I Got Robbed!
The other day I got my iPhone 4 stolen right out of my pocket without me even knowing. Don’t worry Mom, no violence occured… but I got duped. This is the first time I’ve ever been duped and I hate it.
Here is the Story
I was riding in a Jeepney from my home to my favorite coffee shop at the Baniland Town Center in Cebu City, Philippines. The Jeepneys are interesting old Jeeps left over from the American presence in World War II (I film some of them in this video.) Since the 1940′s they have been outfitted with two rows of benches running parallel with the street, pointing inwards towards each other. These are the home made passenger vehicles of the Philippines. I was listening to an internet business podcast on my iPhone with my apple earbuds, while sitting on the passengers side bench.
To signal the driver to pull over in a Jeepney, the passenger uses coins to tap the handrail which is welded to the ceiling of the vehicle. With a loud “Tack-Tack-Tack” sound, I announced to the driver that I wanted to get off. There was a commotion and I assumed the cause to be me requesting a pull over in the wrong spot.
Three little guys sitting in front of me, to my left and right began talking quickly in a strange dialect. ”aba aba aba Country Mall yada blah blah.”
I couldn’t understand them of course, and I still had no real understanding of how this mad Jeepney system functions, but I knew the Country Mall was just a 3 minute walk down the road from where I wanted to go so I just chilled and waited for the Country Mall stop.
As the Jeep was pulling into the Country Mall Jeepney bay, one guy sitting directly across from me on the drivers-side bench reached down between my legs in, what I thought was, an effort to find a coin I had dropped from my pocket. He seemed to have a hard time picking it up and then showed me the coin and offered it to me while trying to say something. I couldn’t hear him so I took my ear buds out to listen to what he had to say. I couldn’t understand him and refused the 1 peso coin he had seemed to find between my legs.
All of the sudden, the guy next to me was pointing out that I had a piece of gum stuck to my shoulder. Again, I assumed that these were nice guys alerting me that I had leaned into a piece of chewing gum that had become stuck to my shoulder.
By this time the Jeepney had pulled up to the curb and I got out of the Jeep to pull the gum off my shoulder and toss it in the bushes.
Then I checked my pockets as I normally do to make sure I had everything in order. My heart sank. Surprise surprise, no iPhone.
I immediately assumed it had fallen out of my pocket on the jeep so I ran over and leaped into the back of the jeep which had started pulling away. I searched around for the iPhone in the place where I was sitting. It wasn’t there and the other passengers were scared of me as I started yelling like a neanderthal. They pointed across the traffic ridden road trying to tell me that someone had taken my iPhone in that direction. I got off the jeep looking around for something to chase. I was ready to be like a lion chasing down some gazelle-like thief through the jungles of urban Cebu.
The witnesses were pointing down a dark ally surrounded by shanty style dwellings and rum vendors. What was I going to do? I don’t remember what the guys looked like. I couldn’t run after them too effectively anyways; I had a decent sized backpack on anyways. It would be like chasing a needle in a hay stack…
…no, it would be like chasing a needle in a needle stack. I was screwed.
The End
Thanks for reading. Leave some comments below and berate me for my foolishness!
-ian
