why I hate Singapore

Apart from the stinking heat and humidity, the enforced sterility of the streets, the craven pandering to foreign investors and tourists, the banal plague of trendy Western department stores and fast-food chains, the parsimonious pedagoguery of the government, and the ridiculous expense...

...there were three things about Singapore I truly despised. 

First, this was the name of one of the Chinese restaurants near the check-in counters at Changi Airport:

Second, Changi Airport itself. The first thing that struck me about the place (apart from the above sign) was the lack of a security checkpoint. I obtained my boarding passes, got an exit stamp in my passport, and boom: there I was in the concourse. I turned left and walked to my gate. It was about ten o'clock in the evening and there wasn't much activity in the duty-free shops or coffeehouses. Most folks were curled up in the darkened departure lounges, several of which had fully-reclining seats. Snores, grumbles, and muted conversation permeated the recirculated air, making me feel like I was creeping through a dormitory after lights-out. 

Then I noticed that there were glass walls enclosing each gate, which could only be accessed through thick double doors (also of glass), behind each of which was a miniature security checkpoint. 

Ah, I remember thinking. Now that is nifty. Instead of waiting in an endless queue with everyone else in the damn airport, you'll only be waiting in line with the people aboard your particular flight. 

Then I sat down and tried to access the Internet. 

Now, I know what you're going to say. What a spoiled, privileged little white brat, hung up on his First World problems. No Internet, boo-hoo-hoo. Man up and read a book or something, chickenshit. 

And you'd be justified in saying that. But I'll declare, here and now, that the cussed Internet provided a vital link between me and (a) my lonely fiancée and (b) my terrified parents. Okay, maybe not terrified. But definitely leery of some the places I'd be passing through. I'd agreed, like any good son, to keep in close contact with my folks during my 27-day jaunt through Southeast Asia, e-mailing them whenever I arrived at or departed a new bailiwick. Even Paul Theroux phones home on occasion. Sue me. 

I couldn't access the Internet at Changi Airport. 

Why? 

Because the password could only be found on placards hung upon the wall of the departure gate. On the other side of those locked glass doors. Which wouldn't open until 12:50 a.m., an hour before our departure time. You could have the codes texted to your phone, but I didn't have a phone. 

This was tyranny, plain and simple. In any American or Korean airport you could breeze through security two or three hours beforehand and then laze around the concourse, surfing the Web, drinking coffee, eating unhealthy snacks, and splattering your smelly body, your grubby coat, your crumpled hat, and your electronic gadgetry over an entire row of benches. 

Apparently they frown on that sort of thing in Singapore. 

My American sensibilities were offended on the deepest of levels. Up to that point I had patiently put up with the pettifogging Singaporeans and their absurd laws: the bans against spitting and chewing gum and graffiti and the ridiculous fines for littering and not flushing public toilets. But this was simply too much. The prejudice leveled against some saphead tourist who showed up to Changi Airport with an iPad and no cell phone three hours early for his flight, who just wanted to contact his loved ones and let them know that he wasn't sitting in some whorehouse in Johor Bahru, shooting heroin and contracting all sorts of blood-borne diseases, was outrageous.

When the security agents finally did open up those thick glass doors and started letting us through security, the final nail was driven into Singapore's coffin. I had a grooming kit in my backpack. It wasn't expensive or irreplaceable by any means, but it had been a treasured gift from my parents—a tacit acknowledgement that I was a man, and was capable of looking after myself on my own. In it was a pair of beard-trimming scissors. I had successfully passed through security at Gimpo Airport with those very same scissors. There was no reason whatsoever for the svelte, fruity-voiced Indian lady in the blue button-down shirt and black tie and slacks to pull me out of line. But she did. She ordered me to empty my bag. She confiscated several bottles of suntan lotion which were too large. That was fine by me; I'd plumb forgot they were in there. But then she ordered me to open the grooming kit. I unzipped the small black leather case an opened it like a book, holding it out for her to see. I was writhing with impatience. The entire contents of my pack were scattered across the cold, hard, unfeeling stainless steel of the exam table, and my fellow passengers were scooting impatiently past me to get into the lounge proper. I felt naked, like someone had pantsed me in public. I was anxious to sit down, jack in, and contact home. I was half-crazed with outrage. 

