THE OTHER DAY I was talking to a Saudi female friend about happiness and depression, and she told me that her friend was so depressed sometimes that she couldn’t get out of bed in morning. She went on to say that she wasn’t the same, that she just went on with life and tried to make herself happy whenever she could. My friend said that her older friend claimed she was happier because she was younger, but we both disagreed with that theory and agreed it had to a lot to do with their personalities. One was predisposed to making the best of life, while the other was constantly worrying about small upsets, stewing in the juices of depression.

It is a well documented fact that women around the globe suffer more from depression then men do, either because they are more in touch with their feelings then men are, or because they have a harder time in general. And here in the Kingdom, everyone seems more prone to a constant low-grade depression, both female and male. It is not surprising then, that Prozac is one of the most popular anti-depressants prescribed in the country. If the US is the Prozac-nation, then Saudi is too.

We all have a tendency to think that the grass is greener over there, either in another country or another company. But in truth, our own lives are often filled enough with good things that we don’t even realize we have. Freedom from hunger, from being poor, from sickness and from strife are all blessings that we routinely overlook. Sure we have fights with loved ones, misunderstandings with colleagues and falling-outs with friends, but all of these can be healed with time.

I know I’m sounding like a new-age guru from California, but in this modern age of fast living, ten-second sound bites and an emphasis on making profits, we often lose sight of the larger picture and end up feeling sad. But it doesn’t have to be so: We just need to regularly stop and sit back and think about our lives. Are we happy or sad? For either we should think of the reasons why. If we’re not satisfied, is there anything we can do to make it better?

The other day I was talking to one of the managers of my gym, and asked him where Ali the trainer had gone. I had heard that he had left the five-star hotel’s gym to start his own gym, but didn’t know where. It turned out that Ali had all along been running a small gym near my house, a gym that I pass by everyday on my to work. Just finding that it was Ali’s gym was enough to bring a smile to my face. I was happy for Ali, that he was finally fulfilling his dream of running his own gym. “I have to stop by and say hello to Ali,” I told the manager, happy for the rest of the day that I had found out that an old acquaintance was doing well.

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Forget Jobs for Filipinos in Iraq

IT IS CLEAR NOW that the United States is going to run the show in Iraq alone, without any major help from allies. It seems that in that respect the hawks in the Bush administration have gained the upper hand, having convinced President Bush not to allow the United Nations, or those ungrateful allies that opposed the Iraq war to begin with, namely France and Germany, to have anything to do with running post-war Iraq.

Rehabilitation of Iraq’s war-ravaged infrastructure is continuing at a snail’s pace. Power cuts are still common, not everyone has running water, and most alarmingly Iraqi looters are still stealing anything that they can get their hands on. Sure, US troops are arresting some of the looters, but they can hardly be expected to keep the peace single-handedly in a country the size of Iraq. Iraq administrator Paul Bremer has ordered the Iraqi armed forces dissolved and has sacked thousands of government workers, leaving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis jobless.

A recent article in the progressive American magazine The Nation points all of this out, and adds that Bremer has opened the floodgates of cheap imports, putting many Iraqi businesses out of action. The US has justified sacking so many Iraqi government employees by saying that is part of the de-Baathification of the country, just as the Allies implemented de-Nazification in Germany after World War II. The problem here is that most Iraqi government employees were members of the Baath Party because they were forced to, not because they believed in Saddam Hussein’s ideology.

It is in this context that the continued pronouncements by Roberto Romulo, head of the Philippine Private-Public Task Force on Iraq, that thousands of jobs await Filipino workers in Iraq, are entirely misleading and false. Sure, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration loudly supported the US invasion of Iraq, but sadly now that isn’t going to translate into jobs for Pinoys.

Migrante, the sectoral party of overseas Filipinos and their families, this week pointed out this fact. “There are no employment opportunities for us Filipinos in the reconstruction of Iraq. The reasons are plain and simple: First, the American government will not allow any ‘visitors’ until a US-puppet Iraqi government has been established...; second, the American government has its own corps of military engineers and other personnel that will initially undertake many phases of such reconstruction work; and third, Iraqi nationals who are equally qualified for the jobs are likely to be given preference over migrant workers,” said Leo Legaspi, spokesperson of Migrante.

I couldn’t have said it better!

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Comments or questions? Email the author at: [email protected].

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