Travel and Culture
My Australian Son and Wife Gave Me Anguish in Singapore
We had no idea chewing gum was a huge issue in Singapore, causing a dramatic outcome.
The Significance of Multiculturism in My Life
Over the last 40 years of my profession, I visited more than 50 countries and worked in 35 countries in Europe, Asia, and America. Every country was unique from cultural, political, financial, and environmental perspectives.
Visiting, living, and working in these countries gave me valuable life lessons, provided me with new perspectives, and broadened my horizon. While it could be stressful, traveling to different countries can be an excellent tool to increase our skills and experience.
Living in Australia, a multicultural country, I had an opportunity to learn about multiple cultures experienced in this unique country.
Thus, Australia has become the catalyst for me by creating the foundation to understand other cultures and adapt to them effortlessly.
In this story, I’d like to share an interesting incident that happened to me in Singapore when my wife and child visited me while working in Singapore. This beautiful country fascinated me and taught me valuable life lessons.
A Dramatic Incident Happened When My Wife and Son Visited Me in Singapore
In the early 2000s, I had a one-year international assignment to support an engineering project in a significant Asian bank in Singapore.
The project was assigned to me by IBM, an organization I worked for 22 years in the second part of my 40-year employment in the technology industry. The company covered all costs, including luxurious accommodation.
Singapore is only eight hours away from Australia by airplane. In addition, there are multiple flights to Singapore each day from Melbourne, where I reside.
My five-year-old son has just started kindergarten. During the school holidays, I invited my wife and son to visit me as it was impossible for me to leave my busy job at the bank.
The first day went well. My wife had enough supplies for my son in her travel bag. But the only problem was the lack of chewing gum that my five-year-old son was addicted to. I said no problem, as there was a large shopping mall adjacent to the luxurious hotel.
I went to the grocery store and searched for chewing gums in a section similar to the Australian grocery stores. I spent around 15 minutes but couldn’t find a single chewing gum.
They are abundant in Australian stores with many competing brands. So, I decided to ask customer service. A very kind lady said, “sorry, sir, we don’t sell chewing gums in our stores.”
I asked her where I could purchase some for my son. She informed me that no stores were selling chewing gum in Singapore. I got surprised and explained my situation. She was kind enough to tell me. The only viable option was to purchase it from a pharmacy after an interview with the pharmacist.
Fortunately, there was a pharmacy just under the hotel. I went to the store and asked the pharmacist to purchase some for my son. The pharmacist said they needed to see the patient.
I told her my son was not sick. She said only after an interview with the person could they provide chewing gum as a restricted substance. I did not understand why it was restricted, but I obeyed her instructions.
When I told my wife, she was also stunned. We had no choice, so we took our son to the pharmacy. My son had difficulty answering the pharmacist’s questions as she had a strong accent. I served as a translator. The main question was why he needed chewing gum.
A brilliant idea came to my mind. I said he has a severe addiction problem and terrible dental problems requiring relief for his tooth pain. It was not a lie. I thought addiction and teeth problems could be valid health conditions to qualify for a restricted substance.
After ten minutes of the interview, with lots of pauses, the pharmacist said, “I understand your points, sir. Let’s make this little boy happy”. She presented three pieces of sugar-free gum to my son with a beautiful smile on her face. My son looked at her hands, grabbed them, and instantly threw the gums to the ground.
Not only the pharmacist and the customers of the shop but my wife and I got also surprised by his bad behavior. I asked him what the problem was. He said, “What am I gonna do with a few pieces of sh*t? I want more bubblegum and now”.
I didn’t know how to correctly and satisfactorily answer his naive question and unreasonable request. I had to switch acting from my limbic brain to my cognitive one taking a few deep breaths closing my eyes, and holding him in my arms.
The pharmacist finally broke the silence. Her beautiful smile earlier turned to an angry face. She firmly held my son’s shoulder, shaking it abruptly, and said:
“Look, spoiled kid! I’m doing a favor for you here. Chewing gum is illegal in our country. Do you understand? It is a regulated substance. Do you understand?” She continued showing him a pamphlet and reading from it by asking, “do you understand” after each sentence.
