Pathetic Beings On A Rainy Tuesday Morning

Pathetic beings congregating at the main entrance of a famous embassy on a rainy Tuesday morning. The wet patches on their clothes were growing, yet their contorted faces, confused and hungry for attention, collectively stayed focused at the booth. The glass window seemed bullet-proof, conversations were conducted via a microphone and speaker fixed on the window, and exchanges of documents via a tiny slit at the base. Occupants in this tiny, protected world had every reasons to believe that the Chinese auntie dressed in a shabby green t-shirt with floral designs standing outside with her ignorant-looking daughter is a first grade terrorist 20 years in the making.

Stepping into this protected world via the similarly thick glass door immediately reduced them from lowly creatures to prehistoric single-cell species, capable of only processing simple instructions executed mainly with the pointing of fingers and nodding or shaking of heads. It is a wonderful sight to behold how significantly a simple uniform with a name tag can redefine class, authority and ego.

Over at the main office, more uniformed beings had evolved further to using telepathy as the main form of communications, thus voiding all forms of facial expressions required for the pathetic beings to gauge responses and process answers. With their piercing eyes, they scrutinized every inch of the subjects, now stripped of any form of dignity. From afar they came, to end up in this protected little world to appeal, plead and beg for a chance to step foot on the country so glorious that the notion of not being able to make it there in this lifetime itself was too heart-breaking too bear.

“2 working weeks you’ll have to wait, and don’t bother calling us,” the uniformed being concluded after a painstaking and tedious, yet well-organised process.

“Auntie,” I turned and talked to the Chinese lady who was now collecting her wallet from the security counter, “How did yours go?”

“That Cantonese-speaking Ang Moh asked me to go visit another country lah,” she mumbled, before disappearing into the congested streets on a rainy Tuesday morning.