Politeness Pays: Filipino American Wins Largest Lottery Prize in the Philippines

Now here’s another reason why you should have good manners: According to the BBC, a 60-something Filipino American visiting the Philippines won the largest lottery prize ever there: 750 million pesos or about $17 million. According to the winner, a woman pushed him out of the way to buy her lottery tickets and he let her go ahead. Given that lottery tickets in the Philippines are sold consecutively, if she had waited her turn, she would have won. Instead, because of his politeness, he won instead.

I was personally hoping that my dad was the guy who won since my dad has impeccable manners and given that the BBC reported that the winner is a 60-something Filipino American father of 3, but unfortunately, my dad was still here in the US when the winning ticket was drawn. (And I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for pharm school, but oh well.)

(Flickr photo credit: missjdub)

About Efren

Efren is a 30-something queer Filipino American guy living in San Francisco. In the past, he was a wanna-be academic even teaching in Asian American studies at San Francisco State, a wanna-be queer rights and HIV activist, and he used to "blog" when that meant spewing one's college student angst using a text editor on a terminal screen to write in a BBS or usenet back in the early 90s. For all his railing against the model minority myth, he's realized he's done something only a few people can claim--getting into UCSF twice, once for a PhD program in medical sociology which he left; and then for pharmacy school, where he'll be a member of the class of '13. He apologizes profusely for setting the bar unintentionally high for his cousins. blog twitter
This entry was posted in Observations. Bookmark the permalink.