Crime Has More Color

One of the interesting contrasts between Singapore and Toronto is how they handle crime. For example, in Singapore, we lived in a “colorful” part of town. That’s not to say it was a particularly bad part, but there’s more potential for conflict of the illegal kind in our area. Our apartment building was directly across the street from an older, ramshackle, vaguely sort of falling apart kind of complex which was in such poor condition because no one of consequence (ie, wealthy) had yet thought of renovating the “quaint” somewhat old building for their post-modern, revisionist requirements. So instead, that crumbly old building across the street was used to house foreign workers en masse, and when I say foreign workers I don’t mean “professionals” that wear a tie and go into the office, so much as the legion of hedge trimmers, street sweepers and construction workers that fill out the jobs much of the locale populace had already deemed beneath them.

As a result, when you squeeze that many poorly paid, disgruntled manual laborers into a such a confined space, in bulk, nastiness is bound to occur. So while it was by no means common, we were privy to the occasional manslaughter, where people would die as a result of getting a bit too angry with each other during arguments.

This would normally result a cop car, perhaps an entire van, showing up while a few cops tried to figure out what to do next, since their normal activity in Singapore consists of helping citizens to fill out forms notifying government organizations of a change of address. Whenever anything even remotely forensic comes up, a kind of student-like bafflement ensues with the local cops, who more or less have the same reaction to a murder as a classroom would when someone bumps the class fishbowl onto the ground and while the teacher is out taking a call and will be back in five minutes.

However, this evening, just across the street from the Old Friends house, some kind of crime was committed (I’ve been told that despite the fact the rest of the neighborhood is decent and safe, that one particular apartment building is a mini-Mos Eisely in that it’s a hive of scum and villainy) and whoo hoo! Ambulances! Fire trucks! Cop cars! Doughnuts and coffee! It was just like TV, but… colder. And no commercials.

Also, I have been informed by The Wife that the last vestiges of Singapore still cling to me with the annoying stickiness that only red tape can produce. The Ministry of Manpower, aka MOM, is now saying that the banker’s guarantee we had as Crime Insurance in the event I committed a major infraction (y’know, like owning gum or not flushing the toilet in a public men’s room, and yes, these ARE chargeable offenses in Singapore) still requires some kind of signature from me before it can be completely nullified. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of this because we never received their Psychic Telepathic Communication informing us of that detail, and it’s not a detail that’s readily accessible unless you’re a bureaucrat.

I guess it’s true what they say. You can never really leave a place. Because there will always be one last form to fill before they can file it, process it, put it out in triplicate, stamp it, sign it and enter it into a database…

On a happier note, The Wife will be here in a couple of days. Yay for wives…