Savoring personal freedom

With professional stress taking its toll, I often yearn for the good old days when life was simple in the old village. A true sense of community existed then where we all look after one another. Those were the days when the only “party-line” telephone was about five houses down the street. After one too many calls, you begin to guard against disrupting your neighbor’s privacy.

Television was a far fetched dream and about the only thing that we have by way of modern means of communications was a family radio set. We listen to KUAM Guam daily for the latest Country and Western hits, i.e., Happy Journey, Last Date, End of the World, among others. Almost every kid in the village knows these hits by heart.

Most other days, you’re alone pulling weeds among tall rows of sweet corn, crab hunting or fishing. Then there’s the breadfruit tree climb which, in quiet ways, signals loudly that you’re having breadfruit for dinner not with canned goods or fresh fish or meat, but with salad oil or animal fat preserved in a jar. At least, you had time alone for yourself up the breadfruit tree.

Such personal freedom is now on the Endangered Species List what with cellumania, beepers and hand-held contraptions to get your e-mail or latest world news. Just as you thought you had some moments alone for yourself, the beeper or cellular phone rings, vibrates or a teeny message flashes on your hand-held communication gadget. These minute disruptions no longer give us the moment to savor personal freedom in solitude.

Sure, a cellular phone is convenient, but it also turns out to be your most unfriendly companion when you want to be alone. Indeed, you can press the power button to turn it off. In an instant, however, you press it back on for it has become a fad though costly tool. And it’s most disruptive as you concentrate on a golf shot, one or two down from your fellow competitor.

Modern day disruptions had this poor son of glucophage romanticizing of “Life In Pagan”. What a treat it must be commuting with nature in the pristine and steep hills of an island in quietude. About the only disruption I’d probably get are the occasional rumblings of its live volcano groaning in the east, airplanes headed for Saipan or Guam out of Japan or the chirps of birds searching for food at dawn, wind bristling through coconut fronds or crashing waves along virgin strand of black sand during tidal shifts.

Well, the next resettlement up north would include this poor son of glucophage. Perhaps, the time is ripe to buckle down and scribble into book form the legends of these isles for posterity. At least, I need not worry about energy exhausting local politics, color coordinates in my wardrobe, staying too much in touch for fear of being thought of as irrelevant, etc. A pair of Levis, powerbook, coffee and cigarettes ought to keep this soul contented until it’s time to go.

It should be a real treat being a part of the resettlement of Pagan up ahead. It’s a new challenge in simplicity that offers solace for those who seek for their personal freedom!
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If the data being collected by the US Census is confidential, then management needs to retrain some of its enumerators who have used the telephone to ask others about their co-workers’ salaries. This is bad practice and what a way to divulge confidential information. Aren’t enumerators supposed to deal with the populace on a one-on-one basis to protect vital information? I had to bring this up after several people have complained of being persistently asked questions of their fellow co-workers. Worse yet, they have been dubbed as employees of the “other” paper! Woe!!!!