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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Thursday, May 01, 2008

entry arrow2:22 PM | Character Sketches No. 1: The Dandy Security Guard

Everybody first saw him roughly two months ago, exactly a day after a robber -- armed with a gun and sheer chutzpah -- walked into busy Cafe Noriter in the early evening and held up a young girl and her mother, hauling away a laptop, some money, and a cellphone. I had been sitting in that same table five minutes previously, and if I hadn't left, that gunman's victim would have been me. Such are the tiny fates we brush with in our daily lives. The very next day, the Korean owners of the new cafe hired this young man to guard the doors. I noticed him, not so immediately, the very next day, when I came in to have my frappuccino and wifi fix. He looked intimidated, the poor boy: he was eternally gawking at the laptop crowd before him who were drinking things with funny Italian names he didn't know existed. He seemed too young, too thin, and too shy to fend off the random dangers from the street. But he had his blue uniform on, and what looked like a pistol in a holster -- standard issue, I suppose -- and that seemed enough to spell security for the little place. But the cafe's laptop crowd must have gotten to him. Soon, he was putting pomade in his hair. Soon, he was sporting a spiffy-looking pair of sunglasses. Soon, he was walking across the cafe with a strut, to the counter to get himself a glass of water, and then back to his post outside, where he positions himself against a parked motorcycle like Adonis waiting to be claimed by the gods. Everyone has dreams. This boy is probably living it.

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