Im all for .asia, not as a domainer, but as a site developer, with a domainers outlook i can see the obvious and sensible caution, but for a site developer i think .asia will be quite nice.
.ASIA will not be a flop. but applying at land-rush is only fruitful if you have bucketful money to participant at auction
Why pay $90 for something you may not get? The .Asia pre-registratiion fee is merely $9.99/year at http://20u.net/asia