Don't get too comfortable

When you've lived all your life in a third world country, no matter how well-traveled and well-read you may be, so many first world "normalcies" will always hit you as quite alien.
Excess.

The exposure to excess is an out-of-body experience that I always find myself conscious about, no matter how logically I tell myself that I am no longer in the third world where excess is exclusive only to 5% of the population or 100% of the government.

I went to church last Sunday and when the time came for the Holy Communion, the priest announced that "for parishoners who are allergic of wheat products or oats, there is another line for hosts without the wheat ingredients."

My mouth was left gapping even before I had to take the Body of Christ.

I still marvel, and probably always will, about how rich and how the wealth is distributed in First World countries, more so in the United States. Americans are a spoiled lot. They take a lot of things forgrannted because they grew up expecting them, knowing they are entitled to so many things because they are Americans. Is it a wonder why Asian immigrants who came from war-torn, impoverished, or communist countries show their appreciation of becoming Americans by not taking anything forgrannted? They do not feel an entitlement that they have not worked hard for, and it shows in what has become the myth of the "model immigrants," or the Asian brainiacs in America.

My cousin, who is born of FIlipino parents but was conceived and brought up in America, is a perfect example of the American sense of entitlement. He disses the Philippines even though he's only been in the country once-- because "it's third world," (a.k.a. NOT AMERICA). If the country doesn't have smiling service 24/7, doesn't understand how important a thread count is, doesn't have toilet paper in every public restroom, don't serve both diet Coke and diet Pepsi in their menu, doesn't serve food from a pristine kitchen, don't have American giant sized burgers--which is the only real hamburger for these football loving Americans-- then they're getting a crappy deal.

God Bless America, because if HE/SHE doesn't, according to George W. Bush, America will be blasted off by terrorists from the face of the earth--or maybe by some embittered third world guy who can't get an American visa.