Perspective

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I was unfortunate enough to visit a Filipino jail house. My iPod had mysteriously vanished on a bus ride through the island of Cebu. It had dropped onto the floor and mysteriously found it's way into a fellow passenger's bag. Gone. So I had the dubious pleasure of sitting in the San Vicente Pulis Station for 2 hours while the casually dressed cop laboriously filled out a report. He was wearing the standard cop attire - shorts, thongs and a Philippine Idol tshirt. A big fuck-off pistol strapped very conspicuously on his hip served as the only hint that he was there in an official status. Well, that doesn't really explain much as many Filipino blokes seem to be carrying a pistol in the back of their shorts. For once it reassured me, as behind him was the open door into the cell house. 25 crims stared me down for the entire 2 hours, making things decidedly uncomfortable for me.

Fast forward 1 week. I arrived at my guesthouse and looked for my money belt. That familiar sinking feeling struck as I realised that the money belt, containing cash and my cards was gone. I lost this one, so there was no need to visit the local cops. Anyway, I bitched and moaned for a while about my poor fortunes until I was confronted with one of the homeless kids begging for food outside of the local soup restaurant. Perspective.

Last night a French guy arrived. He spent the evening on his laptop writing a journal and transcribing everything into a diary. He was very polite and kept himself separate from the others in the room. When I went to bed at about 11:30 he was still frantically writing away. Apparently he hit the bottle hard after that, and to borrow a phrase from my Cockney neighbour Jason, he got arseholed. He arrived back at 6am after partying with locals at the Filipino Disco. Its 2pm now and he woke up 30mins ago. A rancid hangover turned bad when he realised that his passport, credit card, bankcard and stash of Euros was missing. Why he took it all with him, I have no idea. So here he is, alone and without every essential for survival overseas in 2009. It is Sunday so everything is shut, it's raining and poor Jan is having a bad day.

I was lucky enough to be with Fam, so money wasn't a huge issue when I lost my stuff. A replacement bankcard is on its way to Holland and she was able to lend me enough to see me onto a plane North. Jan isn't so lucky. There's a Western Union branch here so his family will be able to help him, but France is currently asleep and stores here are shut. Poor bloke. Again, perspective.

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