MY EXPERIENCE IN BORNEO WITH HABITAT FOR HUMANITY, AND MY TRIP TO FIVE REGIONAL COUNTRIES

In July-August 2013, I made a five week, five country trip to Far East and South East Asia that took me to Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The central focus of the trip was my participation as part of a twelve member volunteer team with Habitat for Humanity (HFH) Canada, to contribute both with physical labor and monetary donations in building a low cost house for a poor Malaysian family just outside of Kuching- capital city of the Sarawak province of Malaysian part of Borneo.

Incidentally, the other parts of Borneo belong to Indonesia, and the tiny kingdom of Brunei. Our team members traveled separately at their own costs and assembled on 20th July at the Grand Continental Hotel in Kuching. Our stay at this hotel was arranged by the Malaysian Affiliate of the international HFH. However, we were individually responsible for the costs of our room and board, local transportation and some recreation activities. I began my journey on 11th July with Air Canada, flying first to Shanghai – the imperial city of my childhood dreams - which I was not able to visit, even though I made it to Beijing twice during my professional life when I had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the six continents.

The Air Canada's direct, non-stop flight over the North Pole arrived at Shanghai on time. After collecting my luggage, I hailed a taxi to my pre- arranged hotel, Holiday Inn Express in Pudong area of Shanghai, not knowing how far the hotel was from the airport.. It was late afternoon with heavy rush hour traffic. The taxi driver surprisingly spoke good English and was a jovial fellow who tried hard to start a conversation with me about my visit to his city. After having flown for almost thirteen hours over night, I was not very eager to answer his mundane questions like the purpose of my visit etc. When I arrived at the hotel in a busy section of the city, but in a quiet back side area facing a canal, it was almost 5 in the evening. For some reason, I was not tired or sleepy perhaps because of the jet lag. After checking in, I went out for a walk along the bank of the canal which was beautifully landscaped and protected, with intermittent paved spaces for people to get together and socialize. I noticed a group of senior citizens who were waltzing and having a good time. I did not have the tenacity to join them but I enjoyed watching them. After that, I took a walk over the beautiful monumental bridge over the canal, leading to a fashionable busier boulevard. On the bridge itself, I noticed four gold plated statues on four corners. The inscription on the wall of the bridge explained that the four statues signified the four stages of human life from conception, nourishment, growth and finally to hope for the future. After a brief walk on the sidewalk along the busy boulevard, I returned to my hotel and had dinner in the hotel's small restaurant and decided to call it a day hoping to get up early the next morning to explore greater Shanghai with its countless skyscrapers.

LIFE THREATENING EXPERIENCE IN SHANGHAI

I got up early the following morning. After an all inclusive fabulous buffet breakfast at the hotel dining room, I hired a taxi to explore the city. My first stop was the city's Peoples' Square which was already busy with both national and international tourists. I took some pictures and then slowly gravitated to the Square's main attraction which was the Chinese National museum.

The line for entrance was already too long with people standing for hours in the hot bright sun. I noticed that almost all of them were Chinese. I was not going to stand in the hot sun to get into a museum. Just the same, I slowly made my way to the front entrance. The young Chinese girl at the gate, noticing that I was a foreigner, quietly let me in. I was thankful. I spent some time inside, but soon became bored reading about ancient Chinese history of potteries and metal works. While at the museum, a fellow Italian tourist gave me an extra city map that he had earlier collected from his hotel. Armed with that, I came out and started walking towards the street. A short distance away, I noticed a metro (subway) station. I decided to enter the underground which was a relief from the scorching heat outside, as the metro was all air-conditioned. At the subway stations in Shanghai, I noticed something which was spectacularly absent in most metro systems in Western cities including London, Paris, New York, Toronto and many others. That is the ceiling high opaque barrier on the edge of the train line trench that hides the trench and the train lines and thus prevents public access to the trench and even to the trains themselves except through designated, remote controlled train doors which perfectly align with the openings in the barrier walls.

The barrier wall's outer surfaces are used for commercial advertisements thus generating revenues. The most significant benefit of these barrier walls is that they prevent intentional and or unintentional acts of accidents involving people using the train services. And, this is in a country where, we in the West are always crying out for lack of value for human lives. I immediately remembered with sadness how the 22 year old daughter of a very close friend of mine gave her life away a couple of years earlier to a treacherously open subway trench in Toronto itself. I thought if the barrier walls could have saved at least one life from such unwanted accidents, then their monetary costs would have been worth it. But obviously, in a profit conscious capitalistic society like ours, such investment in accident prevention does not meet the cost/benefit requirements of the powers to be. During this trip, I have noticed the similar kind of accident prevention measures in metro systems in Malaysia and Singapore as well. Another sign of innovative progress in some of these countries that I had...