Q&A 1

I have moved to a distant country for a person I loved deeply…that’s why I’m in the US instead of the Philippines. However, there is more than just a little chance of seeing my friends and family again. In fact my mom has visited twice already, my dad once and my favorite sister once. And I had gone back there too once. Let’s say I’m not in the situation I’m in right now, I probably would move to a distant country for a loved one IF that person will always make me feel that I’m special, that my sacrifice will not be in vain, that he realizes what a big leap that was for me. If that loved one will not make me feel alone in any way, if he’d take the extra effort to make sure I don’t get homesick and that I find ways to contact the people I might not see again, then yes, I’d do it. 10/6/05

I do not recall seeing ghosts…although I’ve been told that I have. I do believe that dead people and other supernatural beings are around us and we’re just mostly not open enough to be aware of them. I wouldn’t want to spend a night alone in a supposedly haunted house, for 2 reasons. Firstly, I don’t want to tempt these beings. If people say they’re there, I’ll take their word for it and leave it at that. I don’t need a wild display of ghostly presence. Second, I do have a very active imagination. Even if that house turns out not to be haunted at all, with the way my mind is, I’m prone to think it is haunted anyway. I’d probably come up with a million otherwise insignificant things that I would insist were signs of haunting. Every little creak, every mirror, every tree outside the window…there are just a lot of things that can be construed as spooky by someone who is spooked for no good reason. 10/6/05

Hmmm, tough question. For some reason I’m leaning towards telling the people I dislike or hate what exactly I think is wrong with them. I would love to have a few minutes before I die to do that but if those few minutes are just not available to me, then yes, I would regret not having done that. Why haven’t I told them yet? Well, for starters I don’t want to get into a fight. Second, it’s pretty useless. Third, there isn’t much of an effect on the person if the one telling them is alive and well; however, if you’re dying they just stand there feeling they are obliged to listen to you before you die and I think that would be the perfect time to tell them what lousy people they are and why. For the most part, I’m referring to my husband’s kids here. Yes, I think they’re all lousy. 10/6/05

Well, that seems to me a total waste of time. Sure, one year you’re perfectly happy but if you later can’t figure out what the heck you did that one year and if you’re going to spend so much time wishing you could remember any part of it, then it’s bound to be pretty frustrating. All I would ever think is that I wasted a whole year. Never mind that I was perfectly happy; what is the sense in being perfectly happy when you can’t look back and recall those times? 10/6/05

To me, they are equally important, although the memories are more lasting. The experiences themselves shape us into what we are and teach us what we know. The memories of such experiences provide us with something to look back at. If it’s a pleasant memory then we look back to feel happy about something we’d done. If it’s not a very pleasant one, then we look back to remember what lesson we learned from it or what we’d had to overcome to get where we are now. 10/6/05

I think that for the sake of the many people who are suffering from arthritis, I would want it to be released to the public but with a disclaimer. I would want for there to be a warning, very visible, very hard to ignore, about the risk there is in taking it. And then it will depend on the people with arthritis whether they want to risk their life or not. I would think too that a contract of sorts would be in order, so they won’t go after whoever came up with the medicine. And in the meantime, I think there should be research going on to come up with a safer alternative with the same healing effect. And I’m also thinking that there will be something learned from those who’ll unfortunately die from taking it…maybe their autopsies will reveal something that might further the development of a better version of the medicine. 10/6/05

I honestly don’t know. What I do know is I would want to know the medical history of the parents of the child that I have so I am ready for whatever might come up. I probably will see what the other set of parents want. Also, there will be some consideration as to whether they are giving my child a good life or not. I wouldn’t want to break the bond that they’ve established with the child, and if they don’t want an exchange I probably won’t insist on it; I would probably have bonded just as well with their child by this time. It would be nice though to be keeping in touch just so we can all keep tabs on our respective children. Then maybe we can sue the hospital together, for putting us in such a sticky situation. 10/6/05

