Certificates, Medals and Recycling

Random thoughts for me as I sip my hot chocolate reflecting on the past few days.

We finally met P's online friend last week at his place. He turned out to be a very tall and quite smart kid. He has certificates all over their living room wall, although I didn't understood what they were for exactly except for the Chinese one that stands out (not because I can understand Chinese ^^,) I mentioned that it reminded me of P's couple of medals that he insisted on packing in his bag for our international move. P's friend reaction was like, "medals? wow!" He was surprised and said, "I wanna go Philippines." His mom explained that they usually just get papers certificates here even for taekwondo awards. I was like, "really"? I was a bit surprise and now I wonder about it.

I think that medals are quite ubiquitous in my home country specially around graduation month like this March. One can even buy these at the department store. The only difference in the ones that you get from schools or decent competitions would be an engraved logo of the institution who awarded it. Medals, trophies and even plaques are pretty common in different events. For schools, it's certificates and medals typically.

Why are medals not very common here? Maybe because my home country has more raw materials to produce such than here. Of course, we're not really talking about real gold or mineral but alloys most likely. But I think that is a probable theory. Why? Because about nine years ago, I heard that they were collecting old pots and pans or anything like that to recycle into other useful things. Either they really don't have enough raw resources or they really big on recycling. It is undoubtedly can be the latter but that itself would also be because of the former.

I am quite at home with the recycling system here than what my hometown has been trying to do. They have covered almost every kind of junk category specially in apartments. The only part that they missed and my hubby almost got me doing something more than usual is the "vinyl ruyu"  or something like that which is on almost every plastic pack of coffee stick, cookies, ramyeon, etc. There is a recycle symbol but when we asked the security ajassi of the apartment, we were told that it goes to the general garbage plastic bag. I was slightly disappointed but that is one little thing that they missed. Other than that,  furnitures, styros, sturdy cardboard boxes, can, glasses, ceramics, electronic stuff like bulbs are segregated right at the designated area in the apartment complex. The food waste or biodegradables are in a different bin. They are put in a separate plastic or container at home, emptied in that bin in the garbage area, and if the home container is disposable, there is a separate bin for the plastic right beside it. Even the bottles of soju have their own specified sack there. I noticed a pile of orange sack already stack beside and I can only guess how much soju Koreans consume. I've read that they do consume a lot of it.:D

This should be about it for now. I got to figure out how I can add photos here easily from my mobile's camera.