Deebeedee! Deebeedee!

I was watching Contraband (starring Mark Walberg) last night when I realized how seriously they take smuggling in the United States. Perps concoct elaborate plans at par to a magician's disappearing act just to outsmart and go pass through US Customs. At times, the entire scheme is so uniquely designed and beautifully carried out that it becomes an inspiration to such movies as 2Fast2Furious and Contraband.

And then it hit me. Eons ago when VCDs where still the main 'goods' in the local tiangge, I planned to dip my hands on its market share. I went to the my friendly neighborhood suki and asked where she gets her supplies. She pointed me to the local public market.

After finding my way inside a labyrinth of a public market, I met my suki's supplier. After I told him I wanted to deal a considerably large number of VCDs, he offered to supply the 'goods' himself. I then told him that I was interested in a lot more discount in bulk than what he's offering me and so I asked where he gets his supplies and who his supplier was.

At first, he was then looking at me funny, checking me out from head to toe. I guess he was figuring out whether I had a badge on me or not. " Don't worry I'm not with the police", I finally said. He then called out another vendor from the next stall and they started conversing in arabic.

Now, not that I was being a racist ass, but at that time when bombs where going off  on the our neighboring cities and people disappearing never to be found or worse found piece by piece, I was truly convinced they were already plotting ways on how to discard my body.

Finally after they were done talking, the other vendor went back to his stall. When he returned, he was approaching me when he took something out from his malong. Thankfully it wasn't a gun but instead an old dilapidated notebook. He then took out a pen and started to write a name and number and gave it to me.

On the paper was a very common Filipino name and so I asked who this person was and he explained to me in a very thick accent  that they were just the 'distributor' and the guy on the paper is their 'supplier' as if  disclaiming himself.

From the stall, I then tried to dial the number but there was no answer. After trying the third time, I gave up and finally asked where I can find the guy. The other vendor then said, "you do not find him, he will find you". I was just looking to deal some VCDs for crying out loud not cocaine! It was the way he said it that made me feel like I'm in some kind of gangster movie.

To get it done with, I asked why such secrecy (probably the dumbest question considering the stakes) and the vendor, who I guess was starting to get annoyed, finally answered, "because he's from customs".

That was a very long time ago and I already forgot his name and his contact (just to be clear for those who are both interested in dealing and/or busting my caps).

What I'm trying to say here is that in American movies, you rarely see the the government people being involved with these things unless if it was the original plot in the story. In Contraband, the only time you get to see people being paid to do the dirty work was from the laborers in the port to delay the cargo ship on sailing. At the latter part of the movie, you can also see that the ship's captain was on it as well but that's about it. The government agents are almost always the ones who upholds the law in these movies. And if art truly imitates life, then my friend we are in deep crap.

In our country, it's always the Senator, Congressman, or even the Vice-president (we still leave a little bit of dignity for the President) who are the masterminds of these crime syndicates. And unlike our foreign counterpart, everyone here with an empty stomach (pretty much 90% of the country) can be paid and bribed. If you have the connections and the money, you can smuggle pretty much anything you want. You'll breeze in easy like bringing marshmallow on a trip no questions asked.

But to be fair, our system did improve quite a bit in the pass years. We can now see a lot of drug mules from other countries captured trying to smuggle their stuff inside our country. But somehow, I'm hypocritically thankful that we have a thing I like to call "selective justice" or else there wouldn't be DVDs for me to enjoy. I'm just saying.


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