Closing Down Continues

Today my bank accounts and Banker’s Guarantee and all that other financial stuff were officially closed down. The only link I now have to living a “local” life is the fact that my phone still works, and that’s only got a lifespan of about 48 hours at best and then that too will have its plug pulled.

On some level, things are finally startint to seep in that I am leaving this place. For the last year or so I’ve been mostly hanging out with the editor of GameAxis for obvious reasons. We see each other all the time at the office, and, more importantly, we just get along really well, being in just about the same age group, and having a similar sensibility with regards to games, comics, art, film, authority, and how to buck authority. Tonight was his birthday and so the Wife and I had our last dinner with him in what will potentially be either ever, or for the next year or so depending on how his–and our–fortunes turn out with regards to certain projects. But he’s been a really fun, great guy to hang out with, and like the fella’ I had dinner with on Friday, is one of those people I count as a good friend here. I’m gonna’ miss him and the way we’d launch into a tangent about a particular comic book, trashy film or obscure game that would usually leave the rest of the crowd kind of wondering exactly what Tibetan monastery we had gone to school together in.

Also, for the first time since one of my friends got married, I watched Transformers The Movie. The Wife had a vague recollection of it as a kid, but this time she got the full on treatment, and, thanks to my incessant playing of Guitar Hero, had a newfound respect for the wailing guitar solo that follows soon after the hardcore utterance “The Transformeeeeeeeeeeeeeers!“

And, in case anyone is interested, the Wife is now doing her own personal Top Ten Countdown, where she lists the things about this island she is not going to miss. You may have to scroll up to see it.

Respect Your Elders

Tonight was one more in a seemingly endless parade of dinners and get togethers that have been converging ever since it was announced The Move was happening and was not some fake, pathetic, plea for attention or, a petty way to try and get people to convince us to stay with offers of more money and better party invites. This particular dinner was with The Wife’s grandparents and, as you might expect, I kind’a had to rein it in and not be as obnoxious as normally could be.

It’s always a bit weird for me in situations like this. I don’t live the typical Expatriate Lifestyle (that is to say, full of maids, money and more or less hanging out with other white people and experiencing the High Life while the locals madly scramble about to appease my every whim) and I don’t live the local life either (that being, scrambling to appease white people, or, on lucky occasions, coming into enough money that you can pretend to be a white person). Actually, I think I probably live that most rare of things in Singapore, the non-wealthy Creative Life, which mostly entails doing some kind of creative work, but actually relying on it to make a living rather than being a hobby to kill time while waiting for your white husband to come back from the office.

But anyway, so yeah, The Wife’s grandparents. It’s interesting to see what the old fashioned Singaporeans are like, because this is, in my opinion, a far more genuine take on The Real Singapore than what you normally get if you try to read the pamphlets and brochures. I mean, these people were alive (albeit as kids) during the Japanese occupation of the island in WWII, and they were already adults when they witnessed their home go from British trading post to sovereign nation. More importantly for me, however, these people didn’t grow up having cellular phones given to them at childhood, having maids accompany them to school to carry their books, and laugh at poor people, citing either idiocy or an innate genetic inferiority on their part on their part for their economic condition. I am sad to say that most of the Well To Do in Singapore (or at least their children) have PRECISELY these traits and characteristics. So it’s nice when you meet some people with experience and history who have worked hard for what they have and actually appreciate what it can cost to get those luxuries their children may take for granted.

Of course, they usually also think them crazy hippie artsey types are bad for the economy which is why I had to be on my best behaviour and, when asked what it was I do, I replied with the half truth, “Uh… I’m a… Journalist. Yeah, that’s it.” Somehow, that goes over slightly better than “I bitch about games on the internet.”

Still, it was an interesting snapshot view of The Wife’s outer satellite ring of family orbits. And her grandfather has a Jaguar. That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever sat in one of those things, and he wasted no time in showing off the thing by taking it from zero to 60 in about 6 seconds. I also paid one last visit to the Boys & Girls of GameScore, my all time favorite gaming store in Singapore. They actually didn’t know that I was leaving, so there was the usual round of goodbyes and “keep in touch, man” and all that other stuff which I find endearing and at the same time vaguely depressing and painful.

Oh well, just a few more days now…

The Tourist & Geeky Goodbyes

It cost me 30 Singapore dollars to become a tourist.

