nba, gangsters, and scholars

watching the game that determines who gets the honor to be swept by the warriors in the exhibition series (the true NBA finals game 7 is tomorrow. the east-west series will just be a formality). will bulhot to buy sineguelas during half time because my daughters ate it all last night after they arrived home from a discoral in opra. trivia: opra is acronym for organization of philippine railroad, a barangay originally created by my father to relocate the squatters displaced by road expansion along the defunct railway that used to pass along the south highway and mabolo (that is why in mabolo there is a place called riles meaning railway in english which I know because there is a half way house my scholars hangout which used to be a drug den before duterte massacred all the drug dealers). If you lived in cebu in the 70’s and 80’s you remember that big haunted castle on top of the hill behind capitol before it was overshadowed by the tall skyscrapers we have now. we all believed a vampire lived there but actually the dude who lives there is a gay dude and close family friend who is very very rich and owns almost the entire property around the area. so when my dad approached him for suggestions on where to relocate the squatters the gay dude just told my father he will donate the land for free to the squatters and told him to just choose any property he likes amongst the many old and dusty boxes containing the deeds and tittles to his properties. incredible story. now my childhood best friend Allan Barabat even lives there, which is another incredible story on it’s own - his family was living in extreme poverty and i used to sneak out food from our house after meals hide it in my pocket to give to him. he was about to get kicked out from USP (a private school my mom sent him to) because he missed too many classes. but then at that time they had an assignment to write an essay about national reconciliation (at that time communist insurgency was a huge issue) and recite the speech in front of the class. so i wrote this essay for him that blew the mind of all the teachers in the school because it was so out of the box and brilliant. one teacher even remarked it should be published in the newspaper. i let alan memorize 5 lines each day repeat it over and over again the whole day and after 2 weeks when the day came to deliver the speech in class he can recite it in his sleep. i also added some icing on the cake by coaching alan to do gestures and some oratory gimicks i learned from glynda bathan's orations. the faculty was so impressed that they even let him graduate. hahaha. now he has been a manager of the pizza hut in gaisano country mall for 10 years already he has 3 kids who go to private school. I was shell shocked to learn lately that alan still remembers all the lines by heart he even recited it to us in front of my scholars while we were eating at his pizza hut joint. That was freakin’s 30 years ago how can he still remember everything? After graduation he went to manila, rode the boat without a ticket and hid in the bathroom during ticket inspection. He slept in luneta and met a notorious gangster who was wanted for murder in cebu. they belonged to rival gangs but since it was a far away place they decided to reconcile and become friends. They worked at a high end bar full of really beautiful dancers, mostly bastard children of foreigners so they were mestizas and they all lived in the same house so on weekends I would visit manila from los banos and they would give me the most beautiful girl I liked. Then he worked as a goon of a warlord in Luzon but after a while his conscience got the better of him he can’t continue any longer doing bad stuff for his warlord boss but it’s like the mafia where once you are in you can’t get out but he left anyway. He accepted his his fate and was waiting to be killed but miraculously his warlord boss got whacked first. He worked as a motorcycle delivery of pizza hut and now he is a manager and it’s always bring me joy to see his facebook posts on their corporate getaways and conventions at luxury resorts and hang out with celebrity guests. A long cry from when we were 13 years old and we used to sneak out my fathers car in the middle of the night to drive around town to look for stray dogs we can run over so him and his friends would cook it kalderata style. I was also a gangster like them but I swear to god eating a dog was a line I never crossed. Alan has been a source of inspiration for many of my high risk drug war orphan scholars. We would eat at pizza hut and alan would always be happy to tell our story and lessons on the importance of hard work and determination. Many of them are now following in his footsteps. One is now a call center agent, another works at the meat department of country mall, one is working at mcdonalds in escario, and another is working at mcdonalds in IT park. They tell me that if it wasn’t for me they would be bar girls by now - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2018/08/knowledge-bombs-on-marijuana-and-duckling-care.html

11/4/18 fb post:

Manhattan Druglord ( machine gun johnny ) it's funny one of the biggest and ruthless drug lords in new york was arrested by a civilian who had no gun and no handcuff. he just told johnny eng, "can you please come to my office because i'm going to arrest you?". johnny eng went with him and got arrested and eventually spent  20 years in jail. amazing !!! but the writer for this documentary failed to point out that maybe allowing himself to be peacefully arrested by a civilian gave him a harmless image that influenced the jurors into giving him only 20 years instead of life in prison. i'm sure he had a huge stash of cash somewhere and is now just living the rest of his life enjoying beautiful chinese girls and good food like peking duck. i remember in milpitas california i was in the driving range i saw this chinese dude eating very delicious looking peking duck and rice in one of those take out styrofoam box using chopsticks. you know the way chinese eat it makes you hungry just looking at them, especially the crunching of the fresh cabbage. i asked him where he got it. his directions led me to the back of a very strange and creepy old building in milpitas. no tables and chairs just a small take out booth.  there was a line of chinese dudes and i really enjoyed watching how skillfully the  owner would chop the duck. he would just put a small portion of duck in each styrofoam box then put some rice and some cabbages but when my turn came he would chop an entire duck and put it all in a the styrofoam box and give it to me. i told him i just want a single serving size portion like what the other guys are having because i'm just 1 person. he did not speak a word of english so we had to communicate in sign language. but he angrily insisted i buy the entire duck which was so expensive. i asked the other chinese customers for help i thought maybe it's just a miscommunication but they would all just ignore me as if i was not there (just like my facebook friends that was how being ignored everntually became my comfort zone). VERY WEIRD !!! i felt i was in some sort of twighlight zone. but then i saw they had this very tasty looking shomai so i signaled if i can buy 3 of those and all of a sudden he became happy and excited and put 3 shomais in the box. i asked if he can put some rice, he again burst in jubilation and put some rice in my take out box. it was actually cheap and it was the best tasking shomai i've ever tasted - it was so tender and juicy. for about 2 years i became a regular customer i would go there about 3 times a week and every time i go there i would point to the peking duck and then do the begging/praying gesture but he would always intensely say "NO NO NO NO NO NO !!!". until now i still had no idea why the hell he won't give me a single serving of peking duck. people can be scary sometimes. i remember i had this very close friend in our filipino community when i was in bay area california, we went snowboarding together and i was always happy to see him in filipino parties because we had the same line of work and i'm always excited to talk about work related stuff. but all of the sudden in one of the parties, i was so happy to see him and started talking to him but then he just ignored me. i got confused so i asked him if everything is ok. holy shit he just flashed that L sign on his forehead and said to me, "LOSER !!!". i was just, holy cow !!! what the fuck just happened ??? every since then i never made friends with anybody. i stopped attending parties and weddings and funerals. until now i still have no idea what the hell that was all about. i do have close friends right now but i can't even post our selfies in facebook because they are wanted criminals. i just post my photos with their daughters. they tell me they are glad to be my friend because if something happens to them someone will take good care of their kids. i'm like the pleasure is all mine you daughters are so attractive. i'm enjoying my life so much i won't trade it for anything else, not even being president or being famous celebrity. it's amazing how life works in wondrous ways.

(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)