It was only published on youtube in late May 2013, but already the video "What Kind of Asian are You?" has over 5,000,000 views.

A few weeks ago, quite a few of my English teacher friends were sharing this video on facebook. I couldn't watch it right away because, being in Burma, my internet connection is stuck in the dark ages. I think the dinosaurs had a better connection 65 million years ago than I do right now in Burma. My internet connection is the pile of poo that other piles of poo took huge dumps on. All of that is to say that I've just got around to watching this and it is without a doubt one of the funniest things I've seen in a while.

Since I don't have internet at home, I can only get online in public places like a cafe or the lobby of a big hotel (yes, I am cheap enough that I'll go sit in the lobby of a big hotel to use the internet for free). This video made me LOL. Literally. In public. Everything about the way the girl acts her part is just so perfect.

Since it had been only my English teacher friends who had been sharing it, I had assumed that it would be a commentary on something Asian, but in fact, it's more of a commentary on a false assumption many Caucasians in North America make that people who look obviously different must be recent immigrants or that people who have white skin are more likely to be just "normal" Americans.

I got curious about the film's director, Ken Tanaka. In case you missed it, the ginger guy who jogs by at the very beginning of the video is Ken Tanaka. I was curious how such a pasty-faced ginger dude ended up with a surname like "Tanaka" so I did some light internet digging. I didn't really have to go far: he has a brief bio on his website. It turns out he was born in America but adopted by a Japanese family when he was a baby. The videos he shares on youtube are videos he has made while trying to find his birth family in America. He seems like a pretty cool guy with an amazing sense of humour. He's my new favourite person of the moment.