In 1919 my grandfather, a White Russian, was jailed in Siberia during the Russian Revolution. His girlfriend brought him a loaf of bread, with a file that she had baked inside. He used the file to cut through the bars on his window. As he did so, he figured his progress would enable him to break out on New Year’s Eve, an ideal time to make a run for it while the guards were drunk. Which is what he did. He ran zig-zagged across the snow while the drunk guards fired at him. He escaped on foot east across Siberia, then south through Manchuria and China. When he reached Shanghai he boarded a ship headed for the US — his objective. The ship made a several-day stop in Manila Harbor. As he explored the area, after his imprisonment in the freezing cold of Siberia, he saw the Philippines as an island paradise. He decided to stay and catch a later ship to the US. He ended up staying there and marrying my grandmother, and they had two children, my uncle and my mother. He never made it to the US, but my mother did after she married my father and gave birth to me there.