An odd situation, which would be OT on any thread but this one, where nothing is OT:
Six or so months ago a fellow surfaced here that I vaguely knew from previous lifetimes in Manila, a personable, talky Aussie fellow in his mid 50s. He was hanging around with a friend of mine who runs a business here, and obviously angling for a job; he greeted me as an old friend, though we were little more than bare acquaintances. He'd been around Hong Kong a good bit, we had mutual friends there. My friend with the business asked me to check the guy out; I talked to the HK friend, David Hung, producer of bad movies and operator of post-production facilities, good guy. Also with my old friend Nick in Manila who runs a post-prod shop owned by David. The word that came back was 100% negative: the guy is a con man, owes money all over town, rips off everyone he deals with, etc. Common enough species in these parts. I pass on the word, the fellow vanishes, I figure it's over. Wrong.
Now we discover that this unsavory fellow is shacked up in a miserable little roach-ridden dive in downtown Olongapo, dying fast of cancer. His family back in Oz wants nothing to do with him. The embassy wants nothing to do with him. The doctors give him maybe a month or two, no more, say it's useless to be blowing money on him in a hospital. He hasn't a friend on the face of the earth, and he can barely move.
So we his enemies, who concluded six months ago that the world would be better off without him, put our heads and wallets together, rent him a wheelchair and a halfway human place with a little bit of garden, and hire a nurse to feed him and push his wheelchair out to the bit of garden, little bit of money for the necessities. Arrange with a couple of decent-hearted Aussies in the neighborhood to come and visit now and again, bring him a bit of vegemite. Fortunately this is the third world, where these things can be had at modest cost. I will roll the pickup around to move him in a day or two, when the new place is ready.
I do not like this person. In fact, I actively dislike him. Logic tells me that there are millions of people in the world, probably thousands within a few miles of my doorstep, who are more deserving of my help. But if we do not do this nobody will, and nobody should die like that.
I have yet to work out my feelings on this, other than feeling that it is all a royal pain in the ass and I wish I didn't have to deal with it.
But I do, for some inscrutable reason.
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