May I have your recommendations for buying a TASER, please?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Beestie

CRC brake cleaner. One shot in the face and down he goes. Don't get the green can - it has to be the red can. They come in small "toolbox" sizes - the 16oz can is too big. I got this info from someone I believe to be reliable. And you can always come up with a lame excuse for why you are carrying it around. I used to live close enough to the Phillipines to know that it is a lawless jungle - esp. for females. Good luck to your friend.

But, I think she at least needs to follow wolf's advice and at least make a gesture to the authorities - even it its useless, they can't say she didn't try.

I second this very inventive solution. From personal experience.

I was changing the brakes and had the drum off the car once and in the process of cleaning the cruddy, muddy, greasy blech off the parts, I managed to spray myself in the eyes. I was cleaning a bearing race and the part made a neat U-turn of the stream of chemicals right into my face. I never saw a neater trick in the cartoons to return an attackers fire. Damn. Anyway, my shade tree mechanical comedy show was immediately preempted by several minutes with the garden hose in my face. This shit will do the trick, it's cheap, innocuous, shoots a long strong stream, and effective. Except for the effective part, I suggest you go to the local auto parts store and buy a can a try it out for your self. You don't even need the little coffee stirrer nozzle to get the right effect.

[Tonchi]

Cool! Thanks for the hint, Beestie, I'll definitely pass that on. She could stash a can of that in every room of the house and in her car and the police couldn't say anything.

As for "reporting him to the authorities", such as they are, I told her to go to the Barangay chairman of her district. It appears that it's not going to help, because she was told that until he actually lays hands on her there is no proof of bad intentions, and besides, he was seen in an apparently friendly chat with one of her other aunts outside their gate. Told you that your family is often your worst enemy over there, and it was not her aunt's mother who died in that creep's house. No doubt her aunt will tell her she behaved in a very shameful manner if she actually manages to get the best of her tormenter.

I wish we could be talking about immigration options instead, even in her household everybody agrees that it's the only way for my friend to have any kind of life

[BrianR]

if she also carries a cigarette lighter in addition to the CRC, I'd go for it. It allows two levels of response. I've done this with wasp killer and it's damn effective. Psychologically, the fear of fire is deeply rooted in all living things except moths. Failing that, having the hair scorched off one's head, eyebrows and all, will humiliate the male for a good long time. Not much worse than that in Asia. Good luck.

Brian the Magnificent (just wondered what that would look like in print)

[Catwoman]

I often think there's a simple solution to any problem. But when it comes to this... survival... you do what you have to. I don't really have anything to add.

[BigV]

brake cleaner + lighter = http://images.google.com/images?q=wd40%20flamethrower

more personal experience

[jaguar]

deoderant works just as well and is about as innocious as you can get.
but it's not exactly something you whip out. However if someone comes towards you a 1m fireball is a good deterrant.

[Beestie]

Honestly, the lighter is a cool idea and all, but in an abduction situation I would seriously discourage trying it. She'll be damn lucky if she has time to retrieve the can, figure out which way its aimed, rotate accordingly and squeeze off a stream without having to use up another hand (her only free one), fumble for bic lighter (small and hard to pick out of a crowded purse), orient it correctly, ignite it and line the two up in the direction of the attacker and squeeze of a fireball.

Keep it simple.

One shot of BrakeCleen in the face - aim for the upper lip and not the eyes. The point is to induce unconciousness. If you only hit his eyes, he's still awake and can lunge forward and still grab you but if any of that stuff gets in his lungs, he'll drop like a wet dishrag and be out cold for a good while. Besides, if you hit his upper lip some will probably get in his eyes anyway but you could easily hit his eyes and completely miss his nose.

Its not lethal - he'll wake up after a while with a migraine.

Other than playing around in the garage, I'd pass on the deodorant idea - not all of them work as flamethrowers and I don't think any of them would incapacitate an abductor - none of them contain solvents in sufficient concentrations.

[Tonchi]

You guys have given us some great input, and now we have a shopping list for this weekend. Special thanks to BigV for taste-testing one of the solutions!

As tempting as the flamethrower sounds (in her opinion, it would be a very appropriate finale for the guy who was responsible for her mother's death and very nearly her own), when you are always in crowd of thousands of people, even shoulder-to-shoulder, it really would not be possible to execute. And she would instantly be branded as a terrorist and arrested and then we would never get her a visa. We think the best way to go is with the brake cleaner in the car and house and a pepper spray in her purse, then a palm-sized stun gun goes everywhere with her, even to bed. All of those items can be used more than once, and at close quarters without taking out half the pedestrians around her. We have also spoken to one of the local ambulating beauticians, who has a cell phone, about casing the house occasionally to see if he is hanging around the gates. My friend has spent too much of her life locked up inside those gates already, and she wants her life back.

