i was thinking about how many people will never go to the places i've gone, or see the things that i've seen, because they don't have the money, or they're too scared to get on a plane, or they just don't want to go. i met my cousin, from north carolina, in paris. over dinner she told me a rather interesting tale. she was talking to one of her coworkers before she left, and this woman said, "Paris? Why do you want to go to Paris? Everything you need is right here!" naturally i was banging my head against the table (i moved my superb grilled lobster out of the way first) whilst my cousin recounted this story to me. it's this example of ignorant ethnocentrism that shows how isolationist america is. and if you look at the number of passports issued each year for any given country, in comparison to a country's population, you can see that it's absolutely astounding how few americans really travel.
i've been traveling since i was 8 months old. the first trip i took was a cruise to bermuda, and since then i've traveled twice, maybe three times every single year. when i look back at all the places i've been, and all the places i will be going (japan this july, for example), i find it staggering to think about what people miss out on. maybe because they think their plane will crash, or maybe because they think there isn't anything better out there than what they have right here in america. and they really couldn't be more wrong in their narrow mindedness. i feel sad when i think about it, because there's a lot of really cool shit out there that many people will never see outside of a movie screen or the pages of a glossy magazine.
2 Comments:
interesting how your entry is about travelling and the title is "America, fuck yeah." um can i say that if i had had a choice i would not (repeat WOULD NOT) have ever chosen to come here. ironically this is due to the fact that growing up chinese in an american society has made me have an incredibly ingrained inferiority complex. and the people around me do nothing but enforce it. perhaps i should rethink my life...
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Unknown, at 1:09 AM
Likewise as Nancy said (in the Desi sorta way...) I'd rather not have come to the US. To the UK maybe... but only because 9% of the British population is Indo and the plane ride from the UK to India is only 8 hours as opposed to the grueling 15 hour ride from Philadelphia.
America has a bad pension to screw the Asians...
I'd rather be in India. Who knows, I might have made it into the Indian Military Academy in Deradun? I know at least that I'll retire in Goa once I'm done with the making money and raising family side of things. But that's a long ways off.
-Amanopolis
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Anonymous, at 10:32 AM
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