As Christmas presents accumulate around the tree, we hope the best looking one is ours. If we get our desires, we can only be assured of getting the nicest wrappings. Wrappings are the least valuable part of the present and will be cast aside when the present itself is revealed. The goal should be the […]

Looking out from my room on the 18th floor of the Diamond Hotel, Manila Bay was tranquil as far as I could see; traffic flowed along the tree-lined Roxas Boulevard; passenger “Jeepneys” competed with tricycles and taxis on the streets below and people didn’t seem to be bothered by the hot and sunny day. I

We recently spent a week in Manila enjoying the tropical heat, crowded streets, chaotic traffic, and many other familiar sights and sounds of that busy city. It had been six years since our last visit. Even with our joy at being back, we needed a short break. We signed up for a tour of a

During our time in the Foreign Service, we have been assigned to many of the capitals of the world. In each of these places we were provided with a safe and secure place to live. We stayed two or three years at each location and became very familiar with what we could see from our

The news this week was filled with stories of people who died while attempting to cross the sea from Libya to Italy. Hundreds of people trying to escape lives of oppression, war and poverty only made it to a watery grave. Those desperate people paid huge amounts of money to be smuggled in cramped vessels