Day 14 of My 31-Day Writing Challenge: Filipino Relatives
Filipinos are known for having a really large family. The more, the merrier. It does help when you have more family members to ask for help, but I don’t know about the merrier part. Both sides (my father’s side and my mother’s side) of my family have a huge number of relatives and I don’t even know most of them. Relatives, whether you like them or not, they are a part of your family and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I have this one particular uncle that I don’t personally know, he is a lawyer in the Philippines, and he is one of my father’s cousins. I cannot even remember his name, so let me call him Uncle Lawyer. I asked my father to ask Uncle Lawyer about certain legal matters in the Philippines. After my father asked him a couple of questions, he told my father that he will “send a bill” later?!! My father was so surprised that he told me that he has to pay his cousin for “ a legal advice payment”, if that’s what they called it. My father has no money to pay for his “million dollar answer”, so to avoid a nonsense fight with this crooked uncle, we paid for the said bill. It was an absurd amount of money and I know he was taking advantage.
It’s sad to know that when some members of your family know what you can give, they will make sure to take that opportunity. I know living in a third-world country is a challenging place for most Filipinos, and most of them are living from paycheck to paycheck every day. It’s so unbelievable to know that these other Filipinos would take advantage of their own relatives. There’s a well-known saying that “there’s no relatives when it comes to business.” I would fully support my whole family with whatever business they’re into, but not to the point that they would use their expertise or talent to exploit me.
I happen to have a member of my family here in the US who is also a lawyer, but I’ve never heard him say that he’s going to send us a “legal advice fee”. We also have a lawyer friend who helped me with my immigration and naturalization, she didn’t even asked for an excessive amount to help me to become an American citizen. Now, that’s the difference when you have a helpful family member or a friend who truly cares about your well-being.
After dealing with my crooked Uncle Lawyer, I told my father to never again approach him again or ask any questions for he might send him another “legal advice fee”.
