Fili’s world

Yesterday’s headlines in Israel were quite a shock to most Israelis. The massive headlines were crying “Booming growth hit 6.6% in 1st quarter!”. Articles have suggested to the world that instead of investing at the far-east, the world should now invest in Israel. Israel’s ratings are now moving from “So so, I would think twice if I were you” to “Positive, go for it” in the biggest international analyst firms, economists make ecstatic statements about an unbelievable surplusage of billions from the government’s tax income, specialists show how the shares-market has never reached such a high level and everybody looks confused. “Hold on” our puzzled faces suggest, “If the growth is so fast, then how - in god’s name - would we keep complaining about the local economy?”.

All of a sudden, things change. Folks that have been bitching for decades are putting on a smile and praising the politicians they buried a month ago. Folks that have been worried and hopeless are shining with new plans for their bright future. Nope, it wasn’t that something actually changed in our lives, it’s not that there was a single event that has turned everything around. Oh, no, it was just headlines that have allowed ourselves to finally be satisfied, if not pleased, with ourselves. It was all because of a series of statistical reports published as big headlines in the main newspapers. If you think it only works to the positive side, wait till the poverty report comes out and then, all of a sudden, we change from “A promising economy” to “who’d be crazy enough to want to live here”. All because of a report that’s claiming to tell us something about how good our lives are.

Watching “Yi ge dou bu neng shao” yesterday about the countryside life in China the contrast was overwhelming. When I was in Vietnam and while I was studying Chinese, I exchanged a few emails and phone calls with my family and friends in Israel. Most didn’t really understand what I was doing in Vietnam for so long, and why I was studying Chinese in Taiwan. They announced that they figured I was making a very important career move because knowing Chinese and understanding Vietnam’s economy was very good for doing business in the Far-east dominant 21st century. My explanations that it’s not why I’m there didn’t help, as it was the easiest way for some of those people to explain to themselves why a “promising young lad”, like myself, would do what he was doing.
China’s a fast growing economy, eh? maybe… I’m glad for the few folks who are affected by that and wish the best for the Israelis lined up to take part in it. For the countryside folks portrayed at the movie, and the simple people I got to know in Vietnam’s countryside, I don’t think any of that matters now.

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Ly was one of those fortunate enough to be born to a relatively-okay tailor family in small poor HoiAn. She was actually volunteering at the restaurant where I met her and she was the one to take me out on a my first Kareoke and to a Vietnamese wedding.
But the part that has influenced me was when she agreed to my odd request of following her around for a few days so I get to see the life she was talking about in HoiAn. That’s when I got to do things like come with her to help a young mother with 3 kids to make rice paper with strong spicy stuff so that she could sell it at the HoiAn streets for a profit of less than 40000dong a day (about 2$+). That family moved out from Saigon after failing to make any money there and it was showing badly on the kids. The woman would go to the market, buy those crappy quality rice papers, collect whatever she could find on the way to make fire, light it up in a small oven she made from attached stones, and sit there to transform it into solid rice paper to wrap around a strange spice. That woman had no idea how to do any of that, and Ly was patiently teaching her how to do it all.

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There’s a really fine line between what is great and what is horrible. This isn’t my statement on what’s right or wrong in our world, or about poverty-economics-society or anything like that. It’s just about unclear feelings and emotions going on inside.
Lately, back into doing the routine of my ordinary life’s nothing, I feel completely, utterly, empty.