Yes, yes, I know I'm stupid.

Hey folks,

I’ve reached India, and I’m pretty much bored out of my mind here,

save for the fact that I have work that I don’t wanna do, and

there’s more easily accessible cricket here. But don’t worry, that’s

not what this e-mail’s about.

Basically, I wanted to give all of you a free chance to laugh at my

stupidity, because I’ll bet none of you’ve been stopped at the

Singapore departure gate for possession of prohibited items. Yeh,

that happened to me on Sunday, and it sure as hell wasn’t pleasant.

Well, it started about half a year ago, sometime in October, when my

dad made a trip to Afghanistan for work. Along the road, what should

he find, but a spent AK-47 assault rifle shell… which he gave to me

when he got back, which I promptly put in my wallet as a memento.

I think I’ve shown it to a few of you, so you know that the shell is

impossible to come from a handgun, a fact that the people at the

departure gate chose to ignore. But enough spoilers, I’ll start from

the beginning.

5:50 pm, Singapore Airport – A delayed landing of the

Manila-Singapore flight, putting everyone on edge already. 6:20 –

apparent departure time of our connecting flight, taking us to

Delhi. So, after a quick visit to the ‘piddle-pot’ (my dad’s ‘kiddy’

name for a lav) we set off from F41 to E12, about a 12-minute walk.

6:15 – When we finally reach the damned departure gate, thinking

that we’re going to be *just* in time for our flight. All’s okay at

this point, the screens are all flashing ‘Last Call’, and we’ve made

it to the gate, no troubles. Put bags onto the x-ray conveyor belt,

and walk thru the metal detector (beep beep – oh yeah, wallet,

chain, jeans’ button). Then, a not so kind faced lady asks me to

step aside for a body search, and of course, that’s routine, so no

worries. Beep beep – on my wallet. So I take it out, and she

finishes the search, after stopping at my chain and button. So I

make to get my bag, when she asks me if she can examine my wallet

(oh, sh*t, I haven’t taken out the casing, but no worries, I’ve been

to IASAS and the Hague with it in my pocket, so no worries!). Yeah,

right.. “Excuse me sir, please step over here lah” another voice

says, which turns out to be the x-ray conveyor belt operator.

At this point, my dad’s telling me that I’m an idiot, I’m

apologizing, all the while thinking that we’re going to miss our

flight, which should have been taking off at this point. But more

and more people are milling in, meaning that the screen was wrong.

Whew. Unfortunately, that little fact wasn’t enough to take away the

bigger worry, that they’d offload my dad and my baggage, hold us

there overnight while they performed a criminal background check of

me. All the while, my dad’s been teasing me that my goatee would

make them think I was a terrorist, which was unnerving. Then again,

my dad’s ability to joke at this point was a bit more comforting,

because it was possible that they would allow us to go thru. Another

man was called in, who basically copied out the entirety of my

passport, and checked out my dad’s story of his finding the bullet

in Afghanistan, including visa checks, and the whole nine yards.

‘Okay, they’ll let us through now, right? I kept asking my dad’. He

told me they couldn’t really do anything, and even tried to give

them a ‘complete reference’ by flashing his PPS Solitaire card, as

if to say ‘I’m a good customer here, please don’t do anything rash’,

which also, they ignored. Now the time is 6:45, and the last call

signal’s finally being announced on the PA system, adding to the

general fear of missing the flight, which is again, what my dad had

been threatening me with disembowelment about.

Enter two guards, sporting stylish revolvers and truncheons, making

me feel oh so much better. Then, enters an investigator who takes

pictures of the casing, and measures it. All the while, seven

different people are asking my dad and I questions, and that one guy

kept writing out of my passport. They asked for my addresses, in

India and the Philippines, as well as all of my flight details.

Surprisingly, I actually had enough composure to realize that the

morons in uniform kept asking how long we were staying in Singapore,

even though we were standing in a transfer gate. -_-; go figure.

I also noticed, something which I find funny now, but didn’t quite

at that time, that everyone of the Singapore airport staff had a

chic new cellfone, which they used instead of walkie-talkies which

they all had, to contact their superiors. One of the guards told us

that he would have to contact his superior to decide whether we’d

get on the plane at all, lah. He then explained that even a year old

spent shell from an assault rifle that was impossible for me to

conceal on my person was prohibited, and a very serious matter to

them at Singapore, lah; they’d have to confiscate the casing, and he

hoped that it wasn’t worth too much, lah. So I apologized, and we

bid our goodbyes and left in a hurry to catch the flight.

And although I wasn’t really observant enough to place a time on

this event, my dad’s colleague, who was taking the same flight asked

us what was wrong, and when my dad told him, he said that it was a

lucky thing we weren’t arrested, because he got held up like us for

a fountain pen cartridge, which they might have thought was glycerin

or something -_-;. <- at="at" careful="careful" employ="employ" lmao="lmao" people="people" span="span" such="such" they="they">

Singapore!
Anyhow, just thought you’d like a laugh over spring break, cheers!
Cheers folks, Shriram out.
ps- do reply, reading your opinions on my little ‘adventure’ wouldbe entertaining, hehepps- to avoid any physical discrimination while I travel, I’vegotten rid of the goatee, hahaha.