"Different Is Awesome"
life·@patricksanlin·
0.000 HBD"Different Is Awesome"
At last 20 years ago, if you can effort to have hand-phone, you are quite good income or rich. As for us we used to write latter to communicate with someone who we want to. And only can effort to used public pay phone to call our house nearest place that phone are available.. and also once a month or twice because oversea phone call are very expansive. One minutes for S$2 to call our country Myanmar. We only call after we send money to our home and to follow up with them. Mostly we write letter to our home or loves one. As for me I always write letter to my house and friends. My aunt wrote a letter to me every two weeks, my late uncle and my friend wrote me every month once. So I received every week one letter from my country.  A few of my friends are also the same. They also received letter from their home and loves one regularly. We used to send and received letters and keep. And brought the stamps at the shops or post office. After year 2000 we can buy the stamp at machines most of the place in Singapore. At the time, it was so innovative machine for us and life more easier, due to our late working hours.  We used public pay phone by using the pre-paid phone card. They have $2, $5, $10 and $20 phone card and can buy most of the shops around in Singapore. And all the cards are very beautiful and quite solid. We make a hole on used phone card and make beautiful key chain. Some time when we have a chance, we send back some of the beautiful phone card to Myanmar. Although used phone cards, because of beautiful picture, they love it.  By using public pay phone, we used to call under the BLOCK (housing apartment). Every block have pay phone and some have 2 or 3 pay phone. Normally everyone used pay phone. Especially end of the month, all this phone are high demand. Sometime we need to que to get the call. Mostly everyone call less than 5 minutes. But if in-front of you are, either India or Bangladeshi, you better find other phone because they talked very long. And when they called back to their country, the fees are very cheap, so they can effort to talk very long time, at least they talk minimum 15 minutes.  And another thing was public transport, Singapore public transport system was so good and conveniences, they already start to use paying buy card last 20 years ago. Card need to slide into the hole and need to press how much you need to pay and the receive slip will collect from the machine on the all buses. No body cheat to paid because sometime ticket officer will check, if you are caught the fine is S$50. At the time $50 is still very valuable.  Train paid system is also about the same, but when first station aboard to last train station arrive the system will deduct automatically. So nobody can cheat the train fees. Mostly one train to another is only 3 to 5 minutes. Everybody rely on the Singapore train system since last 30 years. Normally we used public transport on week end only because we need to work every day. One thing we noticed that, in Singapore we rarely see pregnant lady at the time. I think may be because of one child policy as well.  At the time (GST) Goods and Services Tax is only 3% in Singapore. Money are more valuable than now. And main league is trying to be an English. You can choose not to study Chinese at the time. As for us, we no need to pay income tax, because our income is too low to pay income. But our lovely country MYANMAR collect tax from us 10% of our salary every months of our salary. But they have difficult to track us due to all kind of different basic salary. Actually they should set the minimum basic salary for Myanmar citizens. But they very clever to set the amount to collect the tax from whoever come out from Myanmar. For female work permit holder they set S$30 and male work permit holder S$40 a month for Myanmar government tax.  We normally get our work permit contract is based on two years basic. So our lovely government give us 3 years passport life spend. So who ever need to renew work permit, must go embassy to renew our passport first. So that they can collect tax from us and get passport renew fees from us. To extend the passport fees is S$300. So we paid for our work permit to work in Singapore is total S$1260 for each male work permit holder need to pay Myanmar embassy.  To pay the tax was very wonderfully innovated idea, we need to fill up the request form that to let us pay willing (our income tax) to our lovely government. All the embassy staff are like lone shop worker, very crude and rude. They treated us like we owe them money. Shouting us and showing long face. Everyone don’t like to go Myanmar embassy. It’s like hell to us.  Myanmar embassy was not giving us any single support for our citizen. What they said to us was, we are compline with each of the country’s law that where we go. Any abuse from employee or other was not their responsible to protect us because we come out from our country illegally to work for other country. And said you guys only come and report embassy is when only need to renew or extend passport life. Such a super supportive embassy in our life time.  If we not pay tax and go back to our country, we will stuck at immigration counter at our country airport. They will confederate our passport and can’t go out from airport until we pay the amount what they said. After passed the immigration station, welcoming from custom counter, waiting for us with grinding and sharpening sward for us, and beginning to check our bags and large gage like we are a thief. Pick whatever they like and start to tell the story, so we have to pay their offer price and settle to go out from airport and see family.  After visited our home when we fly back to Singapore, to cross the Myanmar airport was big challenge for us again. We all will try to settle all the demand from all the people at airport to get on to the aeroplane. Once we on board the airplane, we can breathe normally again. After we landed in Singapore all the immigration station, custom station will welcome you like your friend or relative come back from oversea. We feel like HOME, although its other country to us. I believe all Myanmar who work in Singapore know what the feeling like.  As we are work permit holder, when you go all the public sector they will serve you very well, even you cannot speak very well an English. They will serve you until you satisfy. And also if you brake the terms and conditions, they took very serious action. So everyone respect each other. Although Singapore immigration is very tight and straight, they treated all the people very well. If you try to funny with them they will take serious action. Because of the technology that they using in airport, they already get your information and data. Drug, weapons, cigarette, nicotine and alcohol are very serious crime in Singapore airport.  Beautiful the best is multi religion in Singapore. Church, mosque and temple are some place next to each other. No one fight for religion matter in Singapore. They respect each other and understand when the festival season people are celebrated, even help each other. That is the key point that make Singapore more beautiful place in the world.  To Be Continue..... GO WELL....(By: PatrickSanLin) Photos credit: Google Image
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