In the day I write about IT, and here's where everything else goes.
Leave a comment, but if you're shy you can write to me.
Spot the odd one out. All the freelancers are hard at work (so many iPads!) but I'm relishing the last moments of freedom before I have to start gainful employment next week. In other news, I did read a couple of chapters of my book inbetween sips of iced coffee.
(I'm fully aware of how unflattering this picture is of me. But the moment was too good, plus I couldn't figure out how to replace it with another picture on the fly.)
"Okay models, give me a yeeaahh! A big one. Hey Anna, look more enthusiastic. Like this photoshoot was your idea not your mum's. Come on, you can do it...No? Okay fine. Whatever, everybody else...Altogether now.
"Yeeeeaaaaahhhh."
All day, Monday to Sunday, including public holidays? I get it. Wouldn't "everyday" have sufficed?
There must be something that the US Embassy does as an employer that makes its staff feel extra entitled.
Because why else is the visa application process one designed to strike fear and nervousness in the applicants? And how did process inefficiency become something so easily accepted, while any form of inefficiency in the local government passport office —well-oiled machine, it is—automatically invites disdain? First there was the application process. Once you make it past the guard barking instructions at people stepping out of their vehicles— you aren't allowed to park here—you're greeted by a cold grey building with guards peeking out through small windows.
Make it past that and the unpleasant receptionist, you get to queue up to see the unpleasant woman with the stapler, who will point impatiently to the metal tray on which you slip your documents to her. She will then rifle through them noisily and shove the remainder back on the tray to you. That's punctuated by the loud confirmation of her stapler.
While queueing to get interviewed, you feel like you're violating someone's privacy. Person after person in an open room facing the waiting area, telling their entire life stories to get temporary work visas into the US. Some people get turned away because they didn't bring adequate documentation, or won't be able to fly back to Singapore just to collect their passports from the embassy. One guy said he would call his attorney, and stomped out, while a roomful of bored people watched him go. Word to the wise, wear a watch there. For some reason, there are no wall clocks and they confiscate your phone at the entrance so waiting there without time reference turns A Damn Long Time into plain eternity.
A few days later (or weeks, I hear for some), you get to come back and repeat the waiting process again. This time, because collection time is usually in the afternoon, you get to wait under the sweltering Singapore heat under the sun.
There's a little sheltered area in the carpark, but the queue snakes beyond it onto the tar road. Most in line have fashioned shields for their heads from whatever they had: sheets of paper, bigger sheets of paper, bags, bare hands. Who designed this? Is it a matter of assuming the people here would accept standing under the sun with no shelter because they are native to the country? Or am I just spoiled by my airconditioned nation? Inside the shelter are rows of aluminium benches. Behind those is a makeshift row of wooden benches, which I assume were put there to accomodate the crowd. Not that the volume of people should have been unexpected; they're all there by appointment. Every now and then, the queue moves as people get up, the aluminium benches groaning as the weight on them relaxes. You start making little benchmarks for yourself. Once you make it into the sheltered area, you feel bad for the poor sods waiting in the sun. And then you get a seat—look at the suckers who are standing. Then you graduate from the back wooden benches to the aluminium. Getting there. Then the guard says you may approach The Final Queue, right at the guard house. Don't step beyond the faded yellow line though, or the lady behind the glass window will yell at you. And then... And then. You get your visa. You can hardly believe it. It was such an arduous process, you forgot how many steps it took to get here. The American Embassy is quite efficient, you decide, in a haze. Maybe it's sharing oxygen with a throng of sweaty, disgruntled people, but once you make it out of there, you've never been happier with your visa and the embassy that issued it.Recording equipment was confiscated upon entry, so I went with analogue recording—my sketchbook.
Remember that scene in Titanic where everyone's rushing out of the sinking ship, and it's pandemonium with people zigzagging about, interspersed with disorienting splashes of water?
That's what driving in wet weather in Singapore is like. Everyone wants to get to their destination but just as quickly, without the benefit of peripheral or distance vision. Amazingly, pedestrians aren't exceptions. Yesterday, on my way home, I turned a corner and almost hit a woman who was walking dead centre of the road, looking down and only worrying about skipping over puddles and covering a tiny square of her head with one hand.
