Leanda Lee
No more for me the days of the classic expatriate meltdown: Life is just easier to appear to go with the flow, but never say die. My motto has morphed from poison-pen Percy to pleasant pragmatic persistence.
Macau can have a way of breaking one down, encouraging various forms of hibernation and insulation, or pushing up one’s emotional intelligence quotient. It often takes us through a process of all these stages of adjustment, and more.
Most of us have stories to tell of systems illogical (to us), discretionary processes and uncertain bureaucratic outcomes: you take a trip to a government department, for instance, with the requisite documentation and find that the required list of multiple sheets of paper is not the same as yesterday’s. Or, the day that the MOP1,000 note withdrawn straight out of a bank’s ATM is declined by the post-office right next door due to a “high incidence of fraud”. Or, what about not being able to change the residential address on that bank statement as your name just happens to be the second one noted down on the joint account? “Yes, you can close the account. Yes, you can withdraw all the funds. No, you can’t change the address.” (Facepalm!)
These are the priceless moments that leave us anxious and frustrated to the point of tears or angry outbursts. A wander down to IPIM’s residency application and information counter on any day of the working week will provide enough examples of expatriate meltdowns. It’s almost a rite of passage. Eventually we learn…or else.
I have often argued that these frustrations are caused by different values systems underpinning different drivers of behaviour. There are multitudinous ways to motivate others to act, through incentives, coercion, pleas, appealing to ego, logic… it goes on. But the choice of method by the powers-that-be does not always match our sense of what is appropriate, and frankly, sometimes there seems to be little consideration for simple incentives that really could make life so much easier and pleasant.
I was having a chat with a chap today as he was checking onto a local airline. Only one seat was left, he was told, and it had a broken table. “Only a little broken,” the ground-staff lady assured him. The fact that it was the last seat should be a natural enough incentive to accept it: take it or no flight, simple, and there it would have ended. But then he was asked to sign a waiver, an indemnity form: here is a broken seat, please indemnify us. “Idiots! I had no choice, now they have no choice. I wait to see if they give me an upgrade. Classic stupidity. Too stupid for words. Boomerang stupidity. Stupicracy. Stupocracy” continuing in classic I’ve-got-them-this-time style of an angry passenger.
This is danger zone. There is always a catch. Good behaviour gets rewarded, and the difficult don’t get upgrades… or worse.
It could be foreseen. Some other poor chap from a tour group was pulled aside and signed the indemnity form. The upgrade was not forthcoming. And worse, my associate was relegated down the back of the plane, to the very, very last row. Punishment can be swift and exacting.
Beware, the empire strikes back.
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