After going to the Ministry of Manpower aka, MOM, I got in line behind 200 other people who all decided that they needed so kind of Foreigner Love on Friday afternoon. It took a while, and many runs through the various futuristic race courses of Wipeout Pure on the PSP, but I finally did it. After the horrendously ridiculous bureaucratic storm that has dogged the attempt to renew the Employment Pass so I could stay legal until January, I went in with the official notice from my “employer” saying I’d been fired and they cancelled the renewal. I had to pay the administrative fee for cancelling the renewal, but it’s now official; I am a tourist.

Then I went off to the home of one of my older friends on the island and we had one last dinner and geek out with Gears Of War along with the usual talking about the years we’ve spent as gaming losers, the good ol’ days, etcetera ad nauseum. It was good. I’m gonna’ miss the big lug. As well as those guilty hours being Huge Nerds when saner, more people were worried about their golf scores, or how the chick at the other end of bar perceived their flirtations. It’s little things like hanging out with friends like him that made Singapore a slightly less intolerable experience.

Still. Not. Legal.

Okay, so it looks like my Employment Pass has NOT been approved after all. This is a bit annoying. After getting the letter saying the EP was approved, I headed on down to my all time favorite place in the world, the Ministry of Manpower, aka, MOM, to once again get some of that sweet, sweet tender loving care that only MOM can provide. As usual, the bureaucracy threw a spanner in the works.

After asking me to produce some documents saying that I had what was called a Banker’s Guarantee, which more or less means that a certain amount of money has been set aside in a bank account of sorts and will sit there for the duration of my employment. On the off chance that I do something criminal or inexplicably vanish, the money goes to the government. I provided the document and they looked at it and promptly said, “We’re not giving you your EP.”

The reason is, apparently, that the guarantee expires on March 31st. This, I thought, was not a problem, because it also gets renewed on April 3rd, but according to them, that three day gap might allow me to do all kinds of untold havoc on the island for which I would not be covered.

Of course, this is all kind of pointless since I’m leaving on January 11th, and we’d simply renewed the EP–or tried to–a few months back, so I wouldn’t have to keep going in to get my passport stamped over and over again, something that has happened ANYWAY, thanks to the wonderful bureaucracy of MOM. However, there is hope.

All I have to do is quit.

Once I say “Okay, I’m unemployed,” they’ll stamp my passport for two weeks and expect me to be out of the country by then. Since I am now only going to be here for… oh, two more or weeks or less, it looks like this will suit me just fine.

I hate how complicated, slow and contradictary this simple, fast and intuitive system of theirs is. Someone is seriously racking up some bad karma for having successfully marketed that to the public…

Getting Stuff Back

Now that the move is something like two weeks away, people are slowly either receiving things from us that we are trying to get rid of, or giving things back we had borrowed. Case in point, Battlestar Galactica DVDs. I first saw the new BSG when a friend over here loaned me his Australian version of the mini-series. I held onto it waaaaay longer than I should have, even after getting the season 1 and 2 collections for myself, so I returned that today. I also got back my season 1 collection from someone who’d borrowed it for a few months, and then loaned to the same person season 2 so that he could try and watch it over the weekend and return it to me by Monday.

Also, even though it took far longer than it should have, I have been contacted by the Ministry of Manpower and told that my Employment Pass has been approved and I can once again get a green card to remain legal in Singapore. Unfortunately, of course, this means that as soon as I get said Employment Pass, I’ll have to turn right around and cancel it. I was kind’a hoping that they would have given it to me a couple months earlier when I actually tried to renew it, but bureaucracy being what it is, they are now issuing it to me only now. It’s unfortunate, because the temporary visa they stamped me with in the meantime actually expires on January 9th. If they’d just stamped it for two more days, I wouldn’t need to get the Employment Pass and could have told them to just cancel it right there. However, bureaucracy being what it is, there are rules and this is one I’ll just have to laboriously navigate through. Fun, fun, fun…

“WE’RE NOT WRONG… wait, we are? Oh… then…. YOU’RE STUPID!”

What an odd morning.

After arriving at the GameAxis office, I was told that a story I’d posted on the GameAxis blog had been pulled by the editorial team at the request of Singapore Press Holdings. For those of you that don’t live in Singapore, SPH is company that runs the local newspaper. It is also owned by the government, in the same way that SingTel, the local phone company is also owned by the government, and the Television Corporation of Singapore is also owned by the government, in addition to Radio Corporation of Singapore which is… you guessed it, owned and operated by the government. Recently SPH actually bought out the company that publishes GameAxis.

