Making small talk in Kiwi-Land

My uncle, who lives in New Zealand, has a very interesting theory about why the Filipino is so goddamn lazy. According to him, we Filipinos have it easy compared to New Zealanders. We have maids to clean our homes, to wash our dishes, and to take care of our kids. Since the labor cost is so low, it’s easy to pay somebody to do something for you. When I was visiting New Zealand during the holidays, I was chopping down trees and cutting them into firewood for the winter. He says the winter, or rather the lack of it, is a major reason Filipinos firmly hold a reputation of being one of the laziest people in the world. Since people don’t have winter, they aren’t forced to cut firewood to keep warm during the cold weather. Normally you’d freeze your toenails off if you didn’t have a fire going. Add the fact that since having been colonized by both Spaniards and Americans alike, we Filipinos got used to someone telling us what to do all the time. Now that we’ve achieved our independence to a certain extent and we don’t have anyone to tell us what to do, we become lazy. We procrastinate. This leads me to the conclusion that the Philippines desperately needs a good, solid, benevolent dictator to get us moving, but that’s a different subject altogether.

One thing that surprised me was that a significant portion of the jobs available in New Zealand did not require a college degree. All the girls I talked to (both shoppers and salespeople) only held high school degrees. On the other hand, you need to be a college grad to get a job as a salesperson here in the Philippines. This is probably because a college education in the country with more sheep than people is far more expensive than here. Funny thing is, those high school grads working in the malls probably know more than some of the salespeople in the malls here, if you actually sat down and tried to talk to them intelligently about a subject like history or politics. But a great deal of the Kiwis I talked to over a cup of coffee had little knowledge of the Philippines. They laughed when was I teasing them and when I was making small talk, but when I was asked about my country and started talking about the Philippines’ economic situation, overpopulation and the conflict between the Muslims and the government in Mindanao, they were at a loss for words. That’s fine with me, I can understand if they were a bit shocked. But nearly each and every one of them gave out this laugh that suggested they weren’t exactly sure whether to laugh or not. When it came to the really interesting subjects, the Kiwi chicks weren’t much fun to talk to. It just so happened that the only one worth conversing with was a Filipina who had lived in New Zealand for eight years. Imagine that.

My uncle is a finance and administration manager in a New Zealand company. He’s in charge of 400 Kiwis.

The Philippines and New Zealand have almost identical landmasses, but the disparity between the two populations is tremendous. We have 85 million people, many of whom are below the poverty line and living as tightly packed as a can of sardines. They have four million people who are already complaining that there isn’t enough space for everyone in New Zealand. If only we could find a way to solve our overpopulation, it would make things a lot easier for the rest of us.