Looking back at 08

By Wendell Gaa
MANILA – My family looks back at 2008 as a year mixed with challenges and blessings.
Now having nearly completed their third year of their tour of duty as stewards of the Philippine

Embassy in Washington D.C., a most plum role in the diplomatic service, my parents continue to work hard to further enhance and strengthen Philippine and American relations. Aside from his interactions with top government officials and business people in Washington, D.C., my father has embarked on more trips throughout the U.S. in his enduring efforts to promote vital Philippine interests and serve the Filipino-American community in various business and social activities. For said purpose, he has visited the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami, Portland, Dayton, Denver, Phoenix, and San Francisco and a few others.
Through turbulent events such as the world financial crisis, he has further campaigned for the passage of the U.S. Filipino-American World War II Veterans Equity Bill, which is to confer a long overdue recognition for our gallant servicemen who sacrificed their time and personal pleasure for the preservation and advancement of liberty. One version has already passed through the U.S. Senate, and another was passed in the House of Representatives. And then another version has been submitted for consideration in the Senate during the lameduck session. The remaining challenge is for both chambers to legislate a common bill acceptable to our veterans and timely enough so that the $198M already set aside by Congress for the purpose can be availed of by our aging veterans. If I know him, my father will continue to labor tirelessly with U.S. legislators and both Philippine and American civic leaders to the very day this dream of justice becomes reality for our veterans.
Successful events which my father did help oversee included this years visits of our beloved Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the U.S.A. My father had accompanied the President last June when she made significant stops in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and New York, in which she had reaffirmed strong ties with the U.S. Government and the Filipino-American community. Within that period, the Embassy helped organize the last bilateral meeting at the Oval Office between her and the outgoing President George W. Bush.
He was further on hand to aid the President when the latter graced the United Nations last September during the United Nations General Assembly Meeting of World Leaders in New York.Moreover, his office assisted in arranging the first telephone conversation between GMA and President-elect Barack Obama. And just last November on her way to Peru when the President was unable to meet with the Fil-Am community in Los Angeles due to her emergency stopover in Japan, my father soldiered on to keep the dinner guests engaged and entertained.
Last July, the 4th Annual Philippine Ambassadors/Consul Generals Tour to the Philippines was held in Manila, and my father once again worked with both the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Tourism in hosting this increasingly significant and popular yearly event, aimed at boosting our nations tourism industry. Along with the Philippine Consul Generals/Heads of Posts and Tourism Directors from all over North America, from New York to Honolulu and from Toronto to Vancouver, my father had successfully inspired hundreds of balikbayans from their respective regions in the U.S. and Canada to visit the Philippines this year, many of whom have not seen their native land in ages. Being based in Manila, I had the honor to personally accompany them as they, along with all the other visiting balikbayans, revisited the wonder and beauty of Philippine natural attractions, with our “rapids” trip to Pagsanjan Falls being a memorable highlight of the event. We also had the opportunity to see first-hand the nations contribution to global food security in our visit at the International Rice Institute at the University of the Philippines-Los Banos. Also part of the itinerary was the newly-opened Ocean Park in Manila which is likely destined to become one of the prime oceanic attractions in Southeast Asia. Surely this annual event has instilled in us a greater admiration for our country, and a firm commitment to preserve its cultural and natural heritage.
2008 was a year of extensive travel on my part. In such a short space of time, I escorted my mother and visiting aunts from California to see the marvelous Chocolate Hills in Bohol province after a quick trip to Cebu; I explored the wondrous white water rapids of the Chico River in the bewitching Kalinga province of Northern Philippines with one of my best female friends; and I joined my father in revisiting the mystical Luray Caverns in Virginias quaint Shenandoah Valley, a place I have not seen since I was a little boy.
