FOR making like a wise guy, a Filipino landed in a Hong Kong police station Wednesday where he underwent investigation and was fined $HK5,000 (around P20,000), but later returned.

And what did Joselito M. Daza, 20, do to merit all the attention?

Daza was a passenger on a Cebu Pacific flight from Hong Kong last Wednesday. As he was lifting his carry-on luggage to an overhead compartment, a flight attendant, David Joseph Dysuangco, asked him what was in the bag that appeared too heavy.

"May bomba yan" (there’s a bomb), Daza said, laughing. However, the flight attendant who also laughed with him, reported the incidentr to the flight purser who passed on the "joke" to the pilot who did not think it funny at all. He advised the ground handlers to call the police to investigate. The flight was delayed as Daza was offloaded, along with his of luggage and brought to the Hong Kong police station at the airport, where a Tagalog interpreter was called.

Daza told Hong Kong Constable Chiang Yuk-Cheong that he did not know that joking about bombs in an airplane is a serious offense that members of a flight crew anywhere in the world would not ignore because of the ongoing anti-terrorism campaign.