Passport V

"How was your stay in Singapore?" asked the guard at the Singapore Airport, prior to entering customs. Surprised by the question, I answered from the gut, "Amazing." He smiled honestly. "That's great to hear." He inspected my passport briefly, and said, "Have a nice day."

"You too."

Manufactured politeness should be an export in Singapore. Except, it might not be fake. There are all kinds of people -- overseas Chinese, Malays, and Indians -- who are living in a virtual state of paradise. If they were ever to return to their own home countries, they would return to incredible poverty. And, they know it.

They appreciate the strong hand of the government that allows all to co-exist in a strange, forced peace. In a region filled with authoritarian governments, Singapore is but another. But is it the same as others? It seems more a benevolent dictatorship to me. More than a few have concluded similarly.

My taxi driver to the airport ranted for the twenty minute drive how wonder life was in Singapore. His parents had immigrated the prior generation and the government had always shielded him from outright racism. They cannot prevent subtle racism, but outright expressions they can, and do. This is a rarity among minorities in Southeast Asia. And, the locals appreciate it tremendously.

The other page has my mainland China permit. I never used it; I was supposed to travel to Beijing to install some risk analysis software for my job, but it never panned out. Politics (local, not national) intervened. The back office is fighting with front office. To maintain profits on the Bank of China account, we are delaying the installation of this software in the back office for fear that it may reduce sales!

Regardless, the stamp is beautiful. And weirdly, it continues the Asia trend of English language everywhere. Doesn't this anger the nationalists? It must. There are few countries that have resisted the Roman characters as intensely as the mainland Chinese government, but even they use them liberally on my visa.

Passport IV

Pages twelve and thirteen are a bit boring, so I'll skip to fourteen and fifteen. On the right hand page (fourteen), you can see my work permit. In most countries, you need to change from your current status to a permitted worker. In Japan, this requireds your passport to be surrendered for about one month.

Notice that I am admitted as an "Engineer". Perhaps this is a generic title they give to skilled office workers. Additionally, my permit lasts for three years. I relish the day I will have the opportunity to renew this permit.

Permanence at a foreign branch as a foreigner has many benefits that are not immediately apparent from a distance, nor upon arrival. Institutional knowledge is valuable in developing, remote locations, such as Japan. Prior to my arrival, my department had once tried an expansion in Japan only to fail. Only time will tell if our current approach will work in the long run.

Our Tokyo branch, like other banks, is struggling to balance North American business culture with the local one. Locals cannot believe their jobs secure if they are unwilling to compromise. The same is true of transplants.

Passport III

This pair of pages has another pair of entrances to Japan. Only when you travel to and from Japan do you realise how organised the immigration system is. Instead of traditional stamps, printed stickers are used that can be machine scanned. Don't forget: Most of Japan is trying to keep you out!

On page eleven, you can see my enter and exit stamps for Korea. Prior to traveling to Korea, person after person (both Western and Japanese) told me not to travel to Korea because is was the "same" as Japan. Boy were they ever wrong! Korea is a totally different country than Japan.

My earlier blog posts have detailed accounts of my travels there.

This page also has my business trip to Hongkong. Fortunately, I traveled at the same time as Richard Robinson from work. He is always a blast to go out with after work. Even though we were stationed on different floors in the Citibank building, each night we met for dinner. Richard is an endless explorer, so we managed to find some interesting restaurants ourselves in both Kowloon and Hongkong Island with the help of natives.

I highly recommend traveling to Hongkong on business and for pleasure. I would not recommend it for living for two reasons: pollution and mixing with the locals. Contrary to Tokyo, little mixing occurs between the locals and foreigners in Hongkong. Part of this may be due to its fractured past with Britain acting as its ruler for 150 years. I cannot blame the Cantonese locals for isolating substantial parts of their culture from the Britons and other foreigners. Even to this day, there are neighborhoods on Hongkong Island that are primarily foreign. I wondered sometimes if I was still in Hongkong!

Passport II

Passports have a funny way of disorganising themselves. The first page of stamps is actually out of order. Later pages contain my first stamps when arriving in Hongkong as a tourist.

On the left page:
The top left box is a square stamp issued by the Japanese authorities when leaving the country. This was the first time I left Japan. I had arrived on the admittance stamp the neighboring cell slightly less than ninety days earlier. They sent me back to New York for "fixed income training". Little did I know that it would serve as an opportunity to mix with my new Japanese co-workers. They sent all new Tokyo hires back to New York for (new) standard fixed income training. Bart and I did our best to welcome them to New York City. Oddly, the relationships I forged then lasted about six months, then largely faded. As the Japanese wedged themselves into the local Tokyo branch, all broke away from the group -- albeit one by one. This was difficult at first because I was under the impression these would be lasting relationships. At the most, I still have regular contact with only one. This is not to say that future groups don't deserve the same kind of "red carpet" treatment that Bart and I sought to offer. Other classes may result in stronger relationships.

