Preface: the types of people in Iloilo City, Philippines are,
1)Homebodies
2)Gangsters
3)Those looking for work
4)Those not looking for work
5)Scammers
6)Hotheads
7)Your average drunk trying to make some money and have a
good time acting as an English teacher
8)And the rich
I pretty much fell into category 7 of those types of people in Iloilo City during 2007 and was enjoying myself immensely at that time. One Friday a Korean friend of mine named Mr.Shin called me to see if I was
available for drinks and dinner that evening.I said,”Sure.”
Mr.Shin told everyone else that he was a doctor but I was always unsure of what type of doctor he was, maybe a PhD in women or something like that. He was though teaching visiting Korean students how to pass an English exam called TOEIC. But there was a scam to it were he would find out all the questions and answers before the exam and make his diligent students memorize them all so that they could get a good bonafide score on a bogus test. Very nice.
I was actually doing some side-work for him correcting grammar for some really horrible English sentences he’d been giving me, usually and frequently 20 pages of crap to dismantle and put together again in some readable form. Anyway, we were to meet at some Mexican restaurant called Tijauna which I liked very much for their Quesadilla, Taco and a drink call Tijauna Blue which is and was very potent.
Our plan was 9pm Prior to that I was to bring a 17 year old student of mine named Demion to the same place for the real dinner. That was extremely interesting as he was asking me so many questions how to date a young Filipinna a few years older than himself. I accepted the idea and later he was sitting down talking to 3 beautiful 18-19 year old unsuspecting ladies that believed he was 20. By the end of his evening he had all their cellphone numbers. He was a good listener as a student.
After a few hours his mother came by to fetch him as she felt that maybe while I perhaps was a good instructor maybe not such a good role model. He told me later that he had slept with one but that was never verified but seemed convincing enough to believe.
Then came in Dr.Shin somewhere before Demion left and met the minions mother who was then satisfied that another Korean was there to chaperon her ever so loving son. Mr.Shin and I began to do some serious drinking then and talking shit like most people do when they are really legally drunk. We did that for I’m not sure how many hours while yelling to hear ourselves above the local dance band.
I then after so many Tijauna Blues decided to go home to my wife and sleep off duty and that nights drinks. But to get home relatively soon I’d have to walk back to the hotel where I was teaching at maybe some1500 meters away to find the nearest taxi. In order to do that I needed to cross the road like so many times in the past and travel past a dimly lit area which in my condition was very tolerable and rather non- existent.
Only one problem.
It was Friday and I just got paid a fair amount of money from my teaching job and a lot of people knew that. Of course that never ran through my mind at that time being so brave like I always was. So there I went so happy go lucky on my
way home . After a few minutes there was an abrupt call to me saying,”Give us all your money asshole.” I was pretty good with speaking to people so I said,”Get a fucking job loser.” And that went over very well with the 6 gangster Filippino’s that had been following me since I left the restaurant.
I suppose they didn’t take to my overly sly comments and then they decided that beating my ass was probably the best approach to take with me at that moment. Well one thing led to another and apparently they weren’t half as looped as I was so they got the better of me especially since I was outnumbered 6-1 though I did knock 2-3 of them down.
The ironic thing is by that time I was only about 100 meters from a taxi in sight and was yelling loudly to get the attention of a driver or someone from the hotel. They finally heard me after 2 broken ribs, an eye cut open and many bruises and an enormous black other eye.My rescuers were a little late but I’m sure they saved my life. People from the hotel called the police and the police came with an ambulance and a TV news station traveling cameraman to also
come to my rescue.
Interesting that ABS-CBN broadcasting would arrive with the police and the ambulance at the same time. How can that be! Does ABS-CBN have a contract with the Iloilo CITY POLICE. I have been wondering about this and came to the conclusion that they have an unwritten contract with them which i know as a fact. How can this happen? Maybe We will think about this idea at another time because there is a lot to say about that conceptual idea.
Next I was in the hospital with all of the abrasions I talked of earlier. ABS=CBN was there ready and able with their cameras to document what ever it was that they wanted. Can you believe that they caught me on camera in
the hospital? How is that standard protocol?
Well it is.
I’m in the hospital and they were there to record everything for their television program. It was so And they recorded me asking for my wife Norwina to pick me up from the hospital and to text my wife on her cellphone about that idea. Do you think that is proper?
Norwina did arrive shortly after that and asked me if I wanted stitches to my eye as it was cut open according to the nurse and doctors advice. My response was just ,”No,make them give me butterfly stitches,then let’s just go home OK..”
She said,”OK”
So after that we went home and she was so kind to me and let me sleep and did whatever she did to make me feel better. The next morning I awoke in pain from my side and was filled in on some of the details of what had happened to me. I didn’t think about it too much, just concentrating on rest and how it would be possible to teach on Monday. There were no calls that weekend so there was a period of rest.
The following Monday I wore sunglasses to work due to my black eye. People asked me about it but I didn’t elaborate about it except to a coworker named Mark Bitanga. He was sure to say something as he was a big mouth anyway. And he did as was expected. So my students would come asking questions so I would tell them to ask Mark as my official spokesperson.
They wondered if I could work in pain and he told them that, “He has gone through worse than this.” And he was
correct.
Later in the day to my amazement I found out that a video of me while I was beaten and asking for my wife was recorded and shown on TV. Why wasn’t this shown on Saturday or Sunday as you might suspect. Why was it finally shown the next Monday?
The answer is simple. On Saturday and Sunday there were more interesting stories than mine to report on. And on Monday there was nothing of interest to report on except an American getting his ass beat. Sensationalism is the key word to journalism nowadays and this is proof in the pudding. The next time you are thinking of being seen on the boob tube remember how to do it.
Make sure the media is there, get beaten and that is one way to get on TV.
