Realizations after my first trip abroad

Some thoughts after my first trip abroad... traveling, though quite expensive, is a great educational experience. You get to experience things in another culture and get to compare your own. You realize a lot of things, and you go home with a new appreciation of the world and your unique nationality and country. It makes you realize that the world is so big and there's still so much to see and know. At least for me, it made me think that I don't want to die yet until I see Rome, Israel, Egypt, Europe, or Greece.

Going to a progressive business center in Asia, I found that I was tired after just three days. I got to see the wonders of capitalism: all man-made buildings, monuments of architecture and engineering, people crowded into so little space.

I went to a famous amusement park, all artificial buildings designed like cartoons, perfect sights and facades mimicking animated fairy tales. I smile, and recall much younger days when such a place would be so believable. But behind it... its all so artificial. Manufactured happiness. I actually felt like I was in the Chained to the Rhythm music video by Katy Perry. Turn it up its your favorite song dance dance dance to the distortion...

Maybe its just the jet lag and the general confusion of being in a foreign place for the first time. But I found myself in a delirium. Words like luck, wealth, progress, business, profit, money, money, money went inside my head. Yes, we all need money to live and we need as many of it so we can enjoy the world. But its only... just for this world.

We went to a Jewelry Factory. Chinese are big on luck, feng shui, and supersition. They sell us golden necklaces with moving windmills in glass cases. A symbol of fortune, they say. The wind bringing blessings, luck, wealth, safety! I think they are just more expensive versions of amulets you find sold near Quiapo church. Yeah, you can appreciate its thought for a moment, but I'm seeing another side to that grim windmill.

It looks more like an endless hamster wheel to me. We're trapped in glass cases called modern buildings and we work and work and work endlessly, like windmills finding no rest. Oh, that's not what they want, because stopping means laziness and no money will come.

I think, the god of this city is the god of wealth. A god wearing a mask with a smiling face with no one on the inside.