I think that would largely depend on what happens between now and 100 years hence. If nothing like Armageddon happens, or if no big meteor strikes the earth and causes life to start over from square one, and people go on like they do now, I think things would be much worse. The world now is a lot worse than when I was growing up, and I don’t mean just on the global level. Even on the family level it’s worse. Kids respect and fear nothing and they run the household. Parents are totally powerless and therefore unable to raise the kids properly. And every generation is worse at raising kids than the preceding one in this respect so I am pretty sure that the world in 100 years would be hell, that is if no one has managed to nuke the whole place yet and killed everything except the roaches. 10/6/05

While I do get along just fine with the majority of people I come in contact with, I still would rather not be part of a team if it can be helped. I would choose to be the champion of an individual sport. Being in a team denotes (at least to me) more responsibility than being in individual sports. Being in a team means having people depend on you not to screw up and drag them down with you. Being in a team will most likely mean resenting the person who’s considered the weakest link in the team. I would hate to be that weakest link and I would also hate to be the one who’s doing really well and thinking we can do without the weakest link. I would much rather be solely responsible for my own victories and failures. I would much rather not have people accusing me of not doing what’s best for the team. I think being in sports is pressure enough, knowing that there are fans and spectators (and probably sponsors) always in the background, loving me when I win and hating me when I lose. Why add more people feeling the same way, only more intensely? Which sport would I choose…archery perhaps. I am not much of a fan of any sport, in fact I think I’m too geeky to follow sports. I think scrabble and boggle should be sports so I can pick those instead. Just kidding…only not really. 10/6/05

Hmmm, while that is a tempting offer, I have to wonder just how far that $1,000,000 will take me if I try to live the life I think I should have elsewhere. Also there is the matter of family and friends…am I going alone or do I get to bring a few people I really like? If my husband is still around at the time and I can’t bring him along, then I probably am not going…even if it means waking up in the middle of the night wondering what I could have done with that amount of money. If my husband is gone and there’s nothing holding me here, I probably will go. It’s more than just the money in my case. 10/6/05

Well, that would be either the Philippines or some other place of a similar climate and financial status. I would go where the dollar will get me a lot more things that it would here. It would have to be a third world country with no major political or social issue raging at the moment. But just to keep myself surrounded with familiar things, I would probably just go back to the Philippines. 10/6/05

I think men have it easier. In fact, studies show that men earn more money than women who have the same position and obligations at work. I think society is still pretty much dominated by males. There might be more and more avenues open to females and there might be more “equal treatment” than before but it still is largely a man’s world. If men and women were truly equal, how is it that if a man sleeps around he’s macho or hot but if a woman does it, she’s a slut? And no, I never wished to be a man. I never wished to be one to worry about how my “thing down there” measures up compared to others, or whether or not I’m good at using it. 10/6/05

Heck, yes. If I had such power I would probably be using it quite regularly…not saying I’d use it often but there would be quite a few mysterious deaths around me, that’s for sure. While the whole idea of being in charge of whether someone lives or dies is quite overwhelming, I probably would take a short time getting used to it…and then spend the rest of the time actually enjoying it. It would be quite hard to try not to use it or else people might at least think that it’s such a coincidence that everyone I don’t like has died already. What situations would provoke me to use this power? Any situation where a loved one is being disrespected, or where I’ve gotten fed up of someone’s stupidity and/or ignorance, or when I’m having my monthly “visitor.” No one can predict my mood when it’s that time of month so I guess people will just have to be nice to me then. 10/6/05

I probably can do it given enough provocation. There had been a few times in the past when I’d wished someone dead…and it’s always the same person. Of course I wouldn’t act on that, except maybe if that person ever becomes a threat to the safety or life of my loved one. I always told myself, if he ever crosses the line, I’m meeting him there. 10/6/05

No question about it, I’d go with the mind. I think I would rather remember what I did with the frail, raisin-like body than have it look young and not remember what I did with it the night before, LOL. Also, just to be a smartass, the question made no mention of the face…a 90-year old face won’t quite look good with a 30-year old body, although I’m sure after seeing the body, a lot of men wouldn’t care. If I retain the mind of a 30-year old then maybe I can keep on working, be part of a thinktank somewhere, still be useful at least in a managerial level. Plus, that would help the other old people around me, I can be the “go to” person if they have questions about things they might have forgotten…that is if they remember who the “go to” person is. 10/6/05

