well, being a citizen of a country is a responsibility we ought to take.
But everything has its origin and reasons about who, what, where, when, why and how today came to be...

So, lets do sharing..

My country, the Philippines, is considered a third-world country. Despite of its riches in nature, hard working people and good weather (i really consider our weather nice ) we are still suffering. Poverty? Population growth? Corruption? We all have that.. (hey has anyone heard the current events about the bus hostage in manila? just wondering.. i was blocks away from the incident! )

Recently, i learned that our history has something to do to what we are going through today.
Honestly, i feel sorry for our race.. Always under other countries, always the "conquered land" (for almost 500 years, and i think until today.. neo-colonialism ) i dawned to me we really don't have a concrete identity. What we have today were all influenced by other nation, by other lands, by other cultures. (man, i think ill make this a term paper.. joke ) Until now, i see we are still suffering what our previous "masters" left to us.

Well, thats a little bit of sharing. I wish you'd share something too

US.

Origin: We hated taxes, and taxes without representation more so.

Fun tidbits: Have a hero complex going in that we must be the super police country of the world *facepalm*.

Not all americans are war-hungry idiots. Seriously, we're not.

Our government takes forever and a day to do things.

separation of church and state is still a fantasy here. though we're getting better.

debt and a whole lot of it.

don't worry, you're not alone with debts
wow, you're from the US.
you know, i have this awkward aura? with Americans.. cause they once colonized us..
we were even called the "little brown americans" see? talk about having no identity...

here, the church and state are, yes separated, but they make conflicts..

did you all know that divorce is NOT legal in the Philippines?

lol, where did you think I was from? XD

naw, I don't know much bout the Philippines.

Malaysia:


A third world country trying to pretend to be a first world country (or second, at the very best).

Corruption is our middle name. It's a well known secret that driving schools these days include bribes as part of the students' fees so they won't fail.

Racial flaming/discrimination is the election game, even as we sell racial harmony to attract tourism business. Oh yes, did I mention that keris (Malay daggers) are brought out in Parliament by the present Deputy Prime Minister to threaten the minority races not to challenge the "Malay supremacy"?

We're the net exporter of rich oil (our oil has low sulfur-content, so it's sold more expensively than the high sulfur one we import for normal use), yet all that money seems to have gone... somewhere... We're just not sure where, since the government still seem to need us to pay higher taxes every year.


Goddess, like, are we proud of their failings or what? XD

@mariedan: You gotta give credit to the US, though. Because they were once a colony, they didn't keep you guys as long as the Spaniards did, only long enough for you to function on your own.

though we're still hanging on to puerto rico all these years later. >.>

Not a state, not a country, something in between.

Wow, it's so interesting to learn about all of your countries!
CANADA:
Canada used to be a colony, to. First of France, and then of Britain. Today we're a free country.
Canada is a place where lots of different people come to be free. We aren't a third world country, but we try to help them out.
We're generally peacekeepers, so I don't think we should be in Afghanistan.
We don't all live in igloos, as I was told that a lot of people don't know that. Funny thing.
We have really long winters, and short summers. Or winter and construction.
We also have a lot of variety here. We have about a million choco bar varieties!

I hope that you like my sharing, and my country. I like yours.

Well, my country has been under 300 years of Spanish Influence, and some years of British influence (though they did not last long). The Japanese years were the golden age of Literature in my country. This is the place where 30+ Journalists were ambushed and assassinated.

That's the Philippines....but let's be sanguine! After all, we have the "major major 4th runner up" in the ms. universe pageant, and we have lots of tourist spots...that needs strong security. >_>

@Stardale

LOL @ the "major 4th runner up" xD, she totally killed her chance in the Q&A.

Philippines:

A lil tidbit: Did you know that a divorce can take as long as SEVEN years?

My country : Pakistan

Well its always on the news for bad events. Nowadays, there are bomb blasts every week and our government is corrupt ( But thats a common problem)

Racial flaming/discrimination does not happen unless you are dumb enough to go into the mountaineous areas. But racial killing happens in my city as two races try to obliterate each other every two months.

Bribery is common. U can pay money to get anything

The one good thing is that we actually have a culture.

@Yuffie: is it true that in Canada, education is free? hmm, long winters? i dont think ill survive canada

@KTC: hmm, i wish the Puerto Rico "event: is solved haha, funfact.. Hawaii is a state of the US right? In history, at that time, the US also holds the Philippines. They were deciding whether which they will "free" and which they will make a state. The toss-coin made Hawaii the state and us, free.

wee..@ Stardale.. i remember, we're country mates ahahaha..
@Stardale and Ivanna.. yeah, she totally blew it. major-major. She was actually translating the Filipino phrase "bonggang bonga" (w/c is used to emphasize something.. kind of an adjective, here, it is a slang ) into English..and turned out to be a failure, but im thankful she got 4th place
@Ivanna, hmm, that long?

@theone and aisling.. yeah, having a corrupt government is common we should have a "Our Government is Corrupt" Club.. haha. joke

this discussion is fun
(i just realized i use a lot of smileys...)

Quote:

Wow just imagine if it were the opposite!

Belgium: It rains almost every day T.T

Colonial?
In the Middle Ages, Belgium and Holland were under Spanish rule. Holland got independent, Belgium choose not to. After Napoleon got defeated, the Belgians were forced to join Holland again. However, not happy with the situation they were in, they declared independence.
Under the reign of Leopold II, Belgium got colonial rule over Congo, and later also Rwanda.

