The Drug Bust, Part 3 of 3

The bus finally arrived, which was helpful, because I wasn't sure if Samish was expecting me to describe my comparatively boring life where I spent most of my time shuttling between lab, classes, and studying. As a television character, the best I probably could be compared to would be an extra in the background. The bus driver was a large cheerful man named Tracy, and Samish rushed forward to introduce himself and shake his hand. Tracy seemed stunned, not used to being introduced to his passengers. I decided it was probably best not to follow Samish's lead and did not introduce myself. “Hey man,” Samish said to Tracy, “speed as much as you want. I've got protection.” “Oh really?” said Tracy, with a bemused smile on his face. Discounting the fact that the bus we were in could only go forty miles per hour, just barely above the speed limit, the fact that someone was openly bragging about being protected by cops was an amusing one, to say the least. Samish then proceeded to repeat his entire story while I gazed out the window at the passing scenery that I had seen a thousand times before.

“So yeah man, I'm afraid to be out in public now. I mean, last week, my car was stolen, and I'm not even sleeping in my own place any more!” said Samish, ending his second retelling of his story. Besides these details, the rest of the story remained unchanged, so I just went along with it. Tracy seemed to be more interested in the story than I was. “So how did you know all these guys?” he asked, referring to the laundry list of people that Samish reportedly gave to the police. “You know the 18^th Street gang in Tijuana?” Samish replied, “I used to be a part of it.” A former gang member with an MBA and billionaire parents who lives life in the fast lane; could it get any better than this? Of course, I had no knowledge of the supposed 18^th Street gang, but for the sake of simplicity, I again just took Samish's word for it. “What do you mean by 'used to be a part of it'?” asked Tracy. “Oh, I retired,” Samish said nonchalantly, looking quite proud of himself. I wasn't aware that one could retire from a gang. In my head I wondered what a retirement package would look like. Obviously, he had forgone any protection he got from the gang in his admission today, but he didn't seem too bothered by it.

As we approached the final stop, Samish suddenly asked, “Hey, do you think you could let me off a little beforehand?” “Sure,” Tracy replied, “I'll let you off at the stop right before.” “Great, thanks.” said Samish. “I don't want to be seen in public too much, so many people are out for me.” One can never be too careful I suppose, but once again, he had just told his story to two complete strangers who could have readily identified him in a lineup. Or a body bag. Preferably the lineup, or not at all. We stopped by the pool and Samish got off, walking towards the library, his eyes shifting side to side every now and then.

“Do you know him?” Tracy asked, turning to me. “No, I have no idea who he was,” I reply. “Interesting guy though,” Tracy said, turning back to close the bus doors. “Yeah,” I agreed, as we made our way back on the road. I never saw or heard from Samish again.

The Drug Bust, Part 2 of 3

Most people at the bus stop do not talk to one another, unless of course they are traveling together. Likewise, complete strangers rarely introduce themselves to you for no good reason, especially at bus stops. As both of these commonalities were about to be violated, there was some cause for alarm. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand, “I'm Samish.” “George,” I say, nervously shaking his hand. I immediately regretted not driving to school today. “You know Officer Rinco?” he asked. That's an interesting conversation starter; at least for conversations not between police officers or criminals. “No, no I don't,” I reply, really wanting the bus to arrive more quickly. “Oh,” says Samish. “Well, did you see that squad car a while ago? That was him. I've got protection. I'm in the witness protection program.” Well good news there, I won't be getting killed tonight; I don't think someone who just got out of a squad car (which I did confirm, exists) after being put in the witness protection program would be out to murder people. Plus, he didn't have a chainsaw handy. Second thought in my head though was, “Hold up, if you're in the witness protection program, why did you just tell me your name?” But I was content with the fact that he seemed ready to explain himself, so I just nodded and allowed Samish to continue his story.

“So yeah, so many people want me dead right now, man.” As I figured this story really could only become more interesting from this point out, I politely asked him what he did. Samish told me that he was caught with marijuana earlier today, no big deal he says, but it is a misdemeanor on your police record, and as he was applying for MBA programs, he needed a clean slate. So instead, he says, he made a deal with Officer Rinco to provide him with the names of all the dealers and associates that he knew at UCSD. Apparently, Samish had quite an extensive network of connections, all of whom would undoubtedly be very unhappy with this revelation, hence the need for the police protection, which also explained why he was at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere talking to a complete stranger about what he did. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

A few months earlier, there had been a massive drug bust at the college a few miles away; one involving millions of dollars, large quantities of arrests, and swarms of reporters from media outlets across the country. It was pretty big. In fact, people who hadn't heard of the college often assumed that the drug bust happened at UCSD, the more famous San Diego university. We were quick to assure them that our college was far too boring for such a thing to happen, so they needn't worry. Assurances aside, however, Samish told me that the information that he provided would lead to a drug bust at UCSD that was even bigger. “It'll be all over CNN, just wait a few weeks,” he said repeatedly in a rather excited voice; it seemed particularly odd for someone in fear of getting killed in the immediate future.

