​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

Biz trip: Philippines

As a packaging engineer, I imagined my career would be spent developing attractive, innovative, low cost packages of superior functionality. I didn’t realize how much of the time I would be fighting figurative fires. 

One of those fires came around 1997, when our quality folks in the Philippines contacted us. Apparently they observed that our packages were leaking on a grand scale. We needed to get our butts there as soon as possible. 

We were expected to fly there, assess the problem, and bring back samples to the U.S. for further analysis. Before making travel reservations, I checked with our company’s Health Dept to determine what wonderful health hazards awaited us. Apparently the featured disease in the Philippines was malaria. But since we would be in and around the capital city of Manila, we were told there was “a very low probability of contacting infected mosquitos.” And so with that semi-assurance, I decided to forego the anti-malaria drug of choice and its scary side effects. 

I made the trip with our U.S. Quality Manager. We landed in Manila late at night, and were picked up by a limo driver. In the drive from the airport to the hotel, we passed through a warehouse district, and our driver drove through every red light. He must have noticed my reactions to these traffic violations, and simply said in minimal English, “Bad area, don’t stop.” Ah, good to know. 

The next morning we were picked up by one of our Manila coworkers. I climbed into the back seat of his car and noticed a recessed well behind my seat. As the car pulled away, three mosquitos rose up from that recess, like little phoenixes. I was suddenly captive in a car with three little terrorists. I kept an eye on this axis of evil, looking for any opportunity to clap, slap, or stomp them to death. Thanks to my paranoid vigilance, I avoided donating any blood.