“Chewing gum was banned in Singapore under the Regulation of Imports and Exports (Chewing Gum) Regulations in 1992. This ban carries a hefty fine and possible jail term for those caught importing, selling, or manufacturing chewing gum. We only permit gums for oral dental hygiene. Take it or leave our shop now. We can’t tolerate your bad behavior and tantrums!”.
My son did not understand any of her legal words, and he started crying intensely. I took the three pieces of gum, paid for them, grabbed my son in my arms, and left the shop by thanking the pharmacist with gratitude. She gently smiled back, but her body language depicted frustration, anger, and disappointment.
My Australian wife was confused, couldn’t make sense of the situation, and felt vulnerable to help our innocent child.
Outside the shop, I influenced the problematic behavior of my child, which was unacceptable in this country, by changing his attention to another object he adored.
I asked him how we bought an excellent battery-operated car for him. His mood suddenly changed to a cheerful one. He forgot about chewing gum and the incident as I purchased an expensive car from that five-star shopping mall. He was elated.
As the next day was a weekend, we decided to go to the city center. My wife loved the clean and orderly streets. My addicted son asked for a piece of gum. My wife gave it to him and told him to chew it as long as possible, as we didn’t have many of them. He nodded and started chewing it with pleasure.
After half an hour’s walk, he threw the gum in a rubbish bin, but it fell on the pavement. We did not notice it as we got fascinated by the beautiful and exotic scenery of the street.
Then, we heard a middle-aged man screaming as if something terrible had happened behind us. He was so aggressive that he pulled my wife’s bag shouting at her. He said, “lady, look what your bad boy did, and you ignored it!” Neither my wife nor I understood what he was referring to.
Instinctively, my wife got angry and started yelling at the man. I couldn’t blame her, as most Australian women react the same way when they face an unfair attack on them. Lots of people started gathering. I found myself in the middle of an unexpected drama on a beautiful summer day on Singapore’s main street.
A lady called the police. I thought she was on our side to report the man harassing my wife. In a few minutes, two policemen arrived on motorbikes. They wrote a $100 fine ticket.
My wife said it was unfair as, in her mind, it was just a piece of chewing gum, and we did not notice it. We usually don’t allow our kids to throw rubbish on the street in Australia. But if kids do it, nobody cares and dramatizes it.
One of the men in the street made body language scared my son so badly. He showed his hand like imitating cutting his neck, saying, “we do this to you if you don’t behave.”
The boy started crying with fear intensely again. The scene's atmosphere got so intense, with his crying and the screams of spectators damning us. We heard someone saying, “irresponsible Europeans.” loudly. My wife said we were not Europeans but Australians with a defensive voice.
I immediately apologized to the police and accepted to pay the fine graciously. Besides, the Singapore dollar had less value than the Australian dollar, so it was not a big deal for me.
I told the police I worked for a bank and supported their country with a mission-critical project for their citizens. They responded to my words with kindness and shook my hand, bowing in front of me.
However, they started conversing with my wife in an educative manner. The officer’s words scared my wife when he said, “you consider yourself lucky as we did not report to higher authorities. They might have imprisoned you or even sent you to a whipping center!”.
My wife understood the prison but had no clue about the whipping center.
Later, when I asked my colleagues in the office, they informed me about corporal punishment in the form of whipping criminals naked as an effective deterrent from committing a crime. Whipping could even include offenses considered minor in Western countries.
Conclusions and Takeaways
I understood it was their law and respected their regulation. Every country has different rules that visitors need to comply with.
However, when I explained this to my wife, she was surprised and said how lucky we lived in Australia, as minor crimes could be tolerated. So, a tiny incident that meant nothing in Australia turned out to be a criminal case in Singapore.
Despite this educative and dramatic incident, which gave me grief at the time, I respect cultures and always obey the rules when I visit their countries. I still love Singapore with other fond memories created by wonderful colleagues who became lifetime friends.
Interestingly, my wife also learned to love Singapore, and we had many tourist visits when our son grew up. He couldn’t remember the incident even in the exact street when we told him.
My son found the story amusing when we told him a few times in Singapore. Of course, he thought we were making it up to make him laugh.
Dealing with cultural issues for new visitors in any country could be an issue. So understanding the rules and being pedantic about them is essential to survive in some countries. I had many more incidents in several countries that I plan to share in my travel stories.
If you enjoyed this story, you might also check other dramatic stories that happened to me in my life.
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