Saturday 2 April 2005Ran errands in the morning, and I wanted to get Quizno's for brunch. When I got there, I saw they weren't open till 11 am. Our flight was at 12.20pm, so there was no way. Lazy fuckers.
As we did our final packing, I had a realization: I'm a terrible person.
I swoop in with company, crash at their place, hardly see them, don't even hang out much, and in the blink of an eye, I'm gone. I hate doing this to the guys, especially Nate, since it's the second time we've had to say our hard goodbyes. It'd fuck me up.
They're very tall peopleWe've had good times, but who knows when we'll meet again? I certainly hope that some day in the not too distant future we'll have an opportunity again, and I promise I'll be less of a heartless bastard then.
We said our awkward goodbyes, and Zach drove us to the airport in his good ol' Chevy Nova. I missed that car. During the drive, I remembered how I sat in Eileen's SUV that morning half a year ago, making the same journey. It was hard then, and it was still hard now.
There was an amazingly short line at O'Hare. In fact, I'd never seen a shorter line there. Within 15 minutes we were all checked in, cleared security and all inside; a new record for me.
A Quizno's was glimpsed, and there was rejoicing. But once we partook of it, there was disappointment, for it had the quality of a Subway sandwich. It was not unpalatable, it just was not up to the lofty standards of a typical Quizno's establishment.
I thought I'd booked a flight that transited at Narita, but in actuality we were on one to Hong Kong. This was a bad situation because the plane was shittier, and we had lousy seats, smack in the middle of the center section, with nowhere to stretch our legs. Oh, and the flight was longer too, about fifteen hours. I don't know how we survived.
Oh well, at least we'd be able to understand the porn in Hong Kong.
At one point, the screen helpfully told us we were flying over Siberia. That was real cheerful to know. If we crashed, we'd be in fucking Siberia. Yippee.
There was a succession of terrible movies, that much I remember.
Meet The Fockers was painful in every sense.
Shall We Dance? was just so sad because no matter how hard they tried, there was just no chemistry between the leads. And a movie that needs to tell the audience, "Spectacular. This is spectacular," really isn't. The only good thing I can say about it is that it's set in Chicago.
Thinking back, I think I probably should've bought less shot glasses. That was silly of me. And I should've found time to eat at more of my favorite places. There were two foods I forgot, cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and pancakes from IHOP.
Sunday 3 April 2005I really need to write my thank-you list. So here it is:
Thanks to Weisheng and Colin for putting us up, and Weisheng especially for being an amazing host. Cameron for showing us San Francisco when we needed you to, and driving all the way up to L.A. and just being wonderful in general. Arielle and Dan Viney for your beautiful apartment and company. Danielle and Naureen for letting us stay in your cool old place. Mun and Joyce for picking us up at Midway. Nate, Zach and Aaron for the wonderful apartment at Noyes, and together with Sarah and Eileen, for making me feel loved. To everyone who dropped by to say hi. To everyone whom I met that said hi and made me feel welcome. And to everyone for extending their generosity, friendship and love to Jingli. You didn't have to, but you put in the extra effort to make him feel at home in a strange land, and I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
And apologies again to everyone I didn't manage to see, and to everyone whom I met too, for being such an asshole. It was far, far too short to do any of you justice.
Here we are on the flight to Singapore from Hong Kong. We're sad.
But little did we know that the worst was yet to come.
So we touched down, bought our duty free liquor and was about to waltz through the sliding doors. We were home, nothing else could go wrong. Or so we thought.
We were chatting normally, and I was doing what I tend to do during walk-and-talks, letting my eyes wander all over the place. Bad mistake. My line of sight drifted unconsciously over two uniformed personnel standing near the sliding doors. For an instant, one of them locked gazes with me, then I looked away. I think that was the deciding factor. Of course, it could've also been the fact that I just looked like some young punk in need of a lesson. Damn, I should've worn a hat, and maybe my coat. That would've made me look more respectable. Or maybe it was my fiery-red
ah beng shoes.
In any case, one of them came over. I forget which one. Perhaps it was the Indian fellow. The other was a woman in her forties or fifties; let's call her Menopausal Bitch, or MB for short. We were asked if we had cigarettes. Fuck, we were less than five metres from the sliding doors, beyond which lay freedom. So close, yet so far. Anyway, we claimed we didn't. Rather weakly, I thought - after all, we were both actors at some point in our lives. They then said they wanted to check our bags.
This made us reconsider. Jingli went ahead and declared the two cartons he'd bought for his friends, and I took out the two I'd bought for my colleague. I still had two pretty well hidden (or so I thought) in my suitcase. MB then asked if we had any more. No, I insisted. She pushed again. I refused to budge. She was really pissing me off, she had such a high-and-mighty attitude. She reminded me of all the discipline masters and mistresses I'd had before in school, and nothing makes me madder or more stubborn than people like that.
