Rural and Urban Changes

I have had the opportunity to live in numerous different environments. The first area was my home town, Lewisburg, PA. This is a small town in central Pennsylvania. This wasn’t an extremely small town, but it had about 6-8000 people in it. It is surrounded by farms community with a downtown area. Life there was simple growing up and it is still relatively the same. The one big reason that I miss this area is the farmers market. This market was cheap, unlike the ones here. You got good quality fruits and vegetables. Bad traffic was a 5-10 minute delay, or being stuck behind a horse and buggy. This use to be the home of Pennsylvania house Furniture. But due to the cost of labor, it is now made overseas. There have been numerous job losses due to companies outsourcing. The quality of air was very good.

The next major place I lived was during my stint in the military. This was Pusan, South Korea. Immediate when I stepped off the plane I knew that I was no longer in the quiet town I was use to. The streets were extremely busy and the air quality was noticeably worse. I was informed it would take about a month or so to get use to the air quality. The thing that I enjoyed while there was the opportunity to shop for items. The prices were extremely cheap and very abundant. While in Korea I went to an island south of the peninsula for a school. This was a very rural setting and was interesting to see how the people functioned differently the their city counter parts. You could buy fresh sea food. Literally fresh. You looked out on the ocean and there were women with mask, snorkels and fins diving for fresh food to sell on the rocks beside the ocean. They would have buckets of fresh food for you to buy on the shore. On the main side of the island, since I mentioned about the traffic before, traffic was terrible. You would have a 5 lane highway go down to 2 lanes in each direction. This caused major traffic issues and then people were trying to cut in front of the convoys.

Now the last place was here in the D.C. suburbs. What fun this place is, isn’t it. There is a lot more to do then in the quiet town that I grew up in, but now you may have to wait in line to do it. I never saw the traffic issues that I see here in PA. People here are in a hurry and are quite rude. Unlike my home town where everyone knew you, you could go days without seeing anyone you know here. I don’t like that feeling at all. Let me go back to the traffic issue. I have lived in Fredericksburg for the last 10 years. I have seen the traffic going south multiply greatly as everyone is trying to buy houses in the cheaper suburbs. It use to be that traffic was extremely heavy traveling south in the summer but then lighted up (moving and not standing still) during the other 9 months of the year. It seamed like in 2005 that changed greatly. The summer exodus stuck year around.

I have been very lucky in my life to be able to visit different places in the world. We all can learn different things from one another about how to live and grow efficiently and how not to grow. Hopefully the next twenty to fifty years can bring smart growth to both the business and social world that we all belong. There is nothing that we can do to stop this growth, it is coming whether we like it or not.

I have found a quick video of the women diving in Korea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=ltsax5Jm_qw&feature=related

This Video on You tube actually tells a little more about the women. The ones in this one work off of a boat. The last 30 seconds or so shows on scaling down rocks to swim out to fish. These were the like the rocks that I was at and observed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBb-oofr-7A&NR=1