family-oriented

 

There's always something going on during the weekends! Today, we went to check out the opening of the new art museum of the city. Too bad, the line was too long. So we settled for the long-standing carnival at the park. On the way, there was a street circus at play. The little one enjoyed the site. So did the biggies.

Lakay remarked that this country is still heavily family-oriented, which is a good thing. Stores are closed on Sundays, unthinkable at first for someone who is so used to malls being open forever. It didn't take long before I enjoyed this setup of silent weekends. It might be hard to imagine how these European countries can afford to close up on weekends, but now I see that this is one of the perks of being in a social democratic world. Not much of the capitalist pressure to earn is felt. Result -- all people, from laborers to top executives have time for their families on weekends.

Now I wonder how we can do something like this back home.

eco-, student, multicultural friendly

2. their REAL efforts in taking care of the ecosystem



One of the things that immediately had me at hello in this place is their very efficient waste management system. Garbage is sorted out according to different colors of garbage bags. Blue for recyclables, green for organic waste, a separate bin for bottles, outlets everywhere collecting cooking oil wastes, used batteries and paper. There's also the brown bag where you can put anything that is not in the sorting list. For the lazy ones however, the brown bags come as convenient since they can throw everything there without having to sort. But here's the catch. The brown bags are VERY expensive. So that means, they either follow the rules or waste their Euros on garbage bags.

Aside from their great management of waste, I also love their conscious efforts in beating climate change. Last year, the university launched the project of leasing out 2-wheel-drive bikes to their staff for free, to encourage them to give up their parking slots and thereby lessen the traffic of vehicles entering the city everyday. (And because Ph.D. students are considered as staff members, I got the bike for free, too - hooray!)

3. it's student-friendly environment



Leuven takes care of her students well, so much to the point of smothering them. Everywhere I turn, there is a park with a beautiful garden where I can just sit and read.
Aside from that, tuition fee is very cheap since it is subsidized by the government. (My students from Ateneo who are attending an exchange program here actually said that their tuition fee here is almost a third of their tuition fee back home.) All students are given bus cards for free bus rides all year. Internet is free for all students and they can get to log in from their homes.

The best part is the libraries (aaah, so love them). They have great collections, and have a very efficient way of helping you get a book that is not in their OPAC listings.

4. it's multinational, multicultural face


Someone commented that racial discrimination is strongly felt in other cities here in Belgium. When she said that, I began to notice how this is not so much felt here. I assumed that it's because it's population consists of various nationalities. So, maybe, people here have learned to live with cultural differences. Just this morning, I attended the baptism of the daughter of a friend from Ukraine. They are Orthodox Catholics, celebrating the sacrament in a Roman Catholic chapel, with friends and guests from different forms of faith.

One of the perks of this multiculturalism is that stores are made available for almost every race in this city, and their prices are competitive with regular local stores. In other words, I can get to buy okra, talong, sitaw, ampalaya, bagoong and the like, without having to shell out so much. Just this afternoon, I had the pleasure of eating hilaw na mangga, with red wine vinegar (the closest I could get to ilokano vinegar). Saraaap! Thanks to multiculturalism.

small rich and poor gap

While taking a break from "work," I decided to write down some of the things that I love about this place that I'm starting to call my home. Since I suspect that this will be quite lengthy, I'm going to dwell on one item per post. So here I go:

I love Leuven because...

1. of the small gap between the rich and the poor

After living in Manila for almost ten years, and being constantly distressed by the jarring contrast between the slumps and high walled subdivisions, nothing, NOTHING, can be more refreshing than living here. Belgium's government is a social welfare state. The citizens are highly taxed so that wealth may be redistributed to all. My professor says that this is what prevents the rich from being ridiculously rich and the poor from being inhumanely poor.

I suppose there's a greater number out there who will find this unjust, who will argue for those who work so hard everyday only to find their income generously sliced for other people whom they hardly know enough to care about. And I know that along the lines of such argument, some people would add that this system encourages laziness among some citizens.

They have a point. There's a growing number of immigrants in this country who are at the mercy of social welfare, who, according to someone's words, "are content with simply producing more and more children" as each child would win them an additional allowance from the government. I would say that this is really unjust.

Yet, if this is true, I believe that such people represent a very very small fraction of the population. And even if this is true, these people are still consumers and laborers. Ergo, they still contribute to the wealth of the rich whose businesses they patronize.

For me, their government is still a good example for social responsibility, a concept which most of us at home are alien to. Back there, I had to grapple with this tension between the rich and the poor every single day: the rich not understanding why they have to be responsible for the poor, who rationalize that the poor are poor out of their "own doing" anyway; the poor who satisfy their hunger for wealth through short cuts (stealing, etc.) and instant gratifications (preferring to buy expensive cellphones rather than saving money).

The fact that the likes of Ruffa Guttierez and Kris Aquino really sell on TV bewilders me. Here are people who cannot complete a sentence without mentioning how much they own. Yet they sell. Why? Because the rich love to see them, criticize and compete with them, and the poor project themselves in them.

I know, I sound like I'm hateful towards both the rich and poor. This is exactly how I felt after we have been robbed in our house. Clearly I understood that the robbers were those who sneered at the rich because of their indifference to the plight of the poor. But I wasn't one of them. I felt so betrayed after that, asking why me, us, of all people? Then when my husband and I were looking for a safer place to stay, we felt the snobbery and indifference of the rich. At one point, while I was driving along commonwealth, with flashy cars to my right, and squatters to my left, I had to say to both of them out loud: I hate you both!

But I'm sober now. I have learned to face this reality and look at it with hope. That's why I am here. Perhaps in learning more, I can teach better, and in teaching better, heroic genuises would come up with great ideas on how to solve this gap.

Meanwhile, can someone among those up there do the Filipinos a favor by putting a stop to the constant flashing of the socially unjust wealth of the rich? Because nothing can be more cruel, more dangerous than teaching our poor that the life of our unthinking celebrities is the only happy life there is.