The sad truth if you come from USA

In resolving my pIanned small countryside trip, I thought of renting a car but the question then is who would drive. I received black points in California for driving at speed above 80 miles. Blogosphere taught me that no one would be cited for speeding below 80 in California.

When you are used to the pleasure of driving fast, you could easily find that your lead foot got worse overtime. I tend to drive faster and faster, until I saw a highway patrol chasing my vehicle.

Driving is a trait of every independent person could posses. The ability to go everywhere on land is like the feel of disability when a person is unable to drive. How am I going to drive in Manila, when driving in this city requires nerve, slower speed, patience, good vision and the ability to read actions from other drivers and pedestrians ? It is a skill that a driver can only acquire through many months of practice. Unable to find a driver, I stayed in my usual residence until a friend surprisingly called me to meetup.

This friend of mine can drive so I am happy. She invited friends of hers, few expatriates and locals that do not stay in Philippines for several months of the year. I had fun in this Easter holiday at a residence  of one of the expats. By Saturday nightlife came back to Makati. I was told to be picked up at my place. I was sort of a follower wherever the group goes. We dined in Café Havana of all the places. I am a whiner by nature because the food served was little amount. My friend usually make several trips to Canada and she too agreed with my opinion, that the amount of food served was little for the price we are paying. We ordered lots of drinks in that place but also ate lots of pizza. Not a good lifestyle for a mountaineer like me, who particularly avoid carbs. In a way, we complimented that the country do not have a lot of obese people because of the limited proportion of food served.

After Café Havana, friends then moved to a sports bar in Burgos. I knew this area used to be a red light district. My friend though assured me that it is no longer like that. Apparently over the years, Makati's red light district slowly crippling in Greenbelt's Café Havana et al. The sports bar is nothing fancy and most of the crowds are British. There was a soccer game that night, Liverpool vs Birmingham. My friend saw one of her acquaintance and summoned me to be introduced.

I was delighted at first until my friend mentioned that I live in San Francisco. The British and a bunch of other Europeans in that sport bar threw their interest at me, curious but with negative connotation on their head. Immediately one British man mentioned that Americans are the greediest people in the planet. To this I defended, that despite the corporate greed one would hear from the media, ‘Americans are by far the most generous nationals' out there. Throwing that defense did not help, with so many British against one person. I wondered why there is not one American national around. Or is it because Americans are keeping a low profile due to some unknown threat.

Nonetheless I enjoyed my drinking of spirits but the British were not content of tormenting me, by listing what has Americans did in the world, from the collapsed of Lehman Brothers (which many believed to be the start of world recession), that September 11 was American engineered event (as we all know it's the work of the conspiracy theorists), Iraq and Afghan War (which later been proven that there was no WMD hidden in Iraq) and now there is Libya civil war (again in pursuit of ‘oil') and so many more discussed which is too long to mention.

Our topic jumped from one to another like my belief that the Queen of UK does not have power but has the right to be consulted. The British accused the Americans for going to war in Iraq for “oil”, which was entirely NOT true. Another false claimed mentioned was that Obama is a Muslim. Whether true or not, so what if Obama is a Muslim? I then accused the British for greed, as we all know BP oil leaks in Louisiana's gulf coast did extreme environmental damage.

I closely followed all current events in the world as I am fond of watching CNN. Whilst on-board bound for Manila, I watched the movie ‘Fair Game' which is based on true story and therefore I was already armed with facts debating the fact that the lead up to Iraq war was not solely due to the failure of American intelligence but British should be blamed as well….enough said…

An hour past of arguing a bunch of British nationals, the conversation died, and I felt a sigh of relief. In the end, I was able to defend USA from the ill-information received by many people in the world. The media may have played a role but it is also wrong to suppress negativity in the press. I could easily understand why many Americans, if asked where they are from, often the response is ‘from Canada'. It's the very same reason that to avoid being confronted of the current events, one would just avoid mentioning the place of origin.

At the end of the day, no country is perfect. Anyone could find faults in every country. USA though still has a lot to be proud of.