Last June, I achieved a relative milestone in my own modest diplomatic career as I represented the Philippines at the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as a participant in an intensive training course on multilateral diplomacy, the first time I had taken part in such a highly regarded international workshop. It was to be an experience I will always carry with me, held as it was in an Asian country I have grown to respect and whose people I consider to be blood brothers of Filipinos. I was the consensus choice as President of the Group of 77 Developing Countries (G-77) in a mock UN General Assembly simulation and I learned much new diplomatic skills and expanded my international network of young diplomat friends who came from countries as diverse as Mexico, Croatia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Algeria and Tajikistan, and who all opened my eyes to amazing facts about their part of the world. It was an added bonus when I reunited with a few of them in New York last September on my private visit to the actual UN General Assembly.
In between months of office and conference work which I put forth daily for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, I availed of the chance to fly out to San Francisco last August where I donned a tuxedo for my singular role as one of the groomsmen in Alexis wedding, one of my closest cousins. The few days revolving around this grand affair granted me the opportunity to reunite with family and friends from all over California, New York, Nevada, and Massachusetts. The picturesque wedding in such a delightful city, which my cousin and his lovely bride personally organized, awakened us to the evolving maturity and growth that our extended family is undergoing yearly.
The joyous mood would soon move from the West to the East Coast when I flew to Washington D.C. for the second phase of my U.S. vacation, where I would once again hold a festive celebration of my birthday, with the venue this time around being the elegantly renovated Ambassadors residence in W.D.C., to where my parents have settled back in March of this year. Words simply cannot describe how happy and honored I was to have my own birthday dinner graced by over 70 family and friends not the least of whom was my Las Vegas-based brother Warren, Embassy officers and staff, my Dads Upsilonian brods, Adventist church youth, a lawyer-aspiring cousin, a young Fil-Am naval officer, two diplomats children, a lovely singer, and my parents doctor friends who all love to dance and sing, to name a few. The event was a huge success thanks in large part to my mother, who was instrumental in the interior redesigning of the residence, and whose fabulous cooking never fails to please all appetites!
As for my mother, well, shes not only superb in the kitchen and in interior decoration. Because of her leadership qualities, shes been re-elected as President of the Asean Womens Circle in D.C. Shes also a board member of “The Diplomats Washington, Inc., Advisory Board Committee of the Diplomatic First Ladies. She was also chosen as the secretary of the Neighborhood Club IV. positions that have put her lovely photos in the pages of some Washington magazines from time to time. I hope with all her activities, my father will retire her as his sometime designated driver so she will no longer drive him crazy! (Joke). She also doesnt tire looking around for future daughters-in-law. (Kind and sympathetic brokers please email cvs and photos directly to her)!
Meanwhile, my handsome younger brother Warren continues to enjoy his work at the Computer Center of UPS in Las Vegas. It has been mainly a home to office and computer routine for him, and tooling around in his sleek Audi Quattro and hitting golf balls in his rare downtime.
My parents perpetually host all guests who are willing to do the rounds of the National Mall in Washington D.C. And the warmth of our familys hospitality to all of you for the holidays will be surely glowing like never before. Just as you all have granted us the best of your kindness and understanding, we offer in return our gifts of love, prayers and undying friendship, confident that God is watching over us as He always has throughout the past years, and as He always will for all time to come. We pray that we remain true to the real spirit of Christmas with sincere goodwill towards our fellow brothers and sisters alike. Indeed, our family has much to be thankful for what God and the Year 2008 has brought upon us, and we are equally grateful to Him for all the blessings He has showered upon you all for this year as well.
The veil of uncertainty of what the year 2009 has in store looms over us like a long winding shadow. As with several past New Years, we can never totally predict what this upcoming New Year will bring, but this much we know: God is with us and for as long as we continue shouldering our faith in Him no new challenge that the New Year brings will be too big for us to overcome. It is with this hope that the rest of you will be just as fortified to face the year 2009 with trust and optimism.
Our individual anticipation and anxieties of what is in store for us in 2009, notwithstanding, let us be inspired by this eloquent passage from writer Edith Lovejoy Pierce: “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

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