The Illegal-ish Story

       Hello there! It seems that I will be doing this for a while until I check back in with my fencing coach. Soooooo, more stories about my dad! If you're worrying that I am putting these stories online without permission, most of the stories that I know my dad uses as introductions to his presentations. There is literally no story that I can tell you that isn't already on the internet in some way or another.

       Anyways, the story this time is about crime. My dad never did anything too illegal in the U.S. The same cannot be said for him overseas. 

       A few years after the nuke in the wall incident in TI, he managed to ride up the corporate ladder and become one of the first dedicated environmental engineers. It's not as exciting as it sounds. He had to go to a bunch the factories where their stuff is being made and make sure that it is being made cleanly. The factory that is important in this story is the one in Philly. Not Philadelphia, the Philippines. For reference, the Philippines is an island nation near Vietnam. It's a pretty brutal place, too. My dad went around eating things like dog, not because he wanted to, but because there was no other good food around. There was trash and litter everywhere. My dad remembers one river that got so filled with trash that it acted like a dam and stopped the river. There are plenty of stories about what kind of place the Philippines is, but those can be for another time. What is important is that TI hired a permanent bodyguard for my dad that went with him wherever he went. My dad would wake up in the morning, he'd have to go and wake up the bodyguard to go downstairs. The bodyguard drove him around everywhere and accompanied him at meetings and stuff. While this may sound like torture, there is no one that my dad can't start a conversation with. So, the two of them actually became good friends. Near the end of my dad's stay, my dad expressed some displeasure in the fact that he was away from my mom for so long, so the bodyguard suggested a certain place that my dad was guaranteed to like. He started driving down a road that they had never gone down before. This was when my dad saw the aforementioned river of trash. They got to a village on the sea. It was supported by a bunch of pillars in the water, kind of like a dock. There were houses on the side in their own little inlet dock things, and the entire place was made of wood and the like. It was not a fancy village. At the end of the dock place was this marketplace area with little booths that were as tall as my ankle lining the side. There were all kinds of things like pirated videos and random thingamabobs. One booth caught my dad's eyes. It had a bunch of black pearl jewelry, like necklaces and bracelets. When my dad asked for a price, the guy at the booth pointed at a piece and said, "50 cents." He pointed at another one and said, "25 cents." All of the things were absurdly cheap for what they were, but that was the trend in the Philippines. A full course dinner was like 5 cents (you might not want to eat it, though). My dad had a 20 dollar bill in his pocket, so he was thinking of a way to buy the guy's entire stall. However, the guy selling the pearls got a bit nervous that my dad wasn't saying anything. He probably thought that my dad would leave and not buy anything. So, really indignantly, the guy said, "These jewels are real! I stole them from the factory myself!"  My dad was a bit shocked because he was just thinking about buying an entire stall's worth of stolen goods. After that fun realization, my dad wanted to get out of there. He bought one necklace from the guy because he felt bad about standing in front of his stall without buying anything, but he was still really worried when he was getting out of the country and they were doing all the bag check stuff. When my dad recently told me this story, my mom actually went up into her jewelry box and brought down the necklace that my dad bought. It had a nice shine to it. It was also 100% stolen.


       Hopefully I can get something different for next week. You know, something that actually involves the intended content of this blog. But until then, Stay sticky my friends.