I sympathize with the families of the three Filipino drug couriers executed in China, but Conrado de Quiros hit the nail on the head when he protested against their martyrdom by media. The Filipinos, labor and recruitment groups claimed, weren’t even OFWs: they smuggled drugs to other countries under tourist visas. “Drug mules make as much as half a million pesos per delivery. But such has been their transformation into victims that the government has been forced to commit to shoulder the education of the children they left behind,” de Quiros wrote. “What about the millions of honest souls who are toiling abroad who have been victims of disasters, wars and abuse? Why should government prioritize the needs of those who broke the law and not those who only break their backs for a living?”

For more than a year, the issue of money had been hanging over my head, primarily because I don’t believe that grad school is something my parents should pay for when they’re almost done financing the education of all their children—although now, my sister decided to go to med school next sem. But that’s her. It’s April, and I still don’t know how exactly I’m going to pay for the multimillion peso tuition; I’ll find out in a week or so if I’m getting more financial aid from Columbia. For a whole year, whenever people talked about money or expensive items, I automatically translated them into to grad school funds (“I just bought a condo in Salcedo Village” = “Holy cow, that can support several years of living in New York;” “I’m planning to buy a Birkin” = “Geez, woman. That’ll fund my tuition and more.”) I even bet on the lottery. Clearly, that didn’t work out.

My point is, the drug couriers weren’t on the brink of ruin and desperation. Television footage showed that their houses were decent, and that in some cases, their children had already grown up and left the coop. And even if they were on the brink of ruin and desperation, why take the easy way out and in the process, help ruin other peoples’ lives with illegal drugs? I’ve seen people cheerfully make the most of what they have, opting to make an honest living instead of supplying contraband goods. Better to sell bottled water on the street than illegal drugs.

Of course, J and I aren’t exactly mired in poverty, but I’d like to make a small example. For months, I’d been watching him struggle to pay off a credit card bill for a MacBook that was stolen from his house a mere two months after he got it. He finally just started working for PAL after a year of waiting for a slot, but before that, he accepted freelance writing jobs, primarily to pay for the stolen laptop. That’s what infuriates me the most: when criminals use their poverty as an excuse for the atrocities they commit, but never caring about the people they leave to suffer in the wake of the destruction they inflict.