It’s been one hell of a nerve-wracking week, and I’m glad everything got sorted out. A friend of mine was at the wrong place (read: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and the wrong time (read: the day a piece of jewelry was missing) and, being easy targets all foreigners are in that harsh desert land, was accused of the theft. I didn’t know what I could do, but thoughts of rasing hell over at DOLE and an infinite number of government agencies came to mind. Thankfully it did not come to that (and I never had to come to grips with the impotence of the Philippine government when it comes to protecting it’s citizens), as the piece of jewelry was just misplaced it seems, in the car of the accuser.
Arabs.
This recent encounter also made me realize how much of a racist I can be. I was all too ready to denounce an entire nation – and how easy it would be, wouldn’t it? They’ve always been brutal in our view, these Middle Easterners. Terrorists. War mongers. Their laws are totally alien and cruel to the “modern”, “civilized” (read: westernized) thinker. It’s so easy to hate them, especially when something like what happened to my friend happens. Especially with all of Bush’s rhetoric floating around. Especially given their ancient animosity with Israel, whose Judaism is infinitely more palatable to the Chrisitian mindset than Islam. And after all, they themselves are among the most racist in the world.
So easy. And it’s all I can do not to.
Edit: I got off track with this post; it was supposed to be on the power of prayer, and how God always comes through. I just got so angry… but I’m glad it’s all over :)
In other news
I gave a seminar on PHP-MySQL-xHTML-CSS for the graduating class of AMA Caloocan yesterday, and it struck me how totally unmotivated the students were. It’s like there’s this blanket of indifference over all of them – which either speaks badly for my speaking skills or their outlook in life. For their sake, I hope I’m just boring :)
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3 Comments
whew. that was close. i’m glad your friend got out of that.
great post.
Jorge, I just rediscovered your blog again, nagsusulat ka na pala ulit palagi ngayon. Ako yung hindi. :)
It’s hard trying not to act in a racist way when you know that’s what they’re exactly doing to us. Still, generalizations should always be avoided.
Grabe bigtime ka na ngayon, seminar on php-mysql-xhtml-css, galing! :)
haha, I’m a poser and a mercenary, Markku :) a student’s a member of this friendster-for-bands script that i wrote and paid me to do a seminar on how i did it