[BigV]

Uhhh... thanks. Just for the record, I was truthful in my post, but I am not the only one. From here:

I cleaned up the oil pan, finding some more chain bits and random chunks of sprocket teeth (I'm sure glad I did this). While I cleaned, Scotty removed the bottom end bearings, finding a few with some slight scores and one just worn thru the silver coating. But overall, they didn't look too bad and the crank looked beautiful. I ran out for some STP oil treatment to use as prelub and installed the new connecting rod bearings while Scotty finished lapping the exhaust valves. We did experience a slight disaster when Scott bravely used his eye to keep an errant squirt of brake cleaner from getting on Bob's tools. That prompted a quick trip to an eye bath station. He was really hurting, that stuff really stings.

[lookout123]

if the guy is that much of a threat, and nobody really cares if he were to meet his demise... surely in a relatively lawless society it should be fairly easy to find someone who specializes in "disappearing" people, for a nominal charge. i'm just sayin'.

[Tonchi]

You are absolutely right, and in fact we think the reason this creep has a sudden fatherly interest in her again is because some people he ran afoul of have a contract out on him. He could either be planning to get money for ransom in order to pay off his pursuers or to try to extort money from my friend in order to be able to hide. If this guy "disappeared" it would make more than one person happy, but the fact is that my friend would not willingly harm any life form. She is a very decent person, although she has learned that being decent does not mean you are weak and helpless and men can do whatever they want to you. Wishing somebody dead is one thing and making it happen is something different where she is not going to go. I guess what it all comes down to is she's repulsed by what she sees the Filipinos are like, which is no small part of the problem she has being stuck there.

[lookout123]

well, if she can get to mexico, she can just walk across the damn border into the states and be one of the millions of illegals who...

[Beestie]

One thing I don't get is this. Earlier you indicated that the "wealthy" filipinos could buy some fake docs for 10 grand and easily get off the island. I gathered that your point is that there is no way she or her family could afford that. So, if they are not able to scrape 10k together then why would anyone kidnap her for ransom?

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by Beestie

One thing I don't get is this. Earlier you indicated that the "wealthy" filipinos could buy some fake docs for 10 grand and easily get off the island. I gathered that your point is that there is no way she or her family could afford that. So, if they are not able to scrape 10k together then why would anyone kidnap her for ransom?

She COULD have gotten a visa that way. We had an agreement with a lady who runs a "travel agency" that for $5,000 she would guarantee the visa. The way they do it is you pay the "travel agent" and they make out all your papers. When you go to the embassy for your interview, they are expecting you and mark your name and send you to a specific consul who has already been paid off. He grants the papers and you go home to celebrate.

But when I saw the way the lady was doing the papers (showing that my friend owned a non-existent company, etc. to prove she had ties in the Phils.), I cancelled the agreement and we went for a student visa instead. We had all the papers and approvals on our end, but in the time between when we started and the time when she submitted the petition the Philippines had paid off the terrorists in Iraq to rescue one of their citizens to the tune of $6 million (not one penny for schools but millions for extortion) and dropped out of the farsically-named Coalition of the Willing. So to get even, Homeland Security decreed that all visas to leave the Philippines would automatically be rejected and no reason was to be given to the applicant. They were ordered to tell the applicants "you do not qualify" and send them away (but keeping your fees of course). You can apply once a month if you want to spend the money, but they will never tell you why you are being rejected. This was actually put on the government website here.

The embassy used to give detailed explanations to those who got rejected, so they would know what they were not doing correctly in order to qualify, but no longer. Hence the doubling of the bribe needed to pocket that visa. In fact, that same day another relative told my friend that she had been a fool to back out of the "travel agency" deal and that she herself could recommend a consul who approved all the people SHE knew. Still in shock, my friend sat there and was regaled with stories about how the money was laundered to get it to the obliging consul.

It's not that the aunt who adopted her CAN'T pay that bribe. She could, but it is not in her self interest so she won't. It was her plan that my friend should continue to live with herself and her sisters, as a spinster for the rest of her days, waiting on these women hand and foot, being their driver, and nursing them through their final illness. This was "what God intended for you to be", and they consider her very egotistical, ungrateful and selfish to want to leave them. You do not try to reason with these people, they are not even on the same planet that we are.

So what we DID do was actually start a company. We are selling CDs and other fan items for the club we both belong to on the internet. When we have paid off the inventory costs and cleared $2,000, we plan to turn it over to a Filipino lawyer in San Francisco who specializes in resolving "impossible" immigration cases. We broke even on our books last month, and within days "Voldemort" showed up. It seems like no matter which way you turn in that country, there is somebody trying to block your way.

As to who this creep would plan to extort the ransom? Thanks to one of those brain-dead aunts, he thinks his daughter has a rich American benefactor. So if the aunt who adopted her won't give him money, he probably thinks he can get it out of me. It does not have to make sense, that's the way they think over there. US$500 is a FORTUNE to them. And I don't even want to tell you what else he might do with her if he got another offer.

[Beestie]

Gotcha. That's a very unfortunate situation and I wish you and your friend the best of luck. I'm not supposing that I have all the answers but Canada might be a better option than the US at this point. Getting into the US from Canada is considerably easier and Canada isn't a bad place to wait it out.