Hello Bebie!!!

    Well it is already passed the holiday season and I am finally 
finding more moments to write to you. I hope that all is fine with 
you, your family and friends. How is my little buddy Archie? Is he 
growing big and strong? How was your Christmas and New Year Holiday? I 
am sorry for not having written to you sooner but as you might imagine 
my work and duty schedule has kept me quite busy. I did receive your 
nice Christmas card and I want to thank you very much for remembering 
me. It is so nice to hear from you all the way from Magellanes. I have 
been watching the video over and over of my trip there and I have 
finally taken the photoes down to the store to get developed. We'll 
see in a few days how they turn out. I want to wish you and everyone 
there the best of this new year and I certainly hope the the storm did 
not do too much damage in your cute little town.
    Unfortunatley I did not hear about the storm too much because the 
news here has been dominated by events in the Middle East and the 
U.S.'s involvment there. AS you might expect this is a very big event 
in U.S. history. Many factors are involved with this Middle East 
Crisis and there are depates every day as to how we as a nation are to 
proceed with events happening there. 

    It is clear in the minds of most world leaders that, like it or 
not, countries  around the globe are on the verge of a new world 
order. And what does that mean? Well certainly with the 
interdependence of all nations on one another, the speed of 
comunication via satelite, the shrunken distances as a result of air 
travel, and the complexity of security within any given national 
border lead us all along a path necessating a common system of 
interrelating that supersedes many previous cultural and legal 
systems. An industry with lcoal clientel may find it's very existence 
keenly dependend on the productivity of a competive industry several 
thousand miles away. For example a computer industry in the United 
States and the same such in Taiwan may find they are vying for the 
same customers in New York as well as Burma. A drug smuggler in Panama 
may find ( as in Noriega's case ) that he is held on trial in another 
country (as he is in the U.S.) for actions in his own country. The 
political settling of two countries as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. has 
had a direct effect on the outcome of proceedures in the Middle East. 
Certainly there would never have been such an overwhelming and united 
front of action by members of the United Nations had there not been a 
toning down of what was considered a communist threat by the U.S.S.R. 
And as the controversy of U.S. bases in the Phillipines becomes a 
greater issue in your country will the Philippines be able to be 
inwardly strengthened without an active involvment in international 
economics? Even the smallest of countries such as Shi Lanca depend on 
exports and imports with other nations for there very survival. All of 
us as individual nations have been exposed to modern potentials of 
"progress" that raise our expextations far beyond those of our 
ancestors. Most nations expect and desire very similar conditions now 
with respect to education,health and standards of living. We will not 
be able to retain the descreet cultural,and possibly even language and 
religeous, uniqueness that our ancestors enjoyed ( or bemoaned ) when 
our borders have,in so many ways, become so close.So it is a very 
interesting world indeed. And I cannot deny the fact that in the long 
run these changes effect us all in a personal way eventually.























































way eventually.