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Despair
May 12, 2008When a man sees everything through a window of despair, the world can be pretty mangled. I’ve seen a short mini-series (13 episodes) anime titled “Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei (Goodbye Professor Despair). It’s not your traditional twinkle eyes anime. The show portrays how people have been complacent with a warped life that we ironically consider normal. It has an alternative style and totally not a cute kid’s anime.
There is an episode where a girl in the truest sense of obsessive compulsive tries to put everyone “in their proper place”. She argues that if a man earns (in converted currency) P6000, doesn’t have the right to own a plasma TV. In congruence to the statement, the salary left would only be enough to rent a room. Imagine a small boarding house room with a plasma TV.
It was utterly stupid to imagine because no Filipino would do such a crazy thing. But on second thought, we actually do! Many of us own absurdly expensive phones with features we don’t’ use or we absolutely have no idea how to use. Honestly, who has used their MMS to send pictures? Or who has ever sent emails using their phone? And seriously, have you subscribed to “the latest news delivered straight to your mobile!”? The phone is as expensive as it gets and spending another peso for its features would bleed our pockets to shock.
Extravagance has been part of our culture as rice has been to our meals. We essentially “save” money to buy novelty, even luxury. I don’t even think we know the true sense of “saving”. If we “save” to buy something, then we practically didn’t “save anything at all. Makes sense huh?
A Chinese once told me, a Chinese would only spend P1 if he had more than P10, but a Filipino would gladly spend P10 even if he only had P1.
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