The reason I mention all this is because last week, in the blog post which is no longer there, I wrote a story about how the local newspaper ran two articles in the same paper. One story in their technology section called Digital Life, called the Playstation 3 the must have Christmas gift of the year and urged people to buy it. The other story, in the “Home” section of the newspaper, claimed that the PS3 violated voltage standards for Singapore and so any retailer that was caught selling the console would be fined by the government.

Yes, you read that right. The newspaper told people to buy the console, but told retailers not to sell it. In an amazing second round of even greater confusion, the two articles were written by the same person.

At this point you might be thinking “That’s incredibly stupid,” and if you thought so, you’d be thinking exactly the same thing that I was thinking, which is why I wrote the story pointing out this amazing contradiction. I also pointed out that said contradiction was based on a factual error, because the Playstation 3 comes built-in with a universal voltage convertor and can thus safely operate anywhere in the world without bursting into flame, unless Singapore is operating on some unique Cold Fusion generator that I’m not aware of that requires a canister of hydrogen be present and attached to all consumer electronics.

So I–and the rest of the GameAxis team–were a bit cheesed when we were told that the story had to be pulled now our new “owners” had heard about it and weren’t entirely happy with the criticism. They also said that they wanted an e-mail out of me explaining why I would tell such a hideous story.

Unfortunately for them, I don’t think they have much knowledge of the game industry or how things work around here. Most of the points of contention they wanted explained were wholly on my side. For example, one of the points I mentioned in my article was that since journalist had written a glowing article reccomending the PS3, it must have been one of the “illegal” consoles. SPH didn’t take kindly to this and insisted that the console they used for review was completely legitimate as they had received it from Sony itself.

Sadly, what they weren’t aware of was that Sony gave them PS3 models from the Taiwan/Hong Kong region, which, according to their definition, made the consoles illegal. They had, in fact, just admitted to using contraband technology as they had quite precisely defined it in their article.

Suffice to say after the e-mail was written and a few other people made some relevant points to it, it was sent off and the basic message was “You’re getting mad at us for telling the truth.” After it was sent, we didn’t hear another word from them again.

I suppose we could lie and say that the PS3 doesn’t have a universal voltage convertor, but then Singapore would be the only country in the world that believes this, and I think the country is more interested in not looking ignorant than it is about having one magazine apologize for pointing out they were wrong.

Still, I can guess I can add them to my list of People Gunning For Me. Just a couple of months ago I annoyed the Media Development Authority (owned and operated by the government) and now it’s the press. Man, I just can’t play nice anywhere…

New Propaganda Pseudo/Retro/Neo-50′s/Post-Modern/Public-Service Revival!

Because I too must utilize the public transportation system a few times a week to get down to the GameAxis office, I’ve been bombarded during the morning with the a new public service video that runs on the LCD monitors hanging from the ceiling of every train station. These videos, done in a completely unironic, sincere, recreation of 50′s style public service films shown to kids in school, instructs train passengers on the appropriate action to take in the event that someone should try to plant a bomb on the train.

The videos faithfully follow the structure of films 50 years past with bad music, bad acting and a voice over that praises the actions of the participants. An example:

Man in sunglasses pushes a bag under his seat, then stands up and walks to the connector between train cars. Mary, a passenger notices this.

Mary: Excuse me, you’ve left your bag!

The man looks down then walks away anyway.

Narrator: That’s right, Mary! You should always notify someone when they’ve left their bag behind!

John: Excuse me! Hey’ve you’ve left your bag behind!

Terrorist: [Looks down at bag, then waves hand dismissively and says in broken English] Not mine, not mine…

Narrator: HM! This is very suspicious!

After being exposed to this for the last few weeks, I now present my much more entertaining and commercially marketable version.

[OPEN WITH THE 20TH CENTURY FOX LOGO, FOLLOWED BY THE SHIMMERING LUCASFILM LOGO]

Narrator chimes in now, but instead of sounding like an enthusiastic nerd, we now have Hollywood VO guy who has been smoking cigarettes since the age of three]

Narrator: It is a city, like any other…

[Cut to woman crying on train holding a bloody body]

Woman: NOOOOOOOOOO!

Narrator: A city with a purpose…

[Cut to man pushing another man up against the wall of the train. Cut to bead of sweat falling from assaulted man's brow as they stare each other down]

Assaulting Man: You’re going to DO it, and DO IT NOW!