“Do you know David Duchovny?” Samish asked, changing the subject away from his plea deal. “Sure,” I said, remembering his character on the X-Files. While I never actually watched Detective Moulder do his work, promotions for the show often interrupted my afternoon cartoons, and so my consistently corny Scooby-Doo and Friends would be mixed with a series of pictures of hilariously fake looking aliens and drawings in cornfields, dirt, or ashes. These pictures were inevitably accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack, voiced over by a man who had been chain-smoking cigarettes since childbirth, and always ended with a picture of Scully and Moulder looking dramatically off into the distance. But this was not the Duchovny that Samish was talking about, rather, it was the Duchovny on a different show, Californication. “Yeah man, know how he's always out partying with all those girls? That's me man.” Samish said proudly. I accepted this statement readily; not that I particularly cared about the number of women he slept with, but it may very well have been his greatest accomplishment in life so far, and who am I to deny him of that satisfaction? He said that he had been paying his own way through college, even though his parents were billionaires and could have easily supported him. Apparently this was their way of teaching him the skills needed to survive in business. Obviously, this tactic wasn't all that successful. I began to question the possibility of Samish getting into an MBA program with all his drugs, sex, and partying needing to take up a considerable amount of time, but then again weirder things have happened. Things, such as, hearing about a drug bust from a complete stranger who is supposed to be in the witness protection program.

To be continued.

The Drug Bust, Part 1 of 3

Rarely do I have the opportunity to write about things that happen to me. Here is one of those chances, so I’m taking it.

The Drug Bust

I have never really been comfortable going to bus stops late at night. While I live in a pretty safe neighborhood, the bus stops that I tend to frequent are the ones that are in the middle of nowhere; dimly-lit, and generally giving off the impression that you are in a horror movie and you are about to be murdered with a chainsaw. Thankfully, perhaps, the combination of my odd hours and remote bus stops usually means I'm the only one at the bus stop, leaving me to muse about the possibility of my violent death without fear of it actually happening. If I were to write a story about my time alone at the bus stop, it would likely reference cold weather, exhaustion, the arrival of the bus, and be generally short and uninteresting. This is obviously not one of those stories.

My experiment in lab had run late again. This came as no surprise, as most of the experiments I had been doing lately had their unexpected hiccups that set me hours behind schedule. Managing to find a good stopping point for the evening, I packed up my things and headed to the bus stop for the ride home. The Regents bus stop is in the middle of a large parking lot, dimly lit by sodium-vapor bulbs that bathes everything in a yellow light. There are only about fifteen cars left in the lot at this hour. As I walk up the hill towards the stop, a police cruiser passes by on the road. “Oh good,” I thought, “looks like I won't be getting killed tonight.” Why I thought this is utterly beyond me. Nonetheless, I made my way to the bus stop, where one other person was already waiting. Like most students, he was on his cell phone, entirely occupied by his conversation.

I have always wondered about the strangers around me, and more specifically, how it was that my fellow college students manage to spend so many hours of their waking day on their cell phones. The extent of my research on this subject has focused entirely on listening in on conversations just to see what could be so important to share. While I have heard some rather interesting conversations in the past, including one student who told his friend that he was planning to skip his court subpoena because he had class (a painfully dumb decision on many levels), what I overheard from this fellow traveler took top prize in being the most interesting.

“Yeah man, so many people want me dead right now,” he said to the person on the other end. “I gave them all my names, man, I can't have anything on my record right now,” he continued. At this point I decided I was probably safer standing at the end of the bus stop furthest away from him. The conversation continued for another two minutes, as the student gloated about his narrow escape from the law, as I managed to gather. I leant on the police call box and looked the other way. Three minutes pass, and still the bus hasn't shown up. “Damn,” I think to myself, “I must've just missed one when I got here.” Out of the corner of my eye I see the near-felon mindlessly walking around, and then he turns and approaches me.

To be continued.

UCSD Guardian Senior Sendoff

The following was published June 4th, 2009 and is the first and last article that I have written for the paper.

George Chen

Unlike most of the staff, I never walked a beat or spent a late night in the production room. I never waged battle against The Koala in sloshball or spent a President's Day weekend in Vegas attempting to eat my way through the Bellagio buffet. In fact, this is the first and last article that I have written for The Guardian. There's a fairly good reason why; it takes me ages to write a single article, and along the way there are long bouts of writer's block and false starts. In fact, this article you're reading is version three or four of my many partial rough drafts. My inability to pump out articles at a moment's notice also explains why I have spent my four years at The Guardian as an advertising designer instead of a writer.

Working at The Guardian kept me fairly close to the eye of the storm and showed me that UCSD was not entirely devoid of activity as I had been lead to believe when I first arrived. My hiring came at the same time a scandal broke at SRTV over porn being aired on a student-run television channel. For those who missed it, the story hit national news, and SRTV was subsequently shut down, in a series of rather chaotic events. Other stories followed – wildfires, the opening of Price Center East, the annual debate over the Grove, and of course the annual push to raise student fees through one means or another. I leave UCSD with the story of a bird dive-bombing students in Price Center.

