December 26, 2008
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Phillipino Pride
I should have expected this; my mother went back on her word. I was so excited to get the house all cleaned, organized and stress free but I suppose she is totally unmotivated and “busy” to do anything. I suppose I can’t force someone who doesn’t want to change, to change. I shouldn’t have been too hopeful and now I am so frustrated that I got so excited over something that isn’t going to happen. I think now I will give up on creating my own eBay store because it is not needed. My mom doesn’t intend to help me in the slightest and there is no sense in throwing out all the trash in our house that she doesn’t want to throw away. I suppose I will stay happy, in my own almost effortless clean room and bathroom.
I also have been thinking about the Philippines culture a lot lately. I was thinking how almost all of them are so motivated and they all usually take their education seriously (if they have the money for it). Shouldn’t they be a great nation? What is holding them back? The answer is pride. I was discussing this with a few people recently that Philippino’s can sometimes be very prideful and absolutely blind to the overall big picture. For example, in the general American family culture, is to not make a big deal out of nothing and just do whatever you want to do just as long as you respect your parents and most of their wishes. So when it comes to me asking if I need a fork or a spoon, if I ask my dad or anyone on the white side of my family, for any sort or utensil when they just happen to be in that general area for getting me something, they will get it and I will do that for them in return. Now, if my mother is right in front of our utensil drawer, she will not get it, never ever. Why? Because of her pride and this pride is getting in the way of many things and results in a lot of wasted time and avoidable stress. Not with just forks and spoons but with life in general. Things that could have been done out of a somewhat convenience now has to be a struggle in every way. Also she yells at me for asking while I am getting up and doing it myself and tends to ramble on for about ten minutes or something. It’s ridiculous!
Pride lets them cut corners and when someone cuts corners, someone else gets affected. Since there is a lot of Asians specially phillippinos on the west coast my mom takes advantage of the fact she can get “special treatment” by her fellow phillipinos. This kind of sounds like a cult now but it kind of is actually. If she goes into a store and there is a phillippino cash register lady there, (it is usually a lady, by the way) she will ask what she calls a “phillipino discount”. Then the lady will randomly knock off some of the price or pull out a coupon that she can use that most of the other people will say “sorry we can’t mark anything down without a coupon, you should have one in your mail”. So although she and others are benefiting off this, someone is suffering, somewhere that she doesn’t know about. This can’t be good for our economy.
Here is another example, a perfect example of if you cut corners someone suffers. At my elementary school I used to go to, there are usually two different main courses for your lunch menu. To make sure they can meet the demand for everyone, you sign in under a list of the main dish you want. For example if the choices of the day were pizza and corndog and I wanted a pizza I sign my name down under pizza so they can make sure they have enough to meet everyone’s demand for whatever dish they chose. When you actually get in line to get whatever your wrote down for, everyone would hope you go into the line that you previously wrote down for. When someone cuts corners, like signs up for corndogs and takes a pizza, someone innocent person has to get that corndog because they only have the exact amount of what people asked for. I have been that person who had to deal with what I was given because someone else cut corners and I don’t exactly remember what I ended up with but I recall that it wasn’t a food I hated so much I didn’t eat my main dish.
Everyday my mother turns on the television to watch the phillippino channel and I see people crying all the time on their game show to have some money to eat, the only thing I think about are the people who cut corners. There are so many people who prosper from it and just as many people who suffer and it makes me so sick. In some ways I just wish I could tell them that they can be a great nation if they stop cheating all the time and follow the few rules that they have. There is no way I can get though to them because pride gets in the way. Pride will stop them from listening to a word a say because they are supposedly better than me to listen and they know it all.
Now, I am not saying all phillippinos are like this. Fourtinately there are phillippinos who do follow the rules and who are kind, educated, patient and hardworking who worked so hard to get to America and continued to work to have the lifestyle of their dreams. Those Asians get somewhere in life. Those are the Asians you see with rich cars and huge houses and do the work to get rich instead of unrealistic dreaming and not working.