Then she insisted we pass our bags through the x-ray machine, after which she asked again if I had anything else to declare. "Nothing," I answered, like a petulant schoolboy. Somehow I'd latched onto
Angeline's mantra of "admit nothing". Granted, she meant for the mantra to be used if she was ever caught having an affair, but for some strange reason I thought it might be a good idea to use it now. I was even thinking, "Maybe they'll miss it in the x-ray, since I've hidden them so ingeniously under everything." I guess my brain must've shut off or something, or maybe I was just too pissed at MB.
They then started going through our bags by hand. I just stood by, all pissy and trying to restrain myself from slapping her. I tell you, I'm forever getting screwed over by Menopausal Bitches like her. They're the worst kind. It's like they're made of pure evil and spite. This was when my parents decided it would be a good time to call. I answered it, glad to have a distraction. I think I managed to hide what was happening from them pretty well. When I finished the call, she'd already found the remaining cartons, and was looking pretty smug with herself, giving me a self-satisfied smirk. Fuck you, bitch. I may be breaking the law, but that doesn't mean you can't be civil.
At this point, the Indian dude found the porn I'd gotten at Hong Kong. Now, I'm not ashamed to admit this - yes, I look at porn. So what? If a man claims that he's never looked at porn in his life, 99.9% of the time he's a fucking liar. At least I'm honest about it. Yeah, I say it's for my brother, and it may be his, but that doesn't mean I can't look at it too, right? And this may be the wrong place for a rant on the subject, but I believe that porn is a basic human right, and we should all have free unhampered access to it. Fuck you and your archaic moral high-horse, silly Singapore laws!
Anyway he finds the magazines, and starts looking through them page by page.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, what's this? What's this?" he says, rather too loudly for my benefit.
Gee, what do you think it is, Einstein?
"Where you buy?"
"Hong Kong."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." (shaking his head)
What a hypocritical fucker. If you really disapproved, you wouldn't be looking at them so slowly now, would you? He was really taking his time, enjoying every page. Assholes like that deserve to be raped by a gang of horny monkeys.
"You boys are in a lot of trouble," Indian Hypocrite said.
Boys? Boys?!! I was this close to throttling him. Now I knew why African-Americans feel so much about the term "boy". It's really extremely degrading. And I knew the extent of the trouble we'd gotten into, and it was nothing. People do this all the time, and if all of them were thrown in jail, there wouldn't be enough room. At the most it was going to be a slap on the wrist fine, I was convinced of that.
We were led over to the customs office and waited at some seats. I could see Jingli was worried sick, so I tried to reassure him. "It'll be OK," I said. He didn't look convinced.
You know what pissed me off most about those fuckers? The fact that they traumatized him so much. You can fuck with me all you want, I can take it, but leave my friends alone. Don't fucking touch them, or I'll curse you and your entire extended family to hell and back. I'm that vicious. Fat lot of good that does me.
He went into the offices first, and when he came out, he told me he'd chosen to have the cigarettes destroyed rather than pay the duties. Then it was my turn.
These customs people were really nice and friendly, compared to the assholes outside. I hope those two (and everyone they love) die horrible deaths. I know, I'm a terrible person, but hey, I can live with that. That's what you deserve for fucking with my friends. Anyway, I had to pay a fine of a little over S$1000 (about US$600) for the two cartons of undeclared Davidoffs, and could choose to pay import duties for two cartons and destroy two of them, or have all four of them destroyed and pay nothing beyond my fine.
One of the guys advised me to pay the duties. "If you don't think about the fine, which you're going to have to pay anyway, it's still cheaper than getting them on the street." Knowing that they'd just raised cigarette prices yet again, I had to concur. Duties were about S$75 per carton, and all in all that little incident knocked me back somewhere in the vicinity of S$1250 (about US$760).
It was all very civil. Many pleasantries were exchanged, and this went a long way in making me feel less pissed about the whole thing. Seriously, if everyone could be a little nicer to each other, the world would be a much better place, and I wouldn't feel the need to commit mass murder sometimes.
I was also told that a notice of the confiscation of my porn would be sent to the Media Development Authority, and they would decide if they wanted to do anything about it. Honestly, I don't think anything will come of it, since they must receive hundreds of these a day. In my opinion, they're probably only interested in the big fish, the distributors and such. Me, I'm small fry.
One irony though, the Singapore Film Commission did give me a grant to make my film, and it's also under the MDA. Perhaps this will lessen my chances of getting future grants. But you know what, I don't think so. There's just so much bureaucracy in the government sector that I'm sure the various departments never communicate with each other apart from the annual office parties and dinner-and-dances. The red tape in my company is bad enough, I don't even want to think about the shit they must have in government offices.
I think we managed to conceal our trauma pretty well when we got home. We could blame it on jet lag.
Anyhow, yeah. A spectacular ending to our vacation. Sodomized by The Man, less than five metres from freedom.