Narrator: A city that is ABOUT TO DIE…

[Orchestral sting cuts in, a rapid fire montage accompanies showing a car chase, a helicopter zooming between buildings and an explosion]

Narrator: And it all starts with a bag on a train…

[Man dressed up in extremist terrorist clothing jumps onto a train with a transparent suitcase through which a pack of semtex and a detonator can be clearly seen]

Terrorist: I AM JUST A PASSENgER, MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS BY ALLAH! IGNORE ME OR I SHALL KILL YOU IN MY FANATICAL ZEAL TO ENTER PARADISE FOR THE JIHAD, WHICH IS WHAT ALL MORNING COMMUTERS DO!

[Mary from previous video stands up, wearing a trench coat.]

Mary: I don’t THINK so…

[She pulls at trench coat to reveal body tight latex suit and bandolier bristling with grenades and ammunition]

Terrorist: [In surprise] ALLAHJIHAD! I FORGOT MY CELLPHONE IN THE OTHER CAR, I’LL JUST…

[He tries to drop the suitcase, which is beeping wildly]

Suitcase: WARNING, WARNING, FISSION REACTION ENABLED. YOU NOW HAVE THREE MINUTES TO REACH MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE.

Mary: [Brandishing a twin full-auto pistols] Drop the bomb, terrorist.

Terrorist: AI! HOW DID YOU KNOW?!

Mary: I can smell evil.

Terrorist: But can you smell… NINJAS?!

[A troupe of ninjas appears from nowhere and begins rapidly cycling through various martial arts poses, punctuating each move with "KI-YAI!"]

Mary: Do you like primates and beer?

Terrorist: What?

Mary: I said, do you like primates and beer?

Terrorist: What does that have to do with my ninjas?

Mary: ‘CAUSE YOU’RE ABOUT TO GET A FACEFUL OF DRUNKEN MONKEY FIST! HEEEEE-YAH!

[Mary proceeds to kick 12 different kinds of ass while a plucky reporter and her kid sidekick defuse the bomb while getting talked through it by specialists over the radio]

See, I like my version better…

Boating & Evicting

Today we hopped on one of the long boats (So called because it’s… well, long, and has a tiny propellor attached to an impressively long rod that stretches way out beyond the aft side of the boat) to check out the near by cove of Railey. While we were there we ran into a charmingly stereotypical British girl by the name of Sally and ended up having coffee with her and just yakking about this, that and the other thing, pretty much in that order.

We also got some bad news in that once again, we are kicked out of our apartment, and for exactly the same reason as the last time, it seems; the owner has sold the place.

This is making some excellent in-roads in our mutual attitudes towards owning property versus renting it. The arbitrary nature of us just getting kicked out this particular time seems like a rather sadistic whim, since this means we rented this apartment so that we could divest ourselves of furniture for an imminent move to Canada that will take place as soon as The Wife’s Permanent Residency application has been approved. Now, with only a few months to go, likely, we find ourselves having to spend MORE money to move, and possibly buy furniture anyway, just so we have something to sleep on for the next few months.

Oh well, it’s been a while since something bad happened, so I guess this is just the mandatory complication that needs to run riot once in a while.

Another Random Thought

If Batman had been born in Singapore, he probably would have had to call himself “Fruitbatman,” since that’s the bat indigenous to this region.

Getting Picked On By The Government

Thursday ended up taking a turn for the strange when I got a call from the GameAxis editor who is currently IN FREAKIN’ JAPAN, because HE got a call from the MDA, otherwise known as the Media Development Authority of Singapore. In a nutshell, they are the censorship guys and are the ones responsible for making Playboy, Cosmopolitan (At least until 2004), Kill Bill Volume 1, and the Grand Theft Auto video game series illegal in Singapore. To make a long story short, a video game for the Xbox 360 called Saints Row was schedule to go on sale in Singapore because it had an “M-Rating” and then mysteriously failed to show up at retail outlets on the dates that said retailers had promised. When consumers asked why, the retailers told them that the MDA had banned the game. I made a post about this on the GameAxis blog when it seemed we had found a loophole. It seems that this kind of irriated the MDA since what they were telling retailers was not the case at all, and ended up with phone calls to GameAxis to first track down the editor, who then threw the ball at me, since I was the one that wrote the post. After being very logical and asking questions of the MDA rep (who, in all honesty, I think was expecting a cowed and subservient panic-stricken Singaporean, not a Canadian who told him, “okay, so explain this to me, ’cause it doesn’t make ANY sense…”) I was required to make a SECOND BLOG POST in order to make the MDA look better. Unfortunately the information they told me to relay does anything BUT make them look sensible and better.

Sigh… Bureaucrats… They really should expose themselves to reality once in a while then they might actually avoid embarrassing moments like this.