You Had Me At "You Suck"

I recently came upon an article written by a Filipino-Chinese who shared her thoughts on what was wrong with The Philippines. The piece was titled “Why The Philippines Sucks”. It was a typical tirade that we’ve all heard before except maybe for the fact that she personally knew some victims of heinous crimes here and witnessed firsthand the equally inept bureaucracy that handled the cases. However, it wasn’t the content of her article that I’m writing about but some of the comments it received. One in particular struck a (dissonant) chord. It was actually from someone I knew personally and what he said basically was that he was tired of Filipinos hating and complaining about the state of our country. He said that those very same people are what’s wrong with the Philippines and what they ought to do is to take some action and stop the whining. This made me reflect on my current conduct.

Help me help you! Oh wait, wrong scene...

As attested to by my other blog entries here, I myself have a tendency to state my complaints (or what I’d like to think of as commentary) about the issues I see in everyday Filipino life. On the other hand I actually do take action (as minor as they may seem) instead of just bitching. For one thing I am a law-abiding citizen. I follow even the most basic traffic rules. I fall in line and wait my turn. I smile at customer service people and say thank you each time I get served adequately. So here I am, setting a so-called example, but who’s following? I feel like Jerry Maguire when he resigned from work asking, “Who’s coming with me?” The fact is most Filipinos are so content and used to the way of life here that a slow, methodical change of our systems doesn’t seem to be worth their precious time. To me, one phrase that exemplifies the way of the Filipino is, “Pwede na yan!” and with that mindset, we’re probably going to be stuck here for quite some time.

*I am aware I come off as a self-righteous bastard and maybe I am, but when I bitch for change at least I try to do my part no matter how small it may seem at first.