As a family we have recently become Singapore Permanent Residents, relinquishing our "green cards" in favour of sparkly new blue Singapore Identity cards (IC's).
Now being a green card holder was quite cool, rather anonymous and vaguely reminiscent of being entitled to apply for work in America. Being an IC card holder on the other hand, has its definite disadvantages, not least of which is having a rather fetching mugshot on the front and a digitised thumbprint on the rear.
Now, the initial process of becoming a permanent resident here is relatively painless, a few boring forms to complete, a bit of photocopying, the usual horrible mugshot in quaduplicate and $500+ in crisp one hundreds. The finalisation of the process however, is Singapore in microcosm. Namely a family outing to the Immigration Office, which in our case turned in to a five hour queue fest: first you queue for a queue number, then you wait for your number to pop up on the LED display to let you know that you can join the queue to pay for your IC. Then you wait while your baby screams because she is bored of looking at everyone elses queue number appear on the screen. Then all the counter staff go off for their lunch. Together. After that you rejoin the original queue, the most tedious queue of all which is the one where you get your right and left thumb digitally printed and entered into the singapore identity database. Note to self, when committing crime in Singapore, make sure to cover up thumbs first. And the last queue, well I forget what that was for, after five hours of waiting, without even the ubiquitous Mr Bean on the monitor to entertain us, it really didnt seem to matter.
So in the first week of being a Singapore PR I haven't noticed that my desire for galaxy chocolate, cumberland sausages and sweet & sour pork like they make it in the takeaways back home is diminishing. But then neither then I have I acquired a sudden liking for durian, frogs legs congee and mooncakes. I guess its just gonna takes time. Lah.
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