Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

Today I left home early to go to the Immigration Control Authority to extend my passport to its full potential validity.

In Singapore, we have this weird system where boys aged 11 and above would have their passports extended for only one year at a time, until the time they enlist into National Service. It is only after the inevitable binding of life to the nation’s defence, would the nation relent and allow the passports to have their full validity of 10 years.

You know, it is as if they believe that you would abscond from the country after a few years of not-so-free education subsidised by the country. Not that I doubt their reasons for thinking this way, after I saw the sheer size of the file containing all the charges for national service defaulters in my camp, but it gets annoying when I have to wait in line for the better part of 2 hours each time just to get a stamp that would only give the passport an extended validity of half a year, and that is only after taking into account the other half year compulsory reserve validity that many countries mandate as a criteria for entry.

So I trudged down to the bus stop, and got slightly annoyed by the warmer temperature. It must have been the ice-cold environment that I work in; it shelters me into believing that the afternoon is cooler than it actually is.

I crossed the road to the bus stop on the opposite side, and immediately noticed a construction site placed directly over a side-road leading into the carpark. They were building an elaborate shelter that connected two buildings across the side-road, and they used the outward bound lane for traffic in both directions.

A worker manned a portable sign that had both “Stop” and “Go” on opposite faces of the plate, and was using it to change the direction of the traffic.

At first the traffic flowed fine, as there wasn’t any outward bound traffic merging with the main road. But the sweltering heat got the better of the man, and he crowded closer to the structure that is under construction. And as he did so, he also disappeared from the view of drivers who wanted to turn into the side-road.

A MPV was trying to get into the carpark, and drove into the entrance of the lane, while a taxi was simultaneously trying to leave the carpark via the same lane. The worker immediately stopped the MPV, and signalled for the MPV to reverse back into the fast traffic flow of the main road.

Just then, a sedan came around the blind spot, and was about to turn inwards when it encountered the reversing MPV, and the driver had to jam on the brakes to avoid a collision.

The situation was so dangerous that I was thinking of doing a “Singaporean”. (That is pretending not to notice a dangerous or unfair situation, only to write a whiny letter to the newspaper to show my righteousness.)

But a few moments later, a middle-aged man with a pink cap was pushing a trolley on the small lane. Behind him was a Mercedes seden, which was crawling slowly as the man paused every few steps to turn around and curse at the driver.

Reaching the main road, this man simply crossed the road without so much as a care to on-coming traffic, pausing only to curse at the never-ending stream of cars. I was surprised that he didn’t win a Darwin Award.

The odd happenings didn’t stop there. When I reached the ICA building, there was a steady stream of people in queue, all waiting to do something with their passports. Since extension is one of the many things I had to do to my passports, I joined in the queue, which thankfully moved quickly. However, the relief was short-lived when I got the queue ticket for my request.

Glancing at the digital display hanging above the counters, I realised that there were more than 200 people in queue. It was really amazing, perhaps this is what Badaunt meant when she mentioned the very swamped branches of all the Japanese banks. Initially, I wondered if I should have brought a book to murder the time, but was thankful a short while later when I looked at the waiting room, where there was only standing room, that I didn’t bring a heavy tome along with me.

It was a good thing that perhaps the customer service officers at the ICA were used to such overcrowding — they handled the customers deftly, and with a coolness that could only come with experience, and the 200 applicants in the queue were decimated within the hour. Before long, it was my turn.

Handing my passport over to the Tudung-clad Malay lady, I sat down and twiddled with my thumbs.

“You… finished your national service?”

“Yup” I grinned from ear to ear, and couldn’t suppress showing my teeth while at that.

“When did you finish your service?”

“9 April, this year. ORD loh!” I shouted, despite myself.

The CSO was slightly taken aback, but regained her composure, as all great CSOs do, and did the obligatory clicking on the computer mouse. She frowned as all government officials are tasked to, and then smiled a little as she stamped my passport.

“There. Your passport now has its full validity.”

“Thank you so much, that was about time too!” I grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but stare a moment longer at the weird customer, before pressing the call button for the next queue number.

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