We like MOM!

This time I come prepared so armed with a bottle of cold water and cash in abundance I go back to MOM to pick up our passes. At 7.30 am I am not the first one there but the office opens 20 minute early and there are a lot of cubicles so by 7.40 I am done and I proudly carry my 2 passes. One is the employment pass for Max with details of his occupation and the other one is the dependant pass for me with absolutely no details at all apart from my name. They are meant to be carried with us at all times and will allow us to enter the Country without having to go through the whole Visa paperwork again and they also double as ID cards.

ID cards here are necessary for lots of what appear to be rather strange reasons. The strangest of all so far has been the dispatch of a small parcel to the UK. I went to the Sing Post office as I wanted it to be a recorded delivery and was asked to produce a passport or an ID card. I was rather taken aback by this request because I have never been asked to prove who I am to send a letter. I did not have any documentation and I certainly did not want to walk back to the apartment to pick up my passport so I made a lot of fuss and whined a lot and managed to convince the girl at the counter that I was not a criminal.

The same cannot be said now that I have my ID card which comes in the shape of a sage green credit card with my finger print on one side and my photo on the other.

Now having been reproduced in black and white and as it is now prohibited to smile when posing for an official photo I look like a drug baron one step away from being executed by the militia, not flattering at all.

Still I am now officially allowed to stay in this Country at least for a while.

Max instead looks like a deer caught in the headlights, wide eyed and slightly panicky.

So between the two of us one might wonder why they gave us the passes at all...too late, now we are in though two years from now we will have to start the process all over again as the passes are only valid for a limited period.