Winter solstice…minus the cold temperature, just the length of the night. No stepkids around…no kids anywhere for that matter…hubby and I alone in a luxury hotel room. A jacuzzi, all the movies we want, a loaded fridge, the beach right outside the door, a nice comfy king-size bed…all for free! 10/6/05

I think this would depend on what stage of life I’m in. I think until I’m middle-aged I would prefer an extremely successful professional life. And then when I’ve built up enough fortune, I would retire and then concentrate on having an extremely happy private life and an uninspiring professional life (if any). As much as I would like to choose an extremely happy private life and only a tolerable and uninspiring professional life early on, I don’t think that would help me later on in life. There would be really happy memories to look back to but probably much uncertainty at a point in my life when I shouldn’t be worrying about where I would be in a few months. 10/9/05

I think that as much as people want to think that their private lives are more important than their professional lives, they are also very much aware that the state of their private lives depend largely on their professional lives, i.e. everything costs. If they didn’t put in so much energy into their professional lives, their private lives would be quite a failure and not as happy because then they’d have to deal with financial problems at home. Yes, I do hope that professional success will somehow lead to personal happiness, not magically though. I think that if there is enough professional success to bring in more money than what’s needed at present, then more can be put away for later, when I want to dispose of my professional life entirely and concentrate on making myself happy. 10/9/05

I think the person I admire the most is my maternal grandpa. It’s a pity he’s gone. It took a lot to get him angry, he never was very expressive but he let us know in other ways that he cared and that he wished for us to be everything we can be. He paid for all the summer workshops I attended, during which time I discovered that I am (or was) a pretty good painter and an okay musician. When I was a kid he and my grandma always took my sister and me to the bookstore between our birthdays and Christmas to pick out what we want. He instilled the love of books in us. He bought books he thought we’d find interesting. There never was a day that he wasn’t reading something. He loved a good laugh. He loved learning. He retained so much in his mind, he would have made a really great trivia show contestant. We always called him up when we had homework we needed answers to. He was just an all-around knowledgeable guy. He also liked telling stories of things he went through; he remembered quite a bit of his childhood too. I kept going back to that bookstore he took me to years back. I have a whole lot of books now. I don’t feel sorry that I spent quite a bit of money buying all of them. I think books will always come in handy. Most of them I buy to learn something new. I have a lot of craft materials too, and I’ve dabbled in a lot of crafts. I still try every once in a while to play the guitar or the piano. I like to think that my love for the arts, books and learning all came from him. 10/9/05

I probably would. I realize there is no way to tell exactly what the child is going to be good at when it grows up, but a good look at the parents’ skills. If both parents aren’t good in math, then they should be discouraged from deciding that their child should be a statistician or a physicist. I probably would choose for my child to be into the arts as that seems to run in the family. This could all look so bad, with people accusing parents left and right of making their kids live the lives they wish they had. Also I don’t think there are parents who want their kids to be trash collectors or factory workers. Maybe I’ll choose to make my kid a trash collector. With all the other parents not wanting their kids to be in such a profession, that’s got to pay a good salary in the future. Hmmm… 10/9/05

Now this seems to be a no-brainer to me. Why would I want to be extremely ugly and live a thousand years? Why would I want to subject myself to humiliation and ridicule for that long? The population of the world keeps growing and there are fewer and fewer areas uninhabited or untouched by man. In a thousand years I would run out of places where there’s no one to make fun of me. So no, I would never think of living a thousand years being extremely ugly. 10/9/05