The Guardian is unequivocally the best place to work on campus. Where else does one get to debate the grammatically correct past tense of “ghostriding the whip?” Or walking in on a Wednesday afternoon to see an editor emphatically singing Celine Dion while on his knees. I will always remember crashing classes on Sun God, laughing at the crazy letters to the editor that manage to find their way to us (one in particular claimed Scarlett Johanssen was a cloned human), and laughing at the marketing staff comparing their cute friends on Facebook. Oh and occasionally we put out a newspaper issue or two.

A few words of thanks before I leave. First, thanks to the business staff, the two Mikes (now down to one), James the free agent, Superman Alfredo, and the business manager position that turned over like a professorship in Defense against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, set straight by Anna and currently headed by Monica. Thanks also to all the other advertising designers who have joined me at some point The Guardian, including Laura, Jennifer, Nick, Kim, Brandon, and Jenny, you guys are awesome. And finally thanks to all four years' worth of Guardian staff, lead by Grant, Heather, Charles, and Matt, for keeping the Guardian a fun place to work.

As I pondered over how to end this, I realized that I am severely underqualified to leave words of wisdom for people to read, but I will just say that college isn't about locking yourself in your room and studying 24/7, nor is it about partying it up every night until your liver takes you to court for abuse and neglect. College is about finding the happy medium between the two, and surviving to tell the tale.

Don't Take Things From Strangers

It occurred to me that I haven't updated this blog in about a month. Unfortunately, my life has taken a turn for chaos, and I haven't been able to write anything worth posting for the last few months, though I have loads of stories jotted down. In the meantime, here's an article I wrote last year for a paper that didn't make it. Hope you enjoy it.

P.S. Some of you may recognize the plot from another story of mine. Yes this is the same story, but this is actually what happened.

DON'T TAKE THINGS FROM STRANGERS

Due to legal implications, the names of the people involved in the following story have been changed.

LA JOLLA - I have, in my time at UC San Diego, endeavored to find the ultimate college story - something so far-fetched and seemingly impossible that you have to believe it. This served two purposes: one, to make my otherwise mundane life seem interesting, and two, to have a really great bar story to tell. With this in mind, I have this story to share.

In my freshman year at UCSD I knew a student named James, who, despite being a fairly good person, had a drug problem. Or at least I referred to it as a problem, he didn't seem to mind all that much. The result of this was that he constantly traveled with large amounts of cash to buy drugs with at a moments notice, and he was frequently procrastinating while high. Which was fairly often. All of this procrastination inevitably caught up to him the day before a midterm, and he found himself cramming at Geisel Library. After a few hours of intense stressing, a random stranger approached him with an offer.

"Hey man! How are you?" said the man whom James had not met before.

"Hey," said James, ever the friendly type.

"You seem stressed, wanna try out this pill? It'll totally calm you down." said the stranger, revealing a bottle of pills. He took one to show that it wasn't poison.

James, having missed the day in kindergarten for the lesson "Don't take things from strangers," was intrigued and said yes. He took the pill from the stranger and swallowed it down. The two of them sat around talking for a while until James needed to go out to smoke a joint.

And here, dear readers, is where we take an aside from our story. For all intensive purposes, the city of Phoenix, Arizona is about 300 miles away from San Diego, making it about a 5 to 6 hour drive, depending on traffic. With this minor detail in mind, we return to the story.

James, whom we left outside smoking a joint, found himself passed out on the floor. Or rather, just passed out, as I don't think he knew where he was. He regained consciousness in a rather loud and windy place. The side of a highway. What had previously been daylight when he went outside for a smoke had now changed to night, and James, still groggy, was being prodded by what felt like a broomstick.

"Hey kid," a gruff voice said, "do you know where you are?"

James looked up to get a good view of his interviewer. A cop.

"Oh great," thought James, his heart beginning to race. Ironically, his increased heartbeat helped him wake up faster and seem more alive to the cop, who had no reason to be suspicious of James, who currently appeared to be the victim.

"Uh...San Diego?" said James, thinking it was a trick question, or a sobriety test.

"You're in Phoenix." said the cop, pulling James to his feet.

James was understandably a bit shocked by this, and looked around to be sure. Sure enough, he was in the middle of a desert, and his cell phone told him it was 7pm. Great, he'd passed out for six hours. He pulled out his wallet. Amazingly, all of his money was inside, and none of his credit cards or ID were taken either. So, for all intensive purposes, the only problem with James' current state was that he was now some 300 miles, in another state.

After checking him out, the cop was nice enough to drive James to Arizona State University, where James had a friend, who, as luck would have it, was traveling to San Diego the next day. James most gratefully gave him all the cash he had on him in return.

And so, at 10am the following day, James returned to UCSD, picked up his backpack and books from Geisel (which had also escaped vandalism, remarkably), and arrived to class in time to take his midterm.

As for the random stranger, James tells me that he's never seen him since.