Two friends of mine, both of whom live in Canada, recently wrote articles about life in different countries. These articles piqued my interest, so I’m pointing you their way.
Michael “The Darker Side to Rants” Kalus, whom I know from his comments in this blog, email and IM, writes about why he finds the prospect of returning to Germany unappealing:
Germany, after the second world war, really tried repentance and it
succeeded in a way. But I think the price is starting to show. You
don’t realize it when you live in Germany or grow up there, but there
is a deep seated negativity about oneself, about the things that we, as
a nation have done. I think this is seeping even further into it. Hey,
Hitler wanted to create a superior Master Race, so anybody who is
better should not show this, we are just a good group of simple people,
no harm ever came from those, right?
I think that’s the biggest
problem, there is a lot of good things in Germany but Germany is really
building itself into a brick wall. Looking back now to my own school
time and work there I come to realize it.
I did realize a
different attitude when I moved to Canada, how intelligence is rewarded
not punished (at large), while in Germany everybody just tries to fit
in and “not stick out”.
Ashley Bristowe, with whom I went to Crazy Go Nuts University and have known for nearly 15 years, writes about her experiences in my home country, the Philippines. I may have lived in the Philippines longer than her, but not by much, and not as an adult.
Now,
let it be said that the Philippines is perhaps physically the most
beautiful country I’ve ever visited. Volcanos, beaches, rice terraces,
rainforest, seascapes and hilltops, misty mountains and steaming flat
plains… the quality of light is incredible. It is rich in natural
resources, and it’s been said by more knowledgeable Asiaphiles than me
that if the Philippines ever got its shit together (i.e. elected
officials of an ilk different than the
stream-of-nightmare-consciousness thieves and bandits they’ve elected
for generations who’ve used the national treasury as a personal slush
fund… anyone else, how ’bout?), it could take enormous advantage of
the fact that it’s the only large English-speaking country in Asia.
Could capitalize on its relationship with the United States to push for
preferential trade relations. Could host UN agencies, multinational
corporations, and NGO headquarters. Could supply translators and
executives to the whole region. It’s a shame, really, the wasted
potential and all the grab-the-money-and-run consequences of poor
government and brain drain: urban decay, traffic like nowhere else on
earth, the worst air quality I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve lived in
Delhi), bureaucratic corruption and paralysis. It’s tragic.
And
every born-and-raised-in-the-Philippines-Filipino I’ve ever met outside
the Philippines has a tragic story. I mean, we all have tragic stories.
But they’ll tell you their tragic story inside of five minutes of the
first hello, I guess is the difference. The culture of
immigration-into-servitude among lower-middle class Filipinos has
created a kind of widespread normalization of long-term seperation of
parents from children, wives from husbands, families from clan, that
I’ve never been able to fully wrap my head around. It is not in any way
unusual to meet Filipinas who have spouses, children, families, houses,
jobs, and whole lives waiting for them in stasis back in the
Philippines – while they toil away as domestics, nannies, and
entertainers, in isolation and obscurity and at very low rates of pay,
in Hong Kong condos and Dubai highrise compounds and faceless Canadian
suburbs. There is this “what can I do? I must do this…” flap of the hands, sorrowful upturning of the face, when you talk to them about their situation. Why
are you so far from your family? Don’t you miss them? Isn’t there
ANYTHING you could do back home? When are you going to see your
children again? Don’t know, bahala na. By no means are
Filipinos alone in being migrant workers working terrible jobs far from
home and sending remittances back to keep the family afloat, I do
realize this. It happens all over the world. I think it’s these
Filipinos’ incomparable propensity to communicate the difficulty of
their circumstances, and somehow plead for assistance while seeming
entirely unable to act on their own behalf, that really gets to me.
I’ve highlighted the Tagalog phrase bahala na above, because I think it’s a telling indicator of the Philippines’ number one problem. It’s a Filipino expression that’s kind of hard to translate — think of it like the Arabic word en’shallah, or perhaps the English expression “whatever” when used as a Gen-X dismissal. Perhaps P.J. O’Rourke’s translation of bahala na in his book Holidays in Hell is the most apt: he interpreted it as “You must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit.”
Bonus reading: Get Real Philippines, a site that points out what’s wrong with the Philippines and what can be done about it.
Those of you who weren’t teenagers in the 1980s may not remember the image to the right. Back then, the technology that the entertainment industry feared was good old magnetic tape. The industrial-entertainment complex’s movie arm was fighting the Betamax; 
The fundraiser for Sam Bulte being held tonight at the Drake Hotel will feature a performance by Margo Timmins. You may remember her band, 