I personally am not that much affected by a person’s physical appearance, that is if we’re talking about other people. I am pretty happy with how I am now and if something happened to make me much less attractive than I am now, I probably would go through a long period of depression. I’d most likely stay indoors until such time that I’m positive that people won’t be bothered by my presence, make fun of me or ask me what on earth happened to me. I don’t really find immortality disturbing. I think it’s a very romantic and exciting concept (at least for the first century or so)…and then you get used to everyone dying around you and everything changing too. What age would be ideal to me? Let’s see…I probably would choose 30. I think it’s the perfect age where you’re expected to still be goofy but also quite responsible. It’s not too young, not too old. It just seems to be the age where everything is within reach. It goes uphill to 30…then it starts going downhill. At least that’s what I think. So I think it would be ideal to freeze my age at 30. 10/9/05

Well, this would depend on whether we’re talking about realistic abilities or not. If I were to wake up tomorrow having gained a realistic ability or quality, I would choose the ability to BS people really well that I can sell almost anything. As it is, I can’t see myself being in sales because I am too transparent and I’m just no good at BS’ing people convincingly enough to sell them anything. Now, if we’re talking about theoretical and unrealistic ability, I would love to have the ability to speed read a book and retain everything I learn. It would be so cool to be a genius about anything and everything. Kind of like John Travolta’s role in Phenomenon, except without the brain tumor. 10/10/05

I would still want to meet the person and fall in love even if I know that that person is going to die in 6 months. I think the fact that I know the person is dying will make it even more intense. It’s sad in a way but I guess in a situation like that, you just take it one day at a time and make the most of the days. If the person were going to betray me and I knew about it, no, I wouldn’t subject myself to that. At least if the person were dying, there would be no one to blame for it. Betrayal, knowing that that person is out there somewhere, being happy with someone else, at the expense of my happiness…that would be quite intolerable. 10/10/05

I personally think that at the start, intensity is quite important but as the relationship develops, permanence is definitely what’s needed. I expect a lot from someone who loves me. I tend to be more critical of the people I like or love. I tend to think that they should be more caring and considerate than other people around me. And so therefore it hurts me a lot more when they disappoint me. I would feel betrayed if my mate were dishonest with or unfaithful to me. I don’t trust a whole lot of people so any breach of trust will make me feel betrayed. 10/10/05

I don’t think so…unless I’m unhappy with my family. Otherwise, I’d be willing to go half and half, no more, no less. It might be a great loss to humanity as a whole but selfish as this sounds, I think someone else will come along who will be willing to do that. 10/10/05

I don’t prefer being around any specific gender. I like having an equal amount of men and women around me; it makes for a good mix of people. My friends don’t tend to be one gender or the other. I have friends of both sexes, and I’ve been really close to some guys before and I have been close to girls too. I don’t pick friends according to gender. I basically am friends with the more open-minded people. I have a lot of criteria for friendship but gender is definitely not one of them. 10/10/05

Most definitely, yes…but only if that person can’t get back to me the same way. I already have one person in mind. I’m thinking even if he could get back at me the same way, he probably would take ages to figure out what is going on with him anyway. So I probably would still do it to him even with the risk of being hurt the same way. 10/10/05

Yes, I think I would want my partner to tell me about it. Of course the relationship will probably start going down the drain from then on but the main thing would be that he was honest about it and that he didn’t dare keep it from me. If it were me that did that…it would be so tempting not to tell my partner about it. And it’s just so easy not to say anything since he won’t find out otherwise but it would probably bother me down the line how I wasn’t straightforward about it. So I probably would tell him, after bracing myself for possible consequences. I think anyone who does anything like that has to come clean and face the consequences of their actions. 10/10/05

No. In my mind, there might be people I envy for certain aspects of their lives. But I also keep in mind that they would have problems of their own too. There are no problem-free lives. It’s just a case of having a different set of problems. I might envy someone for being filthy rich. But I wouldn’t want to trade lives with people like that. Sure, here I am wishing I could afford to buy this and that…or thinking about how I will be able to make payments on bills. But there they are, wondering if any of their cronies are cheating them out of a little bit of their fortune here and there, or whether this friend is a real friend or just there because they have money, or whether their investments will bring in more money the next day or crash. It’s just a matter of knowing that for every privilege there is, certain problems tend to rise with it. 10/10/05