Fungus meets The President

There are a lot of guns in the Philippines. Everywhere you go there are armed security guards, we have three of them in our office alone, and it's not unusual to see bank guards tooled up with old M16's. When I last lived here 5 years or so ago we had an incident with a guard and a shot gun.

He was 'just testing, sir' when a shell was 'accidentally' put in the chamber, the safety 'accidentally' turned off and the trigger ' accidentally' pulled. He blew his foot off and got a nice bit of compensation from our insurance company, but I don't think he ever got round to running a marathon.

I was invited to attend an economic briefing last week. I thought it would just be a networking affair and a chance to meet with fellow 'captains of industry' The event was held at a major hotel and I was hanging around the lobby wondering, why there were even more guns than usual. It turns out that the briefing was attended by the President of the Republic of The Philippines. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

She isn't that big in real life

My wife met the previous President, Joseph Estrada. Estrada was a famous movie star whose movies generally portrayed him as a modern day ‘Robin Hood’ (no not the black bloke out of Chips) The story is that he got elected by using his nickname ‘Erap’ so that the less educated Filipinos thought they were in fact voting for the character he played in movies, not the actor.

Anyway, so Erap visits the school where my wife was working at the time and one of his bodyguards ‘accidentally’ discharges a firearm……and shoots a Yaya (local word for a Nanny) in the arse.

This apparently is a true story.

Unlike my wife I’ve never been in the same room as a head of state before and the whole thing was pretty exciting for me. I saw the current Malaysian prime minister (Abdulla Ahmad Badawiat) at the Formula One race at Sepang earlier this year but he was about 100 feet away and driving round the track in an old Mercedes.

Some of my biking buddies ran into Mahatir Mohamed (former prime minister of Malaysia) on Kiara one morning, he was riding his horse with a few hundred body guards in tow.

For me though this is a first. She made the address and I was literally feet away from her. I couldn’t get a good photo though coz of a big pillar in the way. Instead I got a shot of her leaving.

She is actualy this big in real life

I think this is pretty amazing.......Fungus in the same room as the President................

and no one got shot in the arse.