I’m at the Changi Terminal 1… the Jetstar check-in is only possible from two hours before the departure time. My plan to go through the immigration counter before the day was over failed. Now, I have no idea how much of overstaying fine I must pay… Many hours to kill and already tired with my luggage.
2008年2月13日（水）22:17 (Vietnam time)
After all, I had to wait until early morning for my check-in… At the airport immigration, I said to the officer, “I guess I have to pay…” She looked at my passport and asked me, “Have you overstayed before?” I answered, “I don’t think so.” I was then taken to another officer who was sitting at the counter. “So you overstayed five days… What happened?” I finally had a real chance to explain my case. He had an ear to listen to me. I showed the letter from the director and told him the whole story again.
2008年2月14日（木）23:30 (Vietnam time)
He listened to my story sympathetically and attentively, and said with a rather friendly smile, “No fine this time. Only warning. Don’t overstay again.” It took me so many unnerving hours and cost me so much money to see him. But I was scot free, with a warning. I felt relieved a great deal.
This is not a holiday journey. Here in Ho Chi Minh, I need to proceed with my assignments and try to finish a translation work of a substantial volume. This is no time to be lazy.
2008年2月19日（火）21:19 (Vietnam time)
I arranged a trip to Cambodia today. The trip is going to be on 25th and I will stay there only one night. I really don’t want to go anywhere, but without a visa to allow me to stay in Vietnam for more than 15 days, I have to leave here once. A girl of a nearby hotel who did the arrangement tells me that the travel agency is asking US$25 for a visa arrangement for me to re-enter Vietnam from Cambodia. I don’t understand why I need a visa to stay here for another eight days when it is not required for Japanese-passport holders to obtain a visa to stay for 15 days. I’d better check the truth tomorrow. In the map of this area on the wall of the hotel, “Cambodia” is still spelled “Cam Pu Chia (Kampuchea)” of the Khmer Rouge years.
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My feeling is rather stable even though I have nights also in Vietnam when I can only managed to have fitful sleep like last night. It was very hot in this hotel room and I was turning the cooler on, and when it became too cold, off. And on again. And off again… I was watching the “Mr. Bean” movie on TV and found the NHK World channel. (I was a bit surprised when I heard, “This has been the 2:00 am news,” but it was still midnight here…) Then, I finished the remaining pages of “The Singapore Story” and started “The Alchemist,” which I had borrowed from my friend, A. A few hours later at 4:30 am, I was still awake. In a scene of the dream I saw last night, my psychiatrist appeared at the door of my Kyoto house. My mother told me that someone came to see me. And the visitor told her she was the pioneer of some ancient mathematical theory. Indeed she discovered the theory, and she used the term “始祖” to describe herself, trying to speak to my mother in Japanese. I instantly realized that it was my doctor, but my mother was very skeptical about her, thinking she was some phoney figure. The doctor said to me, “Don’t worry. I know you are not living on layers of dust in your room.” She was reassuring as ever to me in spite of my mother.A recurring scene I see is one wherein I ride a slider down to somewhere… The only slider I have experienced for the past 20 years was the one I tried (twice) on a field trip in Michigan in 1987. Sliding down and down…
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Every day, I go to some place where I can connect my PC to the internet by Wi-Fi, mostly to continue with my work and also to check my e-mail inbox and Japanese newspapers.*
Some more from “The Singapore Story”:“[In 1957, Alan Lennox-Boyd] had… introduced a non-negotiable provision to bar all the persons known to have indulged in or been charged with subversive activities from running as candidates in the first election to be held under the new constitution. I objected to this, saying that ‘the condition is disturbing both because it is a departure from democratic practice and because there is no guarantee that the government in power will not use this procedure to prevent not only communist but also democratic opponents of their policy from standing for election.’” (pp. 257-258)
[The Tunku] was disarmingly frank in his self-deprecation, confessing that his Malay father, the sultan, was a weak man and that his strength came from his Thai mother. The Malays, he said, were not very clever or demanding, and therefore easy to please. All he needed was to give them a little bit more and they were quite happy. These views were similar to those expressed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his book The Malay Dilemma, published in 1971. He wrote, “Whatever the Malays could do to the Chinese could do better and more cheaply”, and “they resulted from two entirely different sets of hereditary and environmental influences”. Years later, in 1997, when he was Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir said he had reversed his stand and no longer believed what he wrote in The Malay Dilemma. (p. 441)
What were the real reasons for the Tunku, Razak and Ismail to want Singapore out of Malaysia? They must have concluded that if they allowed us to exercise our constitutional rights, they were bound to lose in the long run….
This was the nub of the matter. The PAP leaders were not like the politicians in Malaya. Singapore ministers were not pleasure-loving, nor did they seek to enrich themselves. UMNO had developed to a fine art the practice of accommodating Chinese or Indian ministers in Malaya who proved troublesome, and had, within a few years, extended its practice to Sabah and Sarawak…. (p. 656)
*
Honestly, I’m not 100% sure if this trip of mine to Ho Chi Minh will have a life-long influence on my life, though things seem going that way. It’s so much easier to jump or leap when you are young. Now I’m looking at the same, or a longer or shorter, distance with some hesitation. Is it because of fear of another failure?
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