WHY IS THIS SO STUPI…Oh, This Is Ours… Eh Heh, Heh, Heh…

And so the end result of the visit to the RCB, which was a great source of satisfaction to the girlfriend was…

Even THEY were baffled by their own easy to use, quick, efficient, online registration system, had to get another pencil pusher to help, still couldn’t do it, had to call a manager, then had to call us back later in the day once they’ve straightened it out.

Call me sadistic, but I derive great pleasure from the bureaucrats being overwhelmed by their own bureaucracy…

It started when the pencil pusher (Actually, a kind of nice lady. For a pencil pusher…) went over our particular case. The case being we tried to register the business online and got stopped dead cold in our tracks because while the girlfriend could register herself as an owner in the business, I could not, seeing as you had to log onto the system using your National ID number, which of course, I don’t have, not being local.

This, apparently, was something the rocket scientists had NOT taken into account when they developed their online system, but had conveneniently failed to mention anywhere in the registration process. This despite the fact that the government has officially stated that it wants to encourage foreign workers, investment and entrepreneurship in Singapore. So the message I guess, is, “We want you to come here! We want you to work here! We want you to have businesses here! We just don’t want you to be able to start one!”

Like, HUH?!?

Thus, the girlfriend had already used her credit card to pay for the registration before the system stopped her and said, “You can’t do that.” So the pencil pusher tried to do it for us, couldn’t. Called her co-worker, her co-worker couldn’t figure it out either, they called the manager, and finally after some fiddling around with the system, (And a 90 minute wait, we went off and got lunch) they got it all figured out by doing some arcane thing with system access that ordinary users aren’t. So in the end, their convenient, online, easy to use system only worked out when we went DOWN to their regular office and they had to circumvent their own safeguards and it took three of them to do that.

Convenient. Easy. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur it isssssssssssssssssss…

Say, did I ever mention I hate bureaucracy?

Well, I do.

We’re nearly there, anyway. After all that got settled we needed to acquire our business registration info, the documents we need to present whenever anyone asks for certification that it actually exists. This is deceptively known as “Instant Information” and we went down to the “Instant Information Counter” and were told our instant information would take a few days.

Say, did I mention I hate bureaucracy?

Well, I do.

I’m A Loser Baby… So Why Don’t You Pay Meeee…

Hm… it’s kind of pointless for me to try and go to bed in a few hours for an interview at 4 pm, so I think I’ll just skip that show up dead tired. From what I can see, the Playworks guys operate in a Zombified state anyway, so me showing up slightly brain dead from writing and playing FFX shouldn’t be that big a deal and might even score points.

I’m still not sure if they’re looking for a full time staff writer, or just a contributing one. That hasn’t come up yet. I’m pretty much game for either, although if review copies are on offer for both positions, I’d probably just opt for the contributing writer since it means more time at home to play.

Yeah, I got my priorities screwed on properly, don’t I?