Close-knit Community

 A Close-Knit Community — whether a village, a scattering of country farms, a city neighborhood — is a place where people know their neighbors and look after them. - tvtropes.org 

As a Filipino, it’s in our culture to celebrate most events with not just family, but friends and neighbors, as well. In my whole life, I have never spent a birthday without celebrating it with, at the very least, my family. I think it’s a natural thing for us to think that birthdays are spent with family and, not just with friends. Not only that, for as long as I can remember, it’s been a long-standing tradition to spend Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve together with other members of the family.

When we were still living in the Philippines, our family lived in the same barangay (Filipino term for village) until we immigrated to the US. So, naturally, I came to know who’s who; from the people who have been living there before I was born, to new people moving in.

Just mention your last name and people will know who you parents and grandparents are. If they don't know who they are, then they most certainly know at least your aunt, uncle or cousin. Most people, probably, even know where your house is. So, depending on the situation, it can be a good thing or a bad thing.

In my case, a community that knew me and my family was mostly a good thing. There was this one time, when I was around 4 or 5 years old, I got lost in a traditional market. I went with my dad and got lost after leaving a stall selling toys. Minutes after I got separated from my dad, one of his friends, living in the street next to ours, found me and brought me home in an instant. Whenever my dad tells the story to my cousins, now, he always mentions how thankful he is that his friend found me right then. It's one of the reasons why I'm all for a tight-knit community. People show care and interest in your well-being, looking after you as if you were their own.

Photo taken after playing outside with some neighborhood kids, along with my sister and cousins, when I was 12

Another common scene during my childhood was the memory of me playing outside from morning to night with the from my street, and the kids from the next street over. We played with variety of things. From playing with cards to playing with jumping ropes made of rubber bands to dodge ball, we played together outside despite the scorching weather, until sundown. 

Photo taken with my sister, cousins and neighbors after the summer basketball league I helped  to organize and facilitate

Today, from what I observe, kids don’t really play outside with other kids as much. They are either inside the house watching TV shows or surfing the internet. My little cousins behave this way, and my heart always aches for them. They’re missing a lot of things. They should be out and about making memories with other people, but instead, they stay inside their houses, playing with things that can never replace the existence of a real life friend.

Maybe it’s just me who feels this way, or maybe it’s just the cities we have lived in so far, but I feel like there is some disconnectedness between neighbors here in the America. As I’ve mentioned in my other blog post before, in the span of 4-5 years, our family has moved to different cities over 4 times already. And, in all the places we’ve lived so far, we always had to be wary in everything we do because the neighbors, whose name or face we don’t even remember, might complain.

Perhaps, this disconnectedness is a part of the current American culture. It can be due to the individualistic nature being emphasize in the culture. Or, it can be that people just don’t have the luxury to let it happen because their lifestyle inhibits it. However, despite that I wish and hope that people will be more open to connecting with their neighbors, just like how we are in the Philippines. Not only does it improve your social network and skills, but it also gives you the opportunity to create valuable memories that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

However, if we want to see change, we can't just wait and hope for something to happen. So, in order link neighbors to each other, we have to take things in our hands and start reaching out to them. In my case, I will try hard to connect with our neighbors by greeting them regularly, and inviting them over whenever we have hold celebration parties. I hope that by the time my birthday comes next year, we are able to connect and communicate better, just like how it was in my neighborhood in the Philippines.

First World Problems

After moving to the US, and I started attending college, I feel like I’ve started complaining about the simplest stuff increasingly. Let me list some stuff I find myself complaining a lot about:

•     RUWireless, and other ways to access the internet
•     Rutgers Bus System
•     Weather
•     Take-out options at Nielson Dining Hall
•     Recent windows 10 updates
•     Inconvenience of not having your own car, etc.

Those are some of the stuff I complain about daily. They are just minor stuff, and shouldn't be really a bother to me, but they are. For example, during this past winter break, we had an electricity outage for about 10 minutes. And no electricity means no Wi-Fi. So, I got very annoyed because of it. That 10 minutes of electricity outage is nothing compared to the electric and water outage I’ve experienced when I was still living in the Philippines. In the Philippines, outages usually last for about 8-10 hours on average. So, I shouldn’t have been pissed. I should have been okay with it. Situations like that always get me thinking about how spoiled I have become since we emigrated here. I, often, get so used to the having things that I forget how other people don’t even have the means to access the same type of resource.

Watch the video below, created by Ryan Higa (nigahiga), and see what other kinds of First World Problems are out there: 

How old were you when you got your first phone? I got mine after my fourteenth birthday during my 3^rd year in high school in the Philippines. It was a second-hand slide phone from my aunt. Though it was just a 2G phone, I was still happy and satisfied with it, because it had a music player. That's what mattered to me, the phone having capability to store tons of songs and play them. Before having that phone, I didn’t own any other devices or gadgets. Sure, I was able to use my parents’ phone, but that was only until it was absolutely necessary for me to use.

How about your first PC or laptop? When did you get it? Following the mobile phone, my sister and I got a laptop, as a present, from my uncle who lived in the US. It was given in hopes of encouraging us to study better and harder. Too bad I pretty much used it to watch anime and K-pop videos. Anyway, though I had to share the laptop with my sister, I didn't care. I was just glad that I didn't have to leave the house to do research or to just browse and watch videos on the internet.

The student in the middle of the group with the laptop is me. And the laptop I mentioned above was the one we were using to watch some Korean shows. ☻

I guess, what I’m trying to get to is that, I am slowing losing the value of appreciation. And, as a society, I think that is also where our direction, in terms of appreciating commodities, is heading. We are less likely to appreciate things now because they are more convenient, easy to access and, also, so easy to dispose. If I may dare to say, I think we a lot of take things for granted. 

Every day, we are surrounded by things that are supposed to make our lives interesting, fun and comfortable. If those things, whether be it a transportation, a device, food or whatever it is that we use in our daily lives, disrupts our plans or lifestyles, even just for a little bit, we complain. If things don’t meet our expectations, we complain. But, just like the message of the quote from The Great Gatsby below, before we complain we should first think about how lucky we are to even have those privileges in the first place.