bright idea
Life would be so much happier for me if I am easily impressed, if I expect less from peole. "Would" is the operative word here because in truth, I am not. Panlalait can be so addicting, nitpicking has become an uncurable habit, and I have been in an unchanging state of disbelief….Of course, as a gay friend once said, "plasticity is da best policy", and I have imbibed that so it is easy for me still to say "wow galeng!", "astig", "okay ah", "panalo", "wagi ka dyan sister", "ok naman eh" through clenched teeth… Yes, Pamster the phoney…. That is why surprises are worth writing in a blog…
Of course, I can delude myself into thinking I am jaded –because it’s cool to be so– when in fact I embarrass myself with this open display of naivete ( to put it bluntly "katangahan"). This is Pamster the poser speaking.
Last Friday I got conned by a one-handed amputee riding a battered bike. I just as easily handed 50 pesos, which would have been one hundred if I didn’t have any change. As I was waiting for a cab with nina at 3am, he rode up to us with a a tablet wrapper (?!– for lack of a better term). HE asked us if we could do him a small favor by buying his wife’s high blood prescription at the nearest drug store. He didn’t have any money and would– at first– not accept money because as he said, he knows how it is to earn a living and how important money is to us. He wouldn’t actually do this but it’s just that his wife was really sick and all he needs the money for is her medication. He told us that a tablet would cost 41.25 Php. .. Now of course the nearest drugstore still open at that hour was in Kalayaan, which was quite a long walk at 3am. Of course we will not walk all the way there to get his medicine. So naturally we just gave the poor guy money to buy the medicine himself. And since 41.25 was an off amount, I just handed him 50 pesos. And watched him ride off into the night to do either of two things: a.)fly to the drugstore to buy the tablet to save his wife’s life or b.) wait for another gullible call center agent to do the same routine.
Lesser beggars would just walk away with loose change at the most. With this method, he could make an easy 500 pesos a day with just about 3 hours’ work. Just find the right location and work at the right hours, and approaching the right people. 500 pesos a day is like 12,000 pesos a month. That’s just about what an entry level call center agent ( in a start up call center I gusess) earns before tax & other deductions. Brilliant. I don’t know if this is original , but I just find this brilliant. He truly deserves the 50 pesos, and more.
I think this is a better idea than snatching someone’s phone, kidnapping someone’s kid, screaming your lung’s out in a funded "rally" , waiting around in a feeding program, gambling your last savings on lotto, jueteng, a freakin horserace or cockfight, selling your home & farm animals for a visa to some godforsaken first world country.
Now, if this picks up, the novelty would die away and people will know that this is a scam. But until then, that one-handed guy should strike while the iron is hot, and invest his money wisely. Hopefully, if he does have a wife, she wouldn’t drop dead of high blood. There is such a thing as karma… But that’s another issue and another blog entry…
