What started out as a trip filled with anticipation and fun filled excitement, abruptly became the funniest rollercoaster ride of my life. Want a quick summary? This is the grand impression I got from the melbourne customs officers: "Good day mate, welcome to melbourne. I am going to treat you with the utmost disrespect and prejudice for the next fourty minutes and find enough incriminating evidence to implicate and throw you in jail."….
Here is the situation between myself and two customs officers. I can still remember it quite vividly in my mind:
Both officers stared at me as if they were going to eat me up. They think i am going to tuck my tail in between my legs by pretending to be fierce. Well, guess what? I had their job. I was in the army for two plus years. I know how all this works. Those two goons did not scare me in the slidest bit.
They did not address me by mr or sir. Instead, they just fired a whole series of questions that were so absurd and moronic, I could not control all my sudden outbursts of chuckles. And somehow, that irritated them quite a bit. *pats myself on the back*
They then proceeded to ransack my backpack at the same time. Here is just a short list of the questions they asked. There were a lot more, but most were just repetitions of what is below:
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What is your purpose of visit?
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I’m here on holiday.
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The custom officers raised their eyebrows in disbelief, as if they already knew there was nothing vaguely interesting tourists can do in melbourne. What a way to promote your city to tourists.
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What are you going to do in melbourne?
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I’m gonna go visit some friends.
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Who are they? What do they do here?
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They are students studying in monash university.
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What are their names?
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Victor and Raymond.
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What do they do here?
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Ermm.. Didn’t i just tell you…
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What do they do here?!
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*chuckles* They are students studying in monash university, clayton campus.
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What are they studying?
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Medicine and Arts.
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Why did you buy your tickets today instead of booking them earlier?
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We did book our tickets, like three weeks in advance. And at the last minute back in singapore, there was some miscommunication with the SIA ticketing office about our ticket collections and online credit card purchases, so my friend and I got our initial tickets refunded. And so, I had to buy new tickets on the spot minutes before our flight.
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I don’t understand a single word of what you just said.
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Huh? Am i speaking in an incomprehensible alien language? You don’t understand any english? I feel sorry for you. So, I explained patiently once again, this time, in a much slower pace and clearer tone, that was just simple enough for nursery children to understand.
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*chuckles* We did book our tickets, like three weeks in advance. And at the last minute back in singapore, there was some miscommunication with the SIA ticketing office about our ticket collections and online credit card purchases, so my friend and I got our initial tickets refunded. And so, I had to buy new tickets on the spot minutes before our flight.
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How much did you pay for the tickets?
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$984 each.
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Is that in Sing Dollars or Australian Dollars?
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Sing Dollars.
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……………………. LIke, DOH……
Do any of those questions pass through any sort of mental filtering?
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What do you do in your country?
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I am a university student.
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You are having your holidays now?
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Yes, that’s right.
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How many months?
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Three months.
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When did it start?
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May.
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What do you study?
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Business.
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Yea, like it is any of your business. Guess it doesn’t take much for you to do your job huh. Do I look like some sort of terrorist or illegal immigrant?
And while answering these idiotic, irrelevant questions, I glanced around the quarantine area. Surprise surprise. Only a few Indians and Chinese. Only Asians. No Caucasians. Gheez, I WONDER WHY THAT IS SO.
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How many semesters have you taken?
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Two. I’m gonna start my third sem in August.
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How many semesters left?
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Four.
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When did you start?
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Last year, August.
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How many months have you got left?
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4 semesters. That would be about 2 years, so 24 months. *chuckles*
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When was your last holiday?
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December.
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Why do you have a three months holiday now, but only one month then?
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Hmmm, that, i’m not sure.
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How the hell should i know?!! Why don’t you make a phonecall to NTU and ask them yourself?
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Really… Show me your wallet. How much money do you have?
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200 Australian Dollars. And a couple of tens, twos and 4 fifties, all SIng dollars.
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How much money do you have in your bank account after you bought the tickets?
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What?
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How much?
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Isn’t these sort of question supposed to be private?
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How much roughly?!
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…… One point something…
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One point something what? Sing? Australian?
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One point something K in Sing Dollars.
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Yes, cut me off when i am not done saying something. And wow.. Am i supposed to have Australian Dollars in my Singapore bank account?
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How much money do you bring?
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Gheez… You have my wallet. Go figure it out yourself. And didn’t i just tell you how much a moment ago?
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200 Australian Dollars. And a couple of hundred Sing Dollars.
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Is this your university identity card?
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Yes.
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DOH… MY matrix card has MY PIC and NAME on it. And then, one of them picks up the bag of antibiotics and fish oil pills from my bag.
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What are these?
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Those are antibiotics and supplements for my friend. I’m bringing them to him as a favor.
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And one of the officers took out his white latex gloves, rips out a pill, and disappears into some sort of drug testing room. The other one proceeded to drag a small piece of paperlike thing held by what i believe to be black tongs, across my backpack. Clearly, they were testing for any small trace of illegal drugs like heroine and cocaine. Cool. They suspect I am a drug trafficker or something. Once again, I was deeply IMPRESSED by their sense of PROFESSIONALISM. ROFL.
And then, one of them sees my 11B.
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You were in the armed forces? How many years??
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Two years, two months.
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He watches me with caution, and suddenly became wary of my actions. Ermm, seriously, you think a small guy like me can overpower two huge caucasian guys with batons? Suddenly, I felt like Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. Uber cool. I am a secret agent. I can take down trained officers with a pen and a rolled up magazine.
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How was it?
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In short, it was not pleasant.
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What is this?
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Oh, this is my refunded air ticket which i booked three weeks ago.
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Both officers went to a corner of the area and whispered to each other. They showed each other the sample of the pill, and the refunded tickets. One of them goes "Damn!". They continued talking for a while.
One of them came back.
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Ok, you can pack up now. Enjoy your stay in melbourne.
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THANK YOU SOOO MUCH. *chuckles*
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Yes. I am not a Illegal Immigrant. I am not a Terrorist. I am not a Drug Trafficker. I am not a Spy or a Secret Agent. Although it may be cool to be an intelligence agent. =p
I am just an innocent Asian tourist who came to melbourne to visit some good friends.
Your interrogation methods did not work. Your tactics in trying to implicate me failed. In marketing terms, this would be a very good example of a badly managed customer relations. Bad service, zero apology. Well, guess what, I will never go to melbourne again. Other parts of Australia? Not anytime soon. Maybe a few decades later. And I will tell this story to not just ten people, like what kotler’s marketing book says. This story will be heard by everyone i come into contact with. There goes some of your tourism revenue….
Ironically, the two goons did not bother to check, and take out from my bag, the two packets of chocolates which i declared on the incoming passenger card. And, they took the fish oil pills for testing, instead of the antibiotics which seem to look more suspicious. Hilarious. Simply hilarious….
I win. You lose.
