Asia

1. Where have you been to in Asia? Have you worked in any of these countries?
I've been to China, Hong Kong and Thailand. I've volunteered in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong People's Alliance on the WTO.

2. What interests you about Asia?
I'd like to make connections with people and organizations in China so that I could better understand strategies and barriers for social change. I also don't feel very up to date on what's happening there, when I feel like it should be. A lot of the country, is still a mystery to me. I feel like China is often a target or scapegoat for failures to meet human rights or environmental standards, and that much of the time its justified. But I also see double standards and see problems in China that are present in other countries, like the U.S. I think connecting with people, organizations (those a part of civil society) in China could help me better understand our related struggles and intersecting issues, and to take effective action.

1. Where have you been to in Asia? Have you worked in any of these countries?

I'm an Indonesian who had a chance to pursue my higher studies in Japan from 1999 to 2006 in the field of Electrical Engineering. My first year there was spent for studying Japanese language at Osaka Gaidai University in Osaka. The next 6 years was spent in a wonderful city called Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu.

On my holidays when I was in Japan, usually once a year, I've stopped by, briefly, in South Korea and Malaysia. On one occasion, I participated in an international conference for students of my field in ShenZen, China and on the way back to Japan visited Hongkong for a day.

Now I'm back in Indonesia and intent on being a good writer which could contribute to "a just and sustainable world created by community".

2. What interests you about Asia?

Asia has much to offer to the world lost in the confusion of modernity. It is the only continent where many of what people calls "traditional" wisdom can still be found more or less intact, untouched by the more than often devastating forces of modern civilization. It's people are still aware of their connection to their past and their land.

However, even this continent is increasingly blending amorphously with the homogenizing forces of modernization, and this worries me much. Even if only China, as has often been said, follows the development pattern of the U.S., there goes the world's forest and fisheries, and there goes out so much global warming gases.

Africa is too vulnerable to withstand the impact of unrestrained globalization, Asia would be the battleground which would decide the world's future. Asian countries must dare to establish their own identity and set examples of development patterns which are more in tune with the needs of people and planet, not of the economy or the endless accumulation of capital.

I know that Asia have the capacity and will to help the world realize the wisdom of changing it's present direction into a future more grounded in common sense.

I hope this community in WiserEarth help us to further this cause.

I am a Chinese born and raised in the Philippines. Then, I went to and worked in Macau for 11 years until 2004. Now I am in Beijing teaching English. I have been traveling in China since 1989 and have seen China changing very fast, but sadly only those in the cities benefit from the economic growth while people in the countryside seem to have become poorer. I see my stay in China as journey of discovery back to my Chinese roots.