* Lyrics from a successful Romanian hip-hop song: "We weren"t born in the right place".

The singer is 24 years old - Laurenţiu Mocanu, stage name "Guess Who".

His list of places for being born: Nigeria, Sudan, Angola, or Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Cuba, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, North Korea.

We could expand on that: the bear"s den, the cat"s corner, the stork"s nest up on a pole.

Of course, Laurenţiu Mocanu means that he thinks he would have deserved to be born in the USA, Germany, England, France or at least in Canada. Or sitting on the throne of Belgium.

Would that be an entitlement?

Of course, it would be the "entitlement by birth".

Why does he think he would have deserved to be born there?

I don"t know and I don"t think he does either.

* Lyrics from another Romanian hip-hop song: "We are the porto-rican family".

The singer is 28 years old - Ştefan Mihalache, stage name "Connect-R".

Here is an interesting choice.

Being the member of a Porto-Rican family would probably be better than being a member of the Mihalache gamily.

There is no room for interpretation: Ştefan Mihalache does not discuss a family living in Porto-Rico state, bur rather one that emigrated to the USA.

Most likely, Mihalache is an admirer of the spectacular activities performed by some of the Portoricans in the USA - not drugs, robberies, or prostitution, but rather philosophy, science and violin rhapsodies.

I promised (in this column, months ago) that I would show my reasons to be proud of being Romanian.

I will do it now.

Academician Constantin Bălăceanu-Stolnici once said, on TV, that some recent theories claim that cultural inheritance is passed down genetically.

We had learned, starting from the blank slate postulated by John Locke, that our after birth experiences are poured into th