Number Six, Please Turn to the Right part 2

In order to eliminate hair color, length, and style a police officer walked down the line and distributed shower caps. Not just any shower caps, but multi-color, krazy pattern shower caps.

So there we sat, ten of us in a row, wrapped up in to our chins in smelly wool blankets with shower caps on our head waiting for the witness to try to pick out the guilty party.

In the men's session, the witness failed to identify the suspect. But in the women's session, the witness identified suspect number six and of course suspect number six was -you guessed it- our very own Julie. (How could anyone ever think that little angle-faced Julie was guilty of anything?) Later, Julie joked that she was all offended becaused the accussed women was at least ten years older than Julie.

The night before when we told our daughters about our debut acting job here in Hong Kong, we had to explain to them that if the witness picked one of us, we would not be arrested. But after Julie was i.d.-ed, she did have to stick around for an extra half hour to fill out paperwork attesting to the fact that she was not in the vicinity on the night in question but was just an actress hired to stand in the line-up.

For giving up our entire Saturday afternoon, we each recieved HK$580 -or about US$70. That and one heck of a memory.

-Jack

When we had the details emailed to us late Friday night, the instructions stipulated that participating men could not have facial hair. I had to decide whether I wanted to keep my beard of three months or have the chance to be part of a Chinese police line-up.

My beard never stood a chance.

Number Six, Please Turn to the Right part 1

On television, whenever the police need to put a suspect in a lineup, the cops always seem to have a steady supply of other derelicts in lock-up that they can use as extras.

In Hong Kong, either they have a different way of doing things or they simply don't have an abundent supply of middle-aged white couples in lock-up ready to serve as extras.

Friday afternoon, just as we were preparing to leave work, a colleague approached Julie and me and said "Have I got an opportunity for you two."

We of course said yes.

Apparently, several weeks ago, a middle-aged white couple skipped out on paying their taxi fare. Things went from bad to worse, and before you know it, Whitey's in handcuffs. Fastforward to this past Saturday and it was time for the witness to identify the scofflaws.

That's were Julie and I, several of our colleagues, and a handful of other people we just met come into the picture.

We spent the better part of the day waiting for the slow machinations of justice to do whatever it is that happens behind closed doors down at the Justice Department.

The good news is that while we waited and waited we got free snacks courtesy of Hong Kong taxpayers (spending limit: US$3.50). After what seemed like an interminable wait and after making our way en masse through about half a dozen waiting rooms, it was go time.

The women went first. An hour later, it was the men's turn. Nine of us men were led into the lineup room. Yup, the front wall was a one-way mirror; nope, there were no lines painted on the wall behind us.

After we all took our position, there was one empty spot. Several minutes later, a side door opened and in walked a pair of police officers escorting a middle aged white guy. As he was led to the empty spot, the other nine of us were all thinking the same thing "Dude, it would have been a whole lot simpler just to pay the taxi fare."

Appreantly, getting ten middle age white guys in the room was a herculean enough task as it was. Getting then to have roughly the same body types, height, and hair color was too much to ask. We were a pretty diverse looking group.

In order to elimnate height as a variable, we were instructed to sit.

In order to eliminate clothing as a variable, a police woman distributed heavy wool blankets that had been used for who-knows-what previous purpose. Julie said hers smelled like urine. That sounds about right.

As if things weren't weird enough already, things were about to get really surreal.

Excuse me Ma'am, I Speak Jive

On her way home to Hong Kong on Korean Air, Julie was upgraded to first class.

Five weeks earlier on her flight to Chicago the flight crew called for any available medical personal on board the plane. Julie raised her hand.

A young boy on the flight was having breathing problems. Turns out Korean Air stocks inhalers on all their planes. Julie simply instructed the mom and the staff on the proper way to administer the inhaler. She also monitered the young boys heart rate and breathing.

To express their appreciation, the flight crew gave Julie a free deck of Korean Air playing cards as she got off the plane.

But five weeks later, when she was preparing to board a Korean Air plane to come back to Hong Kong, the agent behind the desk pulled her aside. Julie thought she was in trouble. The young man explained that Korean Air wanted to further express their gratitude by upgrading her to first class. They also gave her a souvenir blanket in its out carrying case.

They followed all this by giving her a letter of appreciation.

Even before all this transpired, Julie was very impressed by Korean Air's low prices and excellent customer service. Korean Air has definitely become the aircarrier of choice in the Van Noord household.

What is the monetary value of a human life? I don't know, but its nice to think that at least Korean Air thinks that its value is greater than a commerative deck of playing cards.

-Jack