Come to think of it...

Filipinos are more European than Asian. It's not exactly a shocking revelation, since the Philippines had been under Spanish rule for more than three horrific centuries and that Espanya was the first to officially conquer the Philippine archipelago. I was muling about it last night, and came to enlisting 8 things that make Filipinos tilt to the Western side:

1
We don't eat with chopsticks (unless you're a total Chinese/Japanese/Korean junkie). We use spoons and forks to shovel food into our digestive system orifices...

2
Not all of us have "chinky" eyes. Foreigners even describe us as "brown Americans" because our eyes are round.


3
We don't have our own writing system. The Chinese have hanzi; Japan has hiragana, katakana and kanji; Korea has hangul; Taiwan has han tu; and Thailand has its own alphabet. (Okay, correct me if there's something wrong.) Still, there are other Asian countries that make use of the Roman alphabet, like Indonesia...so we're not completely alone.

4
Our primary language, Filipino, is derived from Spanish...and English is our second mother language. What else?

5
Our dishes are Western, like adobo and kare-kare.

6
Even our music is influenced by the West. Filipino composers like incorporating guitar melodies into their songs, something common in Western music.

7
Our national costumes, the barong and Maria Clara, don't exhibit the usual Asian robe features. The barong is like a long-sleeved polo shirt made of pineapple cloth, while the Maria Clara is some sort of A-line evening gown with puffy sleeves and elaborately sewn sequin/thread patterns.

8
With the exception of Tsinoys/Haponoys (is that even a term?!), our names are either American or Spanish, or Italian...whatever. A few examples are dela Cruz, Grecia, Espinosa, and Santos. Common names like Alessandra, Catherine and Johannah also abound.

Because I'm out of ideas and I still have to watch the fifteenth episode You're Beautiful, I'll leave the rest of the enumeration process to you. Tell me (via Facebook) if you have other cool discoveries about Filipino culture. Magkita nalang tayo mamaya sa SM! (haha, I'm pretty useless when it comes to Tagalog)