So while i was at jury duty yesterday, it is really common for bored jurors to talk amongst each other and i met an individual from puerto rico. We were talking to this older caucasian gentleman and he asked what i was. I replied "Filipino-American" but i lived there for 3 years in highschool.
He was like

"Wow dont the people out there still live in straw huts and start fire with 2 sticks"

I was like incorrect sir, i am not sure of which national geographic magazine or animal planet channel you have been watching but thats actually not true..

"hes like are you sure, arent there like 10,000+ islands im pretty sure there are some people out there still like that",




i honestly wasnt mad but i thought it was just funny how people come up with these types of "claims" and "theories" :icon1 8:

 

Some people are just ignorant and only aware of what's around them. I've gotten some comments like that about where I come from. I usually just shrug it off.

 

China is still poor and everybody is dying of hunger... Communist is stripping them of all their happiness...

I get that the most... I don't even bother anymore

 

ppl think im from north korea.

 

[QUOTE=Boneout JZA80;6673153]

"Wow dont the people out there still live in straw huts and start fire with 2 sticks"

QUOTE]

Generally speaking this is not true, but there are parts of the Phillippines that still use straw huts/ bamboo as shelter. I've been to that country and seen their provinces. The "2 sticks comment" is pretty far fetched though unless they ran out of matches.

 

Well you are a nut case like them.

 

You should have looked at him and said "Louse." He'd get all up in arms and you then say "No sir, you're thinking of Laos."

 

so...there isn't 10,000+ islands?

 

 

i take it as a complement!

 

You should've said "my family had their hut blown off by a wolf"

 

What happened to the straw huts? I used to live in one, but that was like 20 years ago.

 

I have family that are missionaries in the Philippines. In the late 80's/ early 90's they were still operating in remote areas, living in huts like the locals, and had no running water or electricity. (although they did help "upgrade" conditions where they could.)

While I speak with them maybe once a year (over the past decade), living conditions never come up. (I guess they don't want to sound like they are complaining.) We talk about how they and my cousins are personally. (Both of them are "in the states" now. One married, and the other in the Army.)

I just googled my uncle Jody..

I will be sure to ask the next time we speak, but from what I have read in the past 20 min., there are still plenty of "tribal" areas where people do indeed live in straw huts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Groups_of_Palawan

I'm not saying that's how the whole country lives, but I suspect that there are serious logistical and economic barriers to "mainstreaming" all 7000+ islands.

 

You are WAY too invested in the Philippines....just saying.

 

"Invested"? "Diatribe"?

I have family there.

 

Lol, Not from the hairs of my chinny chin chin...

 

When i visited the country side of Cambodia 5 months back, people there lived in straw houses, but they had little gas generators for electricity and such.