A complex tale of the Flemish and the Walloons
Back in time, when French was the universal language, the Walloon region began to frenchize. The Flemish region didn't. Less than a hunderd years ago, Dutch was not recognized as an official language, even though the Flemish population spoke Dutch. Court cases, Univeristy, the army were all in French. (That's the reason the army was a catastrophe during the WWs, because the Flemish soldiers couldn't understand the Walloon officers.) Nowadays, Dutch is of course regonized as an official language, just like French and German.

The Flemish population, the Walloon population and the German population?
Yeah, Germany had to give a small part to Belgium after WWI as a compensation for all the damage. They are (sadly) often forgotten bu the other Belgians.

Goverment?
We USED to have a good goverment, but sadly the political parties aren't able to form a goverment anymore, because of all the (linguistic) troubles between the Flemish and the Walloons.

@ Ivanna, yeah, i imagine it too sometime. a part of me wished that we should have just been the state, but then I realized being an independent country has its positive things too

@ slimmmeiske2, lol, viva España. The same country colonized us. (no offense to Spanish people here guys, peace and love ) is it that bad? i mean the linguistic troubles?

As a grandparent who lives in the rainy northwest corner of the USA I have to say this:

What our ancestors did in the past is done and can't be changed. What we do in the future is determined by our actions today. Each one of us must live in the world that we are born into.

I am happy to have the opportunity through Amaranthia to be a part of a Global community. We lose the boundaries that keep us from truly knowing each other, and we find that we actually have more in common than we thought.

Today is the only day you actually have. Make the most of it!

@mariedan11: Yes, it is. That's the reason why we haven't had a succesful government since 2008.
The Flemish accuse the Walloon that they don't speak Dutch, while the Walloon feel threatened by the Flemish politics that say that the first priority if you want to live on Flemish territory is to speak Dutch. (Brussels (our capital where lots of Walloon and French speaking people live) is an apart territory. But Brussels' schools are overpopulated, so a big part of the French speaking students go to a Flemish school (but can't speak a word Dutch.) T.T
Oh and Walloon schools offer a choice in junior high and high school: they or have to learn German or Dutch. (And of course English and French are a given.)
Flemish schools don't offer a choice, they just have to learn all official languages of Belgium (French, Dutch and German) and of course English .

(Umm, hope you understand something of it ^^ It's just a delicate and complex story, that only Belgians (halfly) understand. Oh and I'm sorry if I sound biased to Walloons somewhere. I'm well Flemish after all.)

Random Comment:
Congrats to Kim Clijsters who made it to the Finals of the US Open.

@mariedan11
No free education. The only country that i know has free education is Britain, but their taxes are high.

it is cheaper in some provinces versus others.

If you have aboriginal status in Canada you get free post secondary and those who live on reserves are tax exempt.

This is such an interesting topic! I'm currently taking this literature course (the only one I'm on for the first time as opposed to the others which I'm on for the second or third time), which is called New Literatures, a name that doesn't really communicate much, since there has been real effort made towards it being as neutral as possible. Other terms used are Commonwealth literature (although the very first text we read was an essay titled "'Commonwealth literature' does not exist" XD) and post-colonial literature, so a lot of the stuff you've posted here has been of a particular interest to me.

But that was sorta off-topic.

My country is the 'is it the best country in the world or isn't it?' (darn, I can't find a link to any news stories about when there was this surprisingly big commotion about there maybe being an error in the tally and that maybe Switzerland was the first... Just trust me, there was one) -Finland.

Well, what can I tell about my country? The Finns came here after the ice had melted, but not before the Sami people, who we drove north to Lappland. But the Finns have been under foreign rule as well, first there was Sweden (or Sweden-Finland, as it is in the history books), and then Russia. The independence was achieved by a trip to Moscow by a few diplomats, no battles needed. That was in 1917. The battles we are reminded of every independence day (Dec 6th) are thus not ones that gained us our independence, but those that defended it. During the time of the second World War Finland fought the Winter War and the Continuation War against the Soviet Union, and yes, managed to stay independent with relatively small losses (most of Carelia was lost and the other 'arm' ). Well, yeah, we sided with the Nazis, but I don't think there was much of a choice, and besides the Nazis ended up burning Lappland, so we got our punishment (or, actually, the Sami people did, remember the ones we had driven north?).

The aftermath of the Continuation War is actually the root of Finland's relative prosperity these days. The war-debt Finland had to pay the Soviet Union started a prosperous metal industry here, which lead to the development of the welfare state as we now know it. Before the 1940s Finland was in effect a Third World country.

Ewww, I'm starting to feel patriotic. I'd better stop before I start sporting the Finnish flag and calling immigrants names!

EDIT: Oh, and education here is free, even university (if you're a resident of the EU). We also have very few private schools, which I interpret as being a testimony of the relatively high quality of the public education system here, but it's still far from perfect.

Quote:

I just want to clarify this statement since there's a lot of misunderstanding about it and it's not as straight forward as that.

Aboriginal people in Canada include status & non-status Indians, Metis, and Inuit. It's only status Indians who receive federal funding for post secondary education and even then not everyone who is eligible for it receives it. The federal government provides money to bands council who allocate it to students through a selection process since the money is limited. Also, it doesn't cover all the costs for getting an education so technically they don't "get free post secondary."

As for the tax part, personal property on reserve is tax except, and there's no sales tax on items purchased on reserve. Taxes on personal income on reserve is a little more complex since it depends on the location of the work and the residence of the employer and employee.

wow, i mean, history is very complex.
hearing all of your counties' stories is nice, although it saddens me to think that almost all had their troubles. but then again the troubles made us what we are today

ugh, taxes.
its what runs the government.. but to think that there are officials who are corrupt.