After all suffering comes happiness/Carlos Pueblo

 After all suffering comes happiness/Carlos Pueblo

Yesterday there was an article on the Wall Street Journal about the readiness of Taiwan's defense if China attacks. There is a photo of the frontier Kinman with a photo of a soldier about 1.9 kilometers away of Chinese offshore. It brought me my sad memory of my younger days. I was draft to Taiwanese Army and stationed to that island exactly half a century ago. Our division was off duty to the Capital city of Taipei and ready to be sent to the island for the frontier duty. It was because of Nixon's visit to China we had had some extra time waiting at Tao Yung on the site of current day TPE airport.

Almost all my life in Taiwan was very hard except that I had a dream to go abroad to study and found a way to leave Taiwan. At that time, Taiwan was under Chiang Kai-sek's Nationalist Chinese authoritarian rule. All male citizen must be draft and serve two years in order to leave Taiwan. One of the few ways to exit Taiwan was to study abroad. In my case, I had to get a college's permission, of course, with a financial assistance. I passed that gate as well. Since then, I receive monthly amount of money to maintain my cost of living till now with all kinds of money management via personal savings.

All what I ask in my life is very simple that I have a house to be my shelter, that I have enough money to support myself and my family, that I don't need to worry about my living while I am out of work or earning income. In addition to those, I make some improvement of my senior life that I get up early to play tennis. Except my diabetes, I am basically healthy that I am not afraid to get up to the up stair to my library for most of my day after tennis.

In compare to my miserable past in Taiwan, I am happier in my senior life in the U.S. I appreciate that I have had this opportunity to prevail in this great nation after all suffering comes happiness.