The round symbol on this same page is a stamp for my arrival in New York City. Without fail, the JFK airport customs is a terribly frightening experience for Americans as well as foreigners. Bart once told me a story about a Japanese couple on a honeymoon that filled their forms using Japanese characters instead of roman ones. The officer screamed at them "English please!" Bart was fortunate to stand behind them and translate. If civility begins at customs, this couple was in for a rude awakening for the so-called "American experience".

On the alternate page, there is my Hongkong stamp for 7-May-2005. I can remember how scared I was to arrive at the airport. Hongkong is a long and lonely flight to take by yourself. I was flying on a specially modified Airbus planes that could make the journey from JFK to Hongkong in one leg. Sixteen hours in the air was enough to time to consider how crazy and scary my decision was to travel alone halfway around the world. I spent more than a few afternoons in my hotel curled up in a ball trying to sleep away the depression and weird sleep cycle. I had not considered the time change before I left the United States. Twenty years of living in the United States had truly demented my sense of global position and its time.

In the end, every second in Hongkong was worth it. I was so damn proud to be turned away from a traditional Buddhist burial ground in Hongkong when a women informed me that I was looking for another nearby temple. I profusely apologised and walked 100 meters next door to the temple of 10,000 Buddhas. It was rainy, I was lonely, and far from home, but the hot vegetarian meal waiting at the top made the trip worth it.

During my trip to Hongkong, I took a trip to Macau. It is the Tijuana of Hongkong. If you have ever been Tijuana in Mexico, you realise immediately it is a Sin City where everything is for sale -- women, booze, drugs. The day that I went to the Macau ferry port on Hongkong Island, I frantically searched for my passport unable to find it. Enraged at my stupidity I rode the subway back to my hotel across the harbor in Kowloon. I turned over my room twice only to realise my passport was in my shoulder bag the entire time. I rushed back to the ferry port to make it to Macau by early afternoon. What a waste!

That trip was "worth" an exit and entrance stamp from Hongkong and an arrival and exit stamp in Macau. The experience was more than worth the one thousand dollars I spent for the flight from New York to Hongkong. The return flight left such a impression that I remember my aeroplane meal for more than a year. I spent the next eighteen months searching for the sweet tofu that I had for breakfast. Only when I was searching for breakfast in a convenience with Richard was he able to tell me that it was called anin tofu (sweet tofu).

Passport I

As a romantic for all things Nineteen Sixties -- JFK, Vietnam, the foreign service, jet aeroplanes, civil rights -- I am naturally held by The Passport. Possessing one is like a storybook in every carrier's pocket.

We have a photocopy machine at work that is capable of scanning documents. I like it because the results are always a little grainy. And, they are black and white. I've taken the liberty of scanning pages in my passport with stamp of interest. In the posts that follow, I'll tell the story of pages and stamps and share a few memories.

To start, how did I come across this passport? Ages ago in California, before I traveled to Baha Mexico for a week with some roommates, I was going to apply for a passport. I must have retrieved and filled the application three times in my small room, but I never did mail it. I because discouraged when I realised they don't stamp it at the border anymore. Even more, all you need is a driver's license. So much for romance.

It wasn't until I decided to travel to Hongkong for my first big trip after getting my first job -- at Bear, Stearns, where I still work. It was Hongkong or Singapore, but I settled on Hongkong for romance of the British empire. Of course, not for all the terrible things they forced upon natives, but for what is left. Since living in San Jose in California, I always had a replica flag of what I termed "the old Hongkong flag". When I wanted to escape the misery of school, I would browse the Web and read books about its history and current state of affairs. Much later, the film 2046 only drove my obsession further.

I'm rambling. Back to the original point: my trip to Hongkong. I needed a passport to visit East Asia. I acquired the application at Grand Central branch of the United States Postal Service -- of all places. After much fretting, like the first few times, I finally got all my ducks in a row. When I went for my photograph, I planned in advance to give myself the most severe Wall Street kind of look possible. I wore a sharp suit and tie and slicked my hair back. My eyes were too wide open, but the effect is clear. I'll live with this photograph for the next ten years. (I used nearly the same pose for my New York driver's license.) The best part about my application: I used my baby passport from the Netherlands as proof of a former passport.

The lady behind the special passport desk in the Grand Central branch looked at my old passport with amusement, reviewing all my required documents, and said, "Hmm. Cute. It really looks like you." The application said it could take up to eight weeks to receive it. Within three is was on my desk in New York City. I'll tell the story of my Hongkong trip another time.

The top half of this image has my Foreigner's Card for Japan. Most foreigners in Tokyo refer to it as their Gaijin Card. Gaijin is a shorter version of gaikokujin.