Makati City, Philippines

[slang]

Here's something a bit different.

There's a joke for drivers. When it's lunch or dinner time they warn each other to stickly follow all the rules.

This is what one of the passengers in a car might say to the driver.

"Hey Slow down you jackass! It's lunchtime...don't you know!?"

The complete meaning of this "joke" has completely bypassed me until a few days ago.

There were 5 of us in a Kia Adventure on EDSA, I was in the front, a pinoy was driving.

We were in traffic that slowed down and the driver merged into the right hand lane to avoid the traffic jam. He very purposely merged out of the traffic and into a split in the highway to take a different route.

A police officer ran out into the highway to halt the car. It was 12:20 pm.

The driver yelled, "Oh Fuck!! It's lunchtime!"

Whatever.

He pulls the car over. The officer comes to the window.

Liscence, registration.

I was thinking to myself, what is the problem here but activated my STFU button for the duration of the "traffic stop".

The officer takes the L and R....comes back....speaks Tagalog for about 5 minutes with the other passengers.

His citation pad is out....he's writing something and speaking in a more serious tone in Tagalog.

I see the driver hand over a P500 note which the officer quickly crumples into his hand.

Then the officer says....OK, I've giving you a warning this time. I have to go eat lunch now.

Not really. Not about saying that he has to go to lunch. That is the only part that didnt happen.

He didnt need to say "I have to go eat lunch with your money for a warning, for an offense that you didnt commit"

I just laughed out loud.

I told the driver in all my miles on the road in the US not one single time has anything like that ever happened to me. That in all the backwoods billy-bob states and counties, in the north, south, east and west not one time has that happened to me and that I was truly a bit skeptical that it does happen here.

He laughed with me for a second or two.

"How do you know how much to give?" I asked.

He said normally he gives P100 but no one had any smaller bills today.

So now whenever we drive around, I make sure to have a few hundred peso notes.

With a "rich" white guy in the front seat, this will surely happen again.

At about 4 o'clock, just by coincidence I'm sure, we saw 2 other motorists buying the police dinner.