According to Mama (since Papa doesn't talk much), his salary wasn't that high but the added benefits were more than enough to sustain our needs. Also, this was the only place that offered him residency. Had his band chosen to go to Guam or Bahrain, they would have returned to the Philippines when their contract expired.

A few months later, or in July 1988, Mama and I arrived in what is now dubbed as "Asia's World City". In the succeeding years, our family grew to include two more kids, both of them boys.

Since then, I have always lived in Hong Kong, except when I had to attend university in the Philippines for four years. I have kept my Philippine passport, but I have never registered to vote there or as an absentee voter here.

Recently, I have been asked a lot of times why I didn't register to vote for the national elections this May. Usually, I would smile, shrug and tell them that I just didn't want to. That caused many people to conclude that I do not care about my country. But of course I do. There's just that distinct feeling of supporting your country but without engaging yourself with it. In my case, it's because of the feeling of being sandwiched by two worlds.

I may not have a concrete answer to the question but what's clear is that I just didn't want to limit my duty to the country by registering in the elections, especially after being under the welfare of a foreign government for over two decades. In other words, this is home to me.

A lot of my HK-bred Filipino peers share the feeling, and have long made HK their home. Sometimes, I would join them for dinner and share things about our work, our families, and our future. Most of us experienced what it is like to live in our country for a while because we completed our tertiary education there. That was a purely budgetary consideration because our tuition fees in the Philippines cost only about $6,000 a semester then, whereas our parents would have spent something like $5,000 a month here.

When I was in the Philippines, there were so many things that my heart could not initially accept like the sight of street children begging in the streets. The more I was exposed to such deprivation the more I itched to return to "our home." That also made me realize how blessed we are to live in HK.

Conrado de Quiros once mentioned in his column that Filipinos living in America are treated as second class citizens, but those who do not suffer the same fate because they live in their homeland are no better off.

I see the same thing happening to us here in HK. While we may not get the same privileges as the local Chinese in terms of education and work opportunities, we are still able to live comfortably.

I wonder if the same opportunities, no matter how inequitable, are available to us also in the Philippines.

In a couple of months, the Philippines will have a new president but will the system be new as well? I've learned not to expect too much from the political upheavals in our country, but that doesn't mean I've stopped myself from doing what I can for it.

I remember being lectured by a friend in the Philippines about patriotism and nationalism when he found out that I did not register. His tone sounded so disapproving when he talked about the Filipino youths abroad who, in his view, "do not care" about the country that I had to make an excuse to go.

He had batted for Chiz Escudero and was so disheartened when his candidate backed out of the presidential race. I told him I would remain uninvolved until the next person who will be elected president is able to prove himself.

I am not alone in this thinking. I've had conversations with veteran OFWs who, like me, did not register. They do not beat around the bush when explaining. They say what's the use--their votes won't matter anyway. One even said that unless she could stop being an OFW she won't bother to get involved.

I have tried reaching out to my Filipino peers here through social networking sites, hoping to see if I could involve them into doing something for our country but they are busy looking into the future to worry about the present. But then again, maybe it's just me, a "fool" who cares about some archipelago hundreds of miles away.

But I am undaunted. Their lack of interest has only challenged me to do more, and not give up.

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Our columnist for this issue is the newest addition to The Sun family. Twenty-four-year-old Jan R. Yumul was raised in Hong Kong, but obtained her journalism degree at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. She says she has long wanted to be a media practitioner, and feels blessed because she is not only able to achieve that dream, but is able to do so by being "of service to the Filipino people" in Hong Kong. In her piece, Jan talks about being caught between two worlds--anxious to keep her Filipino identity, but determined to call Hong Kong her home.