This is why I always like to keep an extra passport, in a false name, close at hand. You just never know when some dopey 'chuck frum nuzullund' is going to drop a lazy 'tun mullion' into your account and it pays to be prepared.
A lot more prepared than Leo-Gao and Kara-Yang were when Westpac NZ accidentally credited them with a ten million dollar business loan, rather than the 10K they'd asked for. Like any smart, nimble small business owner they leapt on an unexpected trading opportunity - trading in their life as greasy, hard working service station owners for a more glamorous adventure as international fugitives after legging it with the misplaced folding stuff.
There is much to love about this Kiwi odyssey. The way the bank didn't crush the teller like a bug, instead giving her a nice cup of tea and good lie down until she got over the shock of her mistake. The way the fugitives took a couple of rellies with them, one of whom kept updating her Facebook page with handy hints for Mr Plod, like, 'enjoying the hot weather and cool beer here in Macau, on the run, hiding out in room 413 of the Sheraton'. And the way Inspector Plod 'imself took this entirely at face value, predicting the runaways would be caught in a matter of moments, once he'd rung the concierge and asked him to distract the villains in 413 while they got a couple of constables from Rotorua back from their rostered day off, packed a change of undies, organized a connecting flight and, my word, this international intriguing and detecting is quite a bothersome amount of work isn't it...
(Reminds me of the time I wrote a story for Rolling Stone about the neo-Nazi movement in Sydney, adding the complete red herring to my bio-line that I 'lived in Melbourne'. The Nazis actually stormed into the office to tell the receptionist they were on their way down there to get me. In between giggling at them from behind a pot plant, I did remember to feel a little guilty about the poor passengers on the Greyhound bus who had to sit next to those morons as they headed south seeking their Hitlery vengeance on the cheap.)
Yeah, good times.
Now, where was I? Oh that's right. This New Zealand thing.
Yes, it got me to thinking about how most people just are not ready to leap on a good deal when it comes their way. So I ask you my Instrumentarian friends, are you ready? Do you even have a bank account in New Zealand set up to catch the golden showers of gold dubloons being sprayed this way and that by easily distracted bank tellers? And assuming that you do, have you set up your false identity, opened your Swiss Bank account, booked the plastic surgeon in Buenos Aires, and scoped out your new beach front palazzo on the Amalfi Coast?
If not, pray tell, what exactly do you intend to do when a lazy ten million drops onto your keycard?
This blog entry was first published on the
Brisbane Times website
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