Something happened at the framer's.

I was at a frame shop located in a somewhat seedy part of Makati last Saturday (I’m cheap, I tell you) and waiting for the manager to issue a receipt for our transaction, when I heard ghastly screaming outside the second-floor window. “What was that?!” I asked the manager. She glanced nonchalantly at the direction of the sound and shrugged, “A, wala 'yan” as if commotions of the sort were an everyday occurrence there. I walked back to the car where P was waiting and he said, “What took you so long? Akala ko maba-Babel na ako rito (referring to the movie where the character of Cate Blanchett [an American] was accidentally shot by a Moroccan boy and the whole fiasco was blown out of proportion back in the United States as a terrorist attack).”

According to P, while I was at the framer’s, a cop went running to a group of men, brandished his gun (Western-movie style), and collared someone. Since he was on foot and alone (go figure), he had to drag the man amidst the loud protestations of the man's family and friends. He then hailed a pedicab, kasi nga naglalakad, or what people here call a trisikad or padyak (because this conveyance is really a bicycle, fashioned as a tricycle). Anyway, he hailed a pedicab, threw his quarry in, and shouted to the driver, “Sige, dalhin dun!” which we could only surmise he meant as his office, the police station. The female relatives of the collared man were crying and told his group of tambay friends, “Sundan n’yo! Dali, sundan n’yo!” Someone produced a jeepney where everyone piled in (butcher, baker, candlestick-maker) and soon the bigger vehicle was behind the much-slower padyak, both traveling at maybe 5-10 km per hour.

One might probably laugh out loud at this comedy that is law enforcement in the Philippines, if the reality of the farce was not already too painful. 

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P’s artwork, titled Ang Paborito Kong Aso, mixed media on canvas: