Cheers...

You’d think I’d know by now that the minute I say to myself  “oh bollox, I have nothing to blog about today”,  some calamity befalls me, giving me ample opportunity to rant and complain and generally be a moany bitch.

And so it came to pass that today, approx 14 mins after I thought “oh bollox, etc”, I found myself stuck in the supermarket carpark, with a line of NINE cars behind me.

Let’s back up a bit. (If only I could have).  There’s this ridiculously annoying parking payment system in Singapore.  (It’s almost as annoying as the payment  systems in the department stores, where you queue at the counter of the thing you want, ask for it, take a payment slip, go queue at the payment counter, pay, go back to the original counter, queue some more, and then murder someone.)  So.  All cars in Singapore are fitted with a card-reading device.  You buy a pre-paid card, stick it in the device, and it’s sort-of a debit card:  every time you go under a reader (eg in a car park or on a toll road) it deducts the cost.  Easy peasy. 

Until you run out of money.

Then you have two options:  top up at various cash points using your local-bank-only Singapore-specific debit card;  or top up with cash at a 7-11.  Because we’re not with local banks (solely because I fundamentally object to having to have my husband countersign my application form) the former is not an option.  And so, about twice a month, I go to a 7-11 and put a wad of money on the car-card.

I ran low today.  But!  I had enough to cover 2 hours at the supermarket.

I did not, however, have enough to cover me for 3 hours at the supermarket. Which is what, for some unknown reason, the system decided to charge me.  There I sat, at the carpark barrier, cursing the machine. I pressed the HELP button ; nothing.  I pressed it again;  the cars – NINE OF THEM – behind me beeped at me to HURRY UP.  But I couldn’t HURRY UP because I was stuck.  A stupid fucking machine over-charging me, and not enough money on the card.  So, I did what any sane person would do and started to shout at the machine. And then the cars. 

And now I can’t actually relate in detail all the steps I had to go through to GET OUT OF THE CARPARK because it is honestly, too deeply stressful.  Here are the salient points:

I yelled at the customer service woman.
I made her run up two flights of stairs (unheard of in Singapore).

I yelled at the Security Guard she tried to pawn me off on.

I yelled at the carpark man who had not bothered to answer my distress calls, and who initially refused to attend to me because – get this – it was past 6 o’clock.

I cried.

I cursed Singapore.

Eventually I was freed. 

I got home, at QUARTER TO SEVEN, so irate and tetchy that I could barely see straight.  Then the Baby stuck a pencil into the Girl’s eye, and the Boy’s week’s worth of homework presented itself, and the Mandarin homework made no sense to anyone, Chinese or otherwise, and so I locked myself into the kitchen and had a drink.

Sometimes it’s the only thing to do.