"You cannot take these aboard the plane," said the security agent, her sultry eyes sunk deeply into their sockets, caked with mascara and purple eye shadow beneath plucked eyebrows, snatching the beard-trimming scissors and waggling them under my nose. 

It was then, ladies and gentlemen, that the Vaunter did something he has never, ever done in his entire life. He questioned authority. 

"Why not?" I demanded. "They're mine. They belong to me. I brought them through other airports' security lines just fine." 

"Well, I'm sorry," she said, sounding as sincere as anyone else who has to say "sorry" eighty billion times a day in their line of work. "But I cannot allow you to bring these aboard." 

"Why?" I demanded. I again brought up the other airports which had so freely and eagerly allowed me to pass, beard-trimming scissors in hand. I battled her for five minutes over those beard-trimming scissors. She kept repeating the same dull old lines. No can do. Can't be allowed. Couldn't possibly. She at least had the decency not to claim that the tiny half-inch scissor blades could be used as weapons, perhaps in a desperate bid to take over the plane and crash it into the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Finally, understanding that I was making no headway, and would probably have to take a different flight if I kept this malarkey up, I relented. 

"Well, all right then," I said, grudgingly, sounding exactly like my dad did when I was a kid and I did something idiotic in his presence that he was powerless to halt or avert. 

I began to give the Indian lady my address, so she could mail the scissors to me. She looked confused for a moment, and then she interrupted. 

"No, no, no," she said. "No mail. Confiscation." 

I stood there for a moment, blinking, not comprehending. From way deep down in my brain, there was the sound like a twig snapping in the woods on a dark, frozen, snowy night.

"What?" I asked. "You're confiscating them?"

"Yes," she said, moving away to deposit my things in a bin, but (wisely) not turning her back to me. 

"But they're my scissors."

"We cannot mail them to you. They are being confiscated."

"What's going to happen to them?" 

"I don't know." 

Both of us knew perfectly well. Incineration, probably. Garbage. Waste. Somehow I didn't see Singapore as being the kind of place that would have an Unclaimed Baggage Center. 

"Those are my property, miss," I huffed. I was riding high. The anger endorphins were pulsing through my brain and veins, lifting me higher than the plane I was about to board. I'd never, ever challenged a security agent at an airport, or an authority figure of any kind, really. It was intoxicating. I felt powerful. I felt manly. I felt assertive. And I felt truculent. The more adamant and insurmountable the wall of red tape and bureaucratic posturing erected before me was, the harder I wanted to push against it, headbutt it, knock it down, crumbling and tumbling. 

"Why?" I demanded, my voice calm and clear and cool like a freshwater spring, but with a welter of venomous alkali beneath it. "Why can't you mail them back to me? Why are you confiscating my property?" 

She raised her arms, spread her hands out wide in a full-body shrug. 

"It's Singapore!" she declared, with a faint smile, a pathetic attempt at mollification—or perhaps admission of guilt. It was the sheepish grin of a thief caught red-handed, a shy junior member of a gang of thugs being cross-examined in the dock. 

And in that moment, I saw the futility of my enterprise. The wall was too high and too thick. For the briefest instant I was able to step outside of myself, outside Changi Airport, outside Singapore, and see it as I had from the highest reaches of the Flyer the previous evening—the whole cockamamie place with its dumbass laws and its indentured populace. Poor buggers, I mused. I looked at the Indian woman, her arms outstretched and her shoulders hunched, looking like some stupid scarecrow inexpertly nailed up. 

I said, "Fine." I slapped my lobotomized grooming kit shut and zipped it up. I crammed the disemboweled guts of my pack back inside and lugged the thing off the heavy steel table. I didn't give the security agent another glance. In the time it had taken for us to have our little chinwag, practically every other passenger had gone through, and every seat in the lounge was now taken. I plonked myself on the floor, took out the iPad, checked in with everyone at home, and in twenty minutes it was boarding time. I sat and sulked during the entire four-hour flight to Hong Kong. 

And that, ladies and gents, is why I hate Singapore.