It's almost 2am!

Power trip

I was having yosi at RCBC Plaza a while ago and I decided to sit down in front of the HSBC bank. Not long afterwards, a guard approached me and asked me – in a nice way – to not sit around. I asked why. He said: “Because this is a bank and it’s our orders.”

I just have a couple of questions:

1. Do I look like I have tools to break into a bank? All I was wearing was a jacket, a vest, and a t-shirt. My jacket was wide open exposing my t-shirt. I don’t think I look like I have a bomb.

2. Supposing I have tools to break into the bank, what is he there for? Isn’t he supposed to prevent people from breaking into the bank? It doesn’t look like I was even CLOSE to the door.

3. How come he can’t decide for himself whether I am a potential robber or just a weary walker wanting to experience the comfort of a level surface where he can rest his ass on?

Which leads me a dozen more questions: What’s up with us? Is terrorism and crime that bad here? Are we that paranoid to the point where we cannot trust anyone with public property? Is it bad to sit down anywhere we want? If this country is a democracy, why is power tripping / “following our orders” so prevalent everywhere? Do we have trust issues with every Filipino we see?

I went to HK this weekend and had to make a call to to the Philippines, but it was very noisy outside so I decided to go into the Cultural Center backstage (at the waterfront) to make the call. The guard did not even stop us. She did not ask for an ID or what we were going in for. In fact I was the one who approached her as a sign of courtesy.

Really. What’s up with us? Haaaay, we really have a lot of things to figure out as a nation…

posted by Rom / Rub according to the barista @ 10:33 AM