Strange stories
BE careful with that Christmas tree. A friend and his family landed in the hospital last week after their Christmas tree caught fire, most probably from defective decorative lights. He, his wife and their two children were on the second floor dressing up for church when smoke enveloped the entire house.
Luckily for them, their helper was on the ground floor, where the burning Christmas tree also was, at that time. She managed to run out of the house to ask for help. A neighbor immediately responded but because of the thick smoke, he had to break a glass window to allow the occupants to escape. They were immediately rushed to the hospital where they remained confined as of yesterday because of the amount of fumes that they inhaled.
The lesson here is that a welllighted and decorated Christmas tree can be friend or foe. Make sure you unplug those lights when you’re not around your tree.
Is it really possible that sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction?
In Liverpool, England this week, an accused in a rape case turned the table on his accuser, claiming it was she who forced herself upon him.
The heavily-set bouncer said the woman, who was drunk, ask for a lift and then when they were in a secluded area, she sexually assaulted him. She was so violent, he told the court, that at one time he feared that she would destroy her "manhood."
Meanwhile, in Manila, the other day, two fraternity brothers of President Rodrigo Duterte held a press conference to deny that they extorted p50 million from a Chinese casino operat or.
The two lawyers, who have only been appointed assistant commissioners in the Bureau of Immigrations a few months ago, admitted receiving the money after video footages showed them carrying paper bags handed to them by a representative of the Chinese.
They, however, denied having committed any wrongdoing, claiming that they took the money only for evidence purposes as they were investigating allegations of corruption in the bur eau.
As proof of their innocence, they returned the money yesterday but not the full amount of p50 million as they have, according to them, given P2 million to the agent as his commission and P18 million to their intelligence chief for reasons they did not
say. Strange, no? And here, closer to home, a public school principal told her superiors that a seventh-grader died while attending class after he fell from his chair to the floor. The 13-year-old boy was said to have fallen asleep inside his classroom.
Excuse me? How high is the chair? How violent was the fall? How hard was the floor?
If the strange story is true, the department of education should fire his teacher to prevent a repetition of the sleeping-then-falling incident.
Sir or Ma'am must be a very boring teacher.