theft for life

Today, I learned that my son lost his laptop to a burglar in his home. The culprit worked his way to the second floor through the grills covering the garden on the first floor, then hooked out the laptop and let it pass through the window grills. I felt devastated knowing the extremely important data that the laptop contains and the many months and possibly years that my son had put into gathering and organizing his data.

Two weeks ago, because of too many pressures, I forgot my laptop inside a cab. My whole world seemed to crumble then. I kept walking to and fro on the street, trying to look for a cab that could help me run after the first. Then the tricycle drivers at the corner of the street helped me get one. Upon getting in, I asked the driver if we could look for that new cab, model 2005, except that I don't know where he had gone. The driver looked to the left of the street we were crossing and saw a nearly brand new cab. "That one looks new," he said. "Let's try it," I said as it looked like the cab that I had taken. True enough, after I got out and peeped through the glass window I saw my knapsack with the laptop on the front seat beside the driver's. Then the driver himself got out of the door in one of the apartments where the cab was parked. "Oh, I was going to bring it to you, except that I felt like pissing. So I passed by my house. I told you before I live nearby. I was really going to give it to you." Earlier, while inside his cab, I told him in which building of the Smokey Mountain relocation site called Paradise Heights I was going to, and he told me he knew the place.

I believed him -- that he really was going to return it to me. Otherwise, he could have brought it down to his house and then kept it for possible deals that he could make out of it. Some friends said perhaps he was going to pawn it. I don't know if I should say yes to that. I would like to believe in that never-ending goodness of the Filipino people.

But come to think of it, why does this government allow laptops to be pawned? And there are pawnshops selling second hand laptops and even celfones. This means that stealing these objects could be a lucrative profession because the thieves could easily wangle a deal out of them.
The pawnshops would not even report the serial numbers of the laptops nor of the celfones. Otherwise, many victims of thefts could have recovered their properties.

Anyway, these incidents show that there is a graver problem facing us today and tomorrow -- that of brazen behavior to cross legal rules and steal -- for food, for life, or way of life, we could pick our answer.