Land Transportation Office (LTO)

I just love the corruption in this country. Two days ago, I went to the Land Transportation Office (LTO), equivalent to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in the States. I just had my license expire oh, for about a year. A friend of mine, also had his license expire, except his expired for two years. I imagine, it'll either take him longer, or more expensive to get his license renewed. Anyway, we woke up that day, met up, and it was off to the LTO for us.

It was a hot Friday morning in Mandaue City, Cebu, Philippines. My friend and I ate our breakfast separately, and at about 8 am, we arrived at the LTO office. Take note, we were in the domain of the government, and my friend and I, between us, we had 5 years of expired licenses. But when we pulled up at the LTO office with a Toyota Corolla, we weren't given a hard time. I parked my car in front of the office and locked it up. If you don't lock up your car here in our country, even if you park it in front of a police station, it's still gonna get robbed. That's protocol.

Anyway, almost immediately, two guys in street clothes approached us and asked us what we were doing there. No, we didn't get back in the car, we were used to this. These people are what we call fixers. They make our lives easier by handling all the paperwork, for a fee of course. Normally, it'll usually take 262 pesos to process an expired license. The wait for that would be like a week. In our case, we wanted it processed within the day. So that cost us about 1200 pesos. 1000 pesos is a lot of money for people like us. That's a lot of cigarrettes, man. 25 packs of Marlboro reds to be exact. But we took it. Hell, I've worked all my life to fix the system. And all my efforts were futile. A lot of people died doing the same. Hell if I'll die over this shit. If you can't beat them, take advantage.

Anyway, the guy told us there'd be no way it'd be done by the end of the day because we had to take the exam which took place on mondays. Okay fine. So we took care of the other papers, which were the pain in the ass in processing anyway. So we had our piss tested for drugs, and we had a medical examination. Funny, we were never given a vision test. Common sense should have told them that. Anyway, the "doctor" (I quoted because I wasn't sure if that man was really a doctor) took our vital stats. Height, weight, and in place of the vision test, blood pressure. Okay, I'll try to understand that. Can't have young, hot headed people driving on our streets. Fine.

After that, it was back to our fixers, who should have the other papers ready by now. They told to go to the back of the office to meet someone from the inside. This was a bigger operation than I thought. They had people on the inside. That was cool. Anyway, she gave us our papers and we had them signed by the chief himself. The chief was this short, fat, high strung, trash talking guy. That didn't bother me much because I work with high strung, mostly irate people. Anyway, the short, fat guy told us to come back on Monday.

Monday, 7:30AM. We got to the office of the LTO and we were greeted by our fixers, who told us to go to the back to take the written exam. One of them said not to worry because we would be given answers. I told him we didn't need the answers. It was a very easy written road exam, anyway. My friend said, "Don't worry 'bout it. We already paid for it, so let's just take advantage." Okay. So we went to the back.

There he was, guy in black, the proctor. It was now 8:00AM. The guy announced that the exam would start at 9. That was fine. That's usually how we do it in this country so people wouldn't be late. So the proctor started chit chatting among the examinees, mainly us. We were told, the exam was really, really difficult because it was computer generated. I said to myself, "whatever." He said, in one class, 10 out of 40 passed that exam, and 5 out of those 10 had to pay their way to pass. He also said the chief himself didn't pass the exam on his first take as well. Okay, that caught my attention. This must be a really difficult exam. I braced myself. My friend, who sat beside me, looked relaxed, but I bet he was also nervous.

The fat ass, high strung, LTO chief came out with the test questionnaires. He was trash talking again saying we were all going to fail. He shouted at one of the examminees who was standing in the corner asking him who the hell he was. I believe his exact words were, "Who the fuck do you think you are standing there like a somebody? Everyone else is seated yet you stand there like you own the place! Sit the fuck down!" I said to myself, "Ookay." Shortly he started giving out the exam papers, which consisted of 4 pages: 3 questionnaires and an answer sheet. We all got our pencils, and started scribbling.

Here comes the funny part. All of the questions in the exam were give-aways. Here's a question for example.

You should be alert and awake when on long drives.
If at any point you feel sleepy, you should:
a) Pull up to the side of the road and take a rest.
b) Take Metamphetamines or Crystal Meth.
c) Take Marijuana.

Okay, what the hell?! And 30 of 40 couldn't pass? Then I remembered. Most of the people in this city couldn't read or write in english. Damn. Anyway, I finished the exam as soon as I could, grinning, trying not to laugh.

I signed on the bottom part of the page, saying that I took the exam with a sound mind and body. And proceeded to submit my paper. My friend did the same. When I got to the front to submit the paper to the proctor, he pulled out from his desk another answer sheet all with correct answers and asked me to sign there. Okay. So this is how they do it. Everyone, even the people on the inside were in on it. Nice. Anyway, I compared all my answers with the answers from the other paper, and guess what. I had all the correct answers! And the chief himself couldn't pass. Oh my God. I could be the LTO chief. But at the wages these people are making, think I'll pass.

Anyway, we both finished the exam and laughed before going back to our fixers. They asked us how it went. We told them, "Just like chicken". They told us to come back at 1PM and our licenses would be ready. At this point, it was still like 10:30, so we went to visit an old friend who lived nearby until 1PM came. We had lunch, came back and sure enough, we were certified, non-professional drivers again. We gave our fixers a hefty tip. And off we went into the void.

One thing I learned from this whole experience, if you can't fix the system, take advantage.

Wazzzaaaaap

To my loyal readers (that's if there are any),

I've been busy and I have nothing to say. A friend of mine pulled the words out of my mouth.

This is what I wanted to say.

'Till next time