Kirawan

Another beautiful boat by Rhodes.  According to rumor, she is currently being restored (yet again) by someone.  She was originally designed by Philip Rhodes in 1935 and was completed in 1936 in time to win the 1936 Bermuda Race.

She was subsequently
owned by the actress and wife of Howard Hughes, Terry Moore.

She also competed in the 2000 Bermuda Race, but “did not do so well.”
 

Oh, come on!  I’d like to see any modern boat even racing AT ALL at 64 years of age.  Besides, why blame the boat?  For all one knows, it was probably the skipper.

Picture from http://whyc.org/galler-b.htm

References:
1.  http://astro.temple.edu/~bstavis/pr/kirawan.htm
2.  Picture from http://whyc.org/galler-b.htm

I posted this three years ago on March 14, 2004.  And I still feel the same way.

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War and Peace — or “How a Doctor
Saves Vs. How a Soldier Saves”

What
does it cost to have peace?

“The
Americans are morally weak and like paper tigers, after a few blows
they fall. . .”

– Osama bin
Laden

Could he have been right? I
sure hope not.

I love my grandfather and I respect
him for many of the good things he has done. My grandmother says he
would go to work, walking along the railroad tracks to the neighboring
towns to treat the sick. She had to buy him shirts and shoes often
because, he would always come home without them, having given them to
his patients who had none. This was after the
war.

My grandfather’s high school education was
interrupted by a war.

People came to Philippines
with the intention of changing the way the whole country ran. It would
not be Philippines. It would be. . . Japan.

So my
grandfather hid from the terrorists. He and many others from his town
took to the mountains when the Japanese came. My grandmother tells me,
there was a Japanese soldier who stumbled into their camp one day. They
couldn’t understand him very well, but from the looks of it, he was a
deserter.

He asked to have something to
drink.

And the people in the camp pointed to the
well.

As he stood by the well drinking, one of my
grandfather’s friends assigned him to cut the man’s head off. Why?
Well, if the soldier wasn’t a deserter, he was probably a spy, and if
they let him go, he would lead the Japanese to their hidden campsite.
(They couldn’t keep him in the camp either, as food was limited during
the war.)

My grandfather is a doctor. And I don’t
know whether that part of him that wanted to save people is what kept
him from doing it, but he could not bring himself to kill a
man.

So his friend had to do it for him. Using a
large knife, he severed the man’s head as he drank from the well. The
soldier probably didn’t know what hit him. But, a deserter is not
wanted by any side.

What does it cost to have
peace?

Jesus says to “turn the other
cheek.”

Where does one draw the
line?

Do you tell a woman whose husband is abusing
her. . . to “turn the other cheek, dear.”
Do you teach her
children not to fight their father when he beats
them?

Where does one draw the
line?

I’ve got relatives on both sides of my family
who ran away from the Japanese during World War II. And the generation
before that, they ran from the Communists who were overtaking China and
forcing people into war.

I think sometimes people
forget that war is not a choice.
War is something that is
forced upon you.

Someone does violence upon you or
your family. And you can “turn the other cheek” (as my grandfather
did). . . or you can protect your family, at the cost of your own
soul.

I really admire all those soldiers who fought
for my grandparents in World War II. I am only sorry that so many of
them died to save people who have forgotten. . . what they died
for.

It’s strange to see my relatives running away
from terrorism, just as they ran away from the Japanese. History
repeats itself once more, and I am sad.

They ran to
America. But if America falls to terrorists, where will they run then?
Is anything worth fighting for? Or do you use up your time in one
country, and then when it is spent, do you toss it away like a used
rubber? You’d think they’d get tired of running away all the time. I am
not Filipino. I am not Thai. I am not Chinese. I am an
American.

So many people come to this country from
Philippines, Thailand, and China and send money back “home.” How do
they bite the hand which feeds it? Do you want to know where your U.S.
money goes? It goes overseas to help those in other countries. People
may make fun of the U.S., but why then do they keep coming
here?

And why does the media make it sound like
everyone hates the U.S. After 9-11, one of the first people to email me
was one of my friends in Japan, who wanted to make sure that I was okay
and that my family was safe.

This from a country
that America bombed less than 60 years ago.
This from a
country that created soldiers that killed my relatives in three
separate countries.
How can war and peace coexist? It just
does.

There was one Japanese soldier that spared my
grandmother’s life. Soldiers came into the market one day, and my
grandmother hid behind a jar of fermented shrimp paste. One of the
soldiers saw her anyway, and came up to her and took her baby from her.
According to my grandmother, he held my dad and talked to him and then
started to cry. My father thinks that perhaps he had a son back home as
well, and that he reminded him of that.

There are
other stories, not so nice, and very cruel.

My
cousin used to take singing lessons when she was in elementary school.
I’m not sure that she really understood what she was singing. I doubt
many people really
do.

I’m proud to be an American Where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died Who gave that right to me And I’d proudly stand up next to her And defend her still today. ‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land. God bless the U.S.A.

Yeah,
I really don’t think anyone listens to the words. It’s just a song
written by an over-patriotic hick.

America, the Beautiful

When we lived in Arkansas, we would take occasional trips to Long Beach to visit my grandparents and my great-grandmother (and everyone else on my Mom’s side of the family who lived in the States).  I remember my great-grandmother complained to my mother once, “Why don’t you visit more often?  Maybe I will drive to see you.”  She had no clue, and we probably couldn’t even explain the concept to her, that the distance from Long Beach to Arkansas is over 1500 miles — many times the length of her home country.

Even now, I still remember one of my cousins in California asking me to visit more often, and myself thinking, unless someone pays me for the plane trip, it ain’t happening.

There’s still plenty of wide-open spaces here.  If you don’t like one place, there’s plenty of room to move over.

I’ve been to a number of countries (mostly in Asia), and some in Europe, but nowhere do I feel more at home than in the middle of the United States.  China is too crowded.  Singapore has too many restrictions.  In Thailand, people hate my mother for being Philippino and dark.  In Philippines, people only like my dad because he has money.

But here in my little town, people don’t care that my parents are from two different countries, actually three.  My next door neighbors are Caucasian — an RV salesman and a housekeeper with 6 kids — but I know they’re more than that — they have a mix of German and Irish and all sorts of European countries in their own mix.  The neighbors across the street are a Mexican-Greek couple with 3 kids and their own chain of restaurants in town.  Down the street is a couple with 3 kids who immigrated from California, and I suspect they’re independently wealthy.  We tolerate them Californians just fine!

At work, one of my colleagues who is Sikh just called me recently to congratulate me on finishing my residency.  My coworkers are also Muslim, atheist, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, and agnostic.  We do not impose our religion on each other.  At work, we save kids.  That’s our job, and religion or not, we all agree to do our best.

People who are focused on helping others.  A better working environment, I cannot imagine.

So, I am grateful to my parents that they immigrated to America over 30 years ago.  America is still the land of opportunity to me, and anyone who wants to get off their butt and do something good with his/her life.

I’m also grateful to the men and woman of the Armed Forces, who do their best to make sure we can continue to do our jobs, and do them well.  I still remember, when I was in the NICU, a soldier who had come home on leave was learning to feed his formerly 24-week baby.  I thanked that soldier for protecting our country, and was told, “Thank you for saving my baby.”

While the Armed Forces work, the medical services work.  We have different jobs, but our goals are still the same.