for you. Everywhere you look in Manila condominiums are rising and the malls all owned by the same development corporations, have isl

The world is abuzz with high speed train travel.  Honestly it has been that way for the last 25 years but only recently with the rapid growth in China have some Americans begun to feel we are being left behind. Honestly it shouldn't just be a feeling, we are being left behind.  While the politicians bicker our aging infrastructure falls apart.  Our bridges fall down, our roads become bumpy.  Our sewer systems leak and our power generation becomes more and more 20th century. We always hear about China this and China that but the only contact that most American's have with China is shopping at Walmart.  We can't really conceive how different things could be.  When I visited my friend in China in 2011 I had a taste of things first hand.  Everywhere you look infrastructure is new.  While this is certainly not representative of all of China, industrial China is linking itself increasingly with modern road, rail and telecommunication networks.  South Korea has some of the great

Something about traveling changes a person.  This is especially true when the traveling reaches beyond the boundaries of our own lands.  I think if one were to get mathematical about the whole thing the formula might read something like: Familiarity = Comfort Comfort = Complacency Complacency = Ignorance When we journey out of our comfort zone the results can be unpredictable at best.  Sometimes we reach a feeling of enlightenment, sometimes we become depressed.  Sometimes when we return to our normal state we find that what was once normal has changed. Many of the feelings confronted depend on how far from our comfort zone we journey.  Feelings about ourselves and our lives might vary little if we went abroad to Canada yet traveling to South East Asia, Africa or China can result in an enormous re-evaluation of who we are and where we fit into the world around us. A few days ago I returned from a trip to the Far East.  It was largely a family trip to the Philippines punctuate