MY FRIEND Alan (I’ll just call him that) had a thriving law practice in Metro Manila but gave it up. He now lives in New York, doing odd jobs helping friends do immigration law. It wasn’t an easy decision, he said. Of course, his wife had landed a lucrative job as assistant superintendent of a hospital in the Big Apple, but there was his job and standing in the Philippines to think about. Several things helped him make the decision that he did.

One was his kids’ education. They took to New York like fish to water, devouring its culture – library, theater, museums – like piranhas. They balked at the thought of going home after a long vacation, and in the end so did he.

Another reason was his health. He had become diabetic, and his treatment in the Philippines wasn’t working. When he got to the US, he got the right therapy, no small thanks to his wife’s connections, and he feels renewed. He has little doubt that if he had stayed in Metro Manila, he would be in bad shape today, his condition made no better by the kind of lifestyle lawyers lived there.

But there was yet a third reason. This one at least kept him in America even if it did not push him there. Many years ago, when he was still a lawyer in Manila, Alan, a friend from way back, came to me with a case of exploitation. One of his clients had been pirated from a good job by a multinational, and had been let off after a few months without being given benefits as set out in her contract. I wrote about it. Alan went on to win the case, though that is not necessarily cause and effect.

I asked about it when I saw him in New York. Whatever happened to the case of this woman? “Oh we won it all right even after it was appealed” he said. “But nothing happened.”

That was the wonder of it in our country, he said. It is one thing to win cases, it is another to get the ruling enforced. There is no lack of ways to block enforcement. It’s like getting a contract with government. It is one thing to win it and another to get government to pay. Half the time, you have to pay to get your due.

In the US, he said, ah, but that too was the wonder of it. There is no gap between law and enforcement. A ruling is made, it is enforced. That is true whether the case involves murder or debt. The court orders you to pay, you pay. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Or else, as in the case of debt, you have your properties seized. It’s not just death and taxes that are inevitable there, the law is too. You win in court, you win in life. You want to practice law, that’s the place to be.

He is currently reviewing to take the bar exams here this year.

Another friend, Gary (I’ll just call him that. too), had an unforgettable experience. Coming home one night and eager to get to where he was, he broke the speed limit near his place. A couple of patrol cars jumped out of the bushes and, with sirens wailing, signaled him to stop. The cops asked him to get off his vehicle, and he did. They did an alcohol test on him, and he registered way past the allowable limit. He had been drinking that night.

Gary was a huge success story in California and owned a big house in the suburbs. It wasn’t the first time he had drunk and driven there. A strong drinker, he figured he could always drive straight even after a wild night, and so long as he obeyed the traffic rules he’d be all right. We Pinoys, he used to laugh, will always find a way. We Pinoys will always get by.

He didn’t figure on getting impatient and over-speeding. He was just a couple of blocks away from his house when he got pulled over. The cops didn’t need to ask him if he had been drinking, he reeked of it. After he stepped out of the car, they put handcuffs on him. The sirens must have alarmed the neighbors because their lights popped up one by one and they peeped through their windows to see what was going on. “I’ve never been more humiliated in my entire life,” Gary said.

The drunkenness left him completely, and he felt more sober than a judge. Alas, not in ways that would contradict the things that measured alcohol intake. His ordeal did not end there. He was brought to the precinct and was made to spend a night in jail. His fine was a minor fortune, “wag mo nang tanungin kung magkano [don’t ask how much],” and he had to spend several weeks afterward in driving school to get his license back.

Gary now preaches to the young the use of a designated driver or better still not drinking too much even with one, with the passion of a convert or ex-convict. His ordeal, he said, happened some years after 9/11, but he never thought of raising the issue of profiling. Not even while he was being frisked, handcuffed, and driven like a common criminal to the station. Emphasis on common – he felt even less than common. Maybe it was profiling, but he knew he was wrong. He knew he had well, the word is not used in respectable publicationsk – up.

All in all, the experience did not leave him bitter, it left him appreciative of how things were done where he was. The law applied universally, given a lapse or two. The law was enforced resolutely, given a lapse or two. Driving school showed him so – his classmates came from all walks of life, from all shades and colors, from all stories of success and failure.

Of course, he muses, outside looking in that law can look so stern, so forbidding, so unyielding. So – inhuman. But in the end, he said, better that “inhuman” face than the very “human” one back home, the kind that had no eyes, the kind where blindness was universal. The kind where the next victim of the driver that got off for (very) drunk driving ended up being you. Or your kid.

Good points, I thought. And wondered why some people made rules with no thought to obeying them.