oh yeah, I'm Asian

There is no better hype machine than the war machine.

Not this one

The thought of impending doom and the loss of thousands of lives is a spooky thing but it's also very interesting. Cue the latest news from East Asia as "tensions mount" between North and South Korea. One side has a basketball obsessed dictator with nukes idly resting on his lap and the other has terrible music, women disguised as boy bands, and a people with a Hajj-esque mission to learn English from a 3rd World country. It's a battle between face-melting nuclear weaponry and cultural corruption. Verdict: stalemate.

What surprises me is how close we actually are to this action. Geographically we aren't as far to these at-horn nations as we perceive ourselves to be. We are culturally distant from our neighbors but the cold, hard fact is we're still Asian and we are "related" to Japan, Korea and Singapore as we are related to our weird second cousins. Even if we aren't that close, their achievements still tickle a sense of envy in us. Seeing then how our Asian neighbors have risen from the stereotypical notion that our continent produces nothing but rice-and-noodle loving degenerates begs the question: What happened to us? 

Just ten years ago we had faster Internet capabilities than Japan. Okay. Right now, a Japanese boy just downloaded a movie in a minute and a half while a Filipino dad is on the phone talking to a PLDT representative complaining about his intermittent 1Mbps connection.The gulf in available technology is vast- it's ridiculous but not incredible. Our country is plagued by so many problems that any dream of advancement is hampered and eventually brought to stagnation. I have no hope left for this place. Unless, of course, people would be willing to give up some of their freedom for the sake of the country (which will never happen because people are selfish and they believe that their freedom is a right).