Day Zero: Ang Moh Direct

Carry-on luggage, Lowepro CompuDaypack: 15.4’’ Dell laptop, Nikon D40 w/ kit lens, 80gb iPod classic, 8gb USB flash-drive, Samsung A-737 handphone, printed e-ticket, and accompanying itinerary—all mine; also containing: Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Lens, Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G VR Zoom Niikor Lens, Nikon SB-600 Flash, Hoya 52mm Circular Polarizing Filter—all Yang’s.

You see, my trip to Singapore just isn’t as fun without bringing contraband into the country. And if you don’t consider someone else’s camera equipment contraband, then you simply lead a far more interesting life than I do and you would then do well to indulge my fancy. After all, I’m a frisky ang moh, defiant to the last breath. I’ve even been known to jaywalk. However, I’m no fool—I leave the peg leg and eye patch at home so I don’t look too suspicious. I’m sure I belched out an occasional pirate-like “Yar!” while traipsing through the airports, the weight of the piracy hanging from my shoulders a small burden worth bearing, but no one appeared fazed. And as I marched through the 3rd terminal at Changi International approaching the customs queue, chest puffed out and unruly smirk glued to my pasty-white face, I felt obliged to chuckle. This is just too easy, I thought to myself, these guys are complete amateurs.

It was but a few moments later, while standing in queue at customs and waiting for the old, officious woman to eye me like the perpetrator I aspired to be before pecking her little stamp upon my passport, that I the Changi intercom screeched: Mr. Matthew McGee, who just arrived from flight SQ25, please blah blah blah, buh-blah blah number two.

Again my poor hearing fails me! Hoping that Changi officials haven’t asked me to go to the restroom, I tapped the nearest person, an elderly Indian fellow with kind eyes ears just as bad as mine. “Sir, did you hear what that message said for Mr. Matthew McGee to do?” I asked, placing my hand upon my chest to drive home the point.

He smiled, revealing fewer teeth than a hen has sense. “You,” he said, poking his finger in my chest, “Mr. Matthew McGee, who just arrived from flight SQ25, please blah blah blah, buh-blah blah number two.” I winced. He shrugged. And within minutes that smug customs agent pecked both our passports with that tiny little stamp of hers. Soon after, we were all strangers again.

But as I stood at the baggage claim for minutes that passed as slow and as long as a hog passes wind—or so I am told—without a glimpse of my luggage making its giddy little rounds along that filthy conveyor belt, an intense feeling of dread overcame me. That old Indian fellow gleefully extending an obnoxious wave goodbye as he galloped through the Nothing To Declare checkpoint, suitcase in hand, only drove home the point: I’d been played like a sucker.

The latter half of the airport paging message now suitably decoded within my miniscule brain, I headed to Lost & Found, not so much to find my luggage, but instead to recover my dismal self-image. There they explained Singapore Air had misdirected my checked luggage to Timbuktu, and, I gotta’ tell you, I ain’t never going to Timbuktu, luggage or no luggage. How did my luggage end up anywhere else but Singapore? No one’s saying anything. Only that it will arrive tomorrow morning. So, $S 120 wealthier and one bag of compensatory amenities later, I moped through the Nothing To Declare checkpoint and collapsed in Yang and Ling’s arms, defeated but still determined to make good on my mission impossible: To make the drop of camera contraband before the authorities were on to me. Clearly I am a trooper.

And I did. They, like the tattered remains of my deflated corpse, are now in Yang’s hands.

To be continued . . .