Registering for Employment Pass

Heads Up: This is a continuation on my blogging about applying for an S-Pass employment visa in Singapore. If you miss part one, scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the corresponding sequences! 

And now the moment of truth. I have all my paper work filled out, every document notarized by the proper professional and I've even put it in a nice purple folder for presentation... hey, purple is super professional looking so stop snickering!

It's time to register my employment pass and have it made official by the government.

So in most cases, if your company has any legitimate Human Resource department, they can make the appointment at the Ministry of Manpower for you. Those that don't... it can require some hunting through the usual bureaucratic nightmare that is a government website. I personally believe that instead of going this route it just easier to call the Ministry and wade through the hour of operators to get a real live person to confirm your appointment. I however lost charge on my battery and was thrown back to step one before my appointment was confirm.

But HR came to the rescue and got in my appointment situated.

Once your confirmation is in the system, they send you a email with all your details, along with a registration bar-code. Print off this paper and bring it along with all your other documents.

With that all nailed down it was just holding out the days until it was time. Now remember this is a bureaucracy... it doesn't mean being punctual, it means being early. Finding the front entrance to just the campus wasted at least 20-minutes and thankfully I was there nearly an hour early, so it wasn't a mad dash to the door.

Inside its crowded, but keep your eyes peeled because Ministry officers are moving through the cluster of confused and waylay people, helping to get you to your appointment as fast a possible. They will take you to a nearby electronic kiosk. This is where that confirmation paper you printed off comes in. A quick scan and all your information is confirmed along with your physical arrival and in response, it prints off what lettered queue you are suppose to head to (A, B or C).

Inside the queue you have to wait in another line, though this is so short it will barely take longer than a few minutes. A screen on the wall will chime when a interview desk has opened and the corresponding number of said desk. Within minutes you'll be ushered into a glass lined cubicle that is so small you'll feel as if one wrong move and you'll be in the interviewer's lap!

Here is where you'll be handing over all your important documents that you've been collecting since the beginning of your journey:

• Passport (Include multiple photo IDs and your social security card just to be safe).
• In-Principle Approval Letter (the letter you were sent when your application was approved).
• Disembarkation/Embarkation Card (basically the long-term visitor visa you were issued at Singapore customs when you arrived).
• Completed Medical Examination form.

Make sure to note if your American or European, that the sequence your name is in will not match the common naming sequence on naming documents in Asia. To clarify, in Asia it is common to first list your last name, any numeral relation (junior, senior, III, IV), your first name next, finalized with any middle names you have (its common in this region of the world to have none at all or more than one, hence going last). In the case of Americans, who go First, Middle, Last, Numeral, this means you'll have to be issued a name amendment so they don't completely spell your name on the card in a disorganized manner. I had to correct the interviewer twice that she listed my name out of order... interviewers don't like to be corrected.

Next is the picture for your card and lets be clear, make sure you look presentable and wear something that you won't be embarrassed to be seen in. For the Indian man in the ratty, stained and torn t-shirt with Michael Jackson on the cover... congratulations, every official document your picture will appear on in this country will also show your poor taste in fashion.

I will admit I looked damn good in my picture, though at 5-foot 8-inches, I still had to bend my knees to fit into the camera's frame. You get two takes and after that its picking the lesser of two evils. I very much approve of the black and white, high contrast picture of me... whoever the photographer is, I want her doing all future photo shots for me!

With this completed, all those documents you brought (save the official ones like your passport and social security card) are taken for your registration and now are all gone... never to be seen again... thank God!

Now its time to wait. In general, you or your company will get a call within the next four to five business days, confirming that your card is ready. If you work for a major company, generally they will send the card directly to your office by secure messenger. If not, then you'll have to go all the way back to the Ministry office and pick it up yourself. 

Until that day, I'll keep you posted but until then, the AngMoh is now a semi-registered American Expat in Singapore!

For those that missed it, here is the complete S-Pass Application Process. Click below for:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Forests Atop the Concrete Jungle

Disclaimer: Because I mention my job in this post I am enforcing the anonymity rule with comments. Do not mention my name, position, company or office location. Any comments that do will be deleted. Same applies to me, I will NEVER refer to my position, company, its location beyond country, refer to colleagues or anything they say. I will also never post pictures, taken of either colleagues or on the office premise. In general I will be as vague or broad as possible with details! Thank you.

So today I am walking out of my new office (I love saying that!) and into the lobby of sorts we share with the other branch offices of our lovable, multi-national corporation to notice two construction workers drilling green leaves into the wall. Yes, you read correctly, they were drilling holes in a newly added facade wall in the lobby and plugging a ranging selection of grasses and ferns into each hole.

According to the rumors circulating through the oddly always crowded and bustling lobby, it is our corporation's desire to go green and add some life to our always open air office.

Considering my last two offices were so sterile they could have doubles as surgical theaters, this was a sudden change of sorts.

I have to say without a doubt... I love urban gardening and quickly noticed I was spending too long staring at the construction workers as they went about their duties... earning a few perplexed stares back before I head back to my desk after my bit too long bathroom break.

This is one rising trend that is certainly not a fad or theme running through Singapore at the height of the laughably obvious global warming debate (seriously, if you don't think Human activity is not effecting our world, play a game called count the extinct animals for just the last decade... it stop's being a game real quick). Singapore is one the country is actively making an effort to incorporate the ideals and designs of urban gardening into itself.

Every day I head out in the plaza that lays before our office, I get a glance up at the oddest skyscraper you'd ever see. It has to be at least 50-stories but its missing chunks, like someone cut entire floors and cubes out of the structure. From down on the street you can't miss these sudden voids of space, where you can clearly see the sky beyond and long concrete stilts holding up an amazingly immense portion of the structure above it.

You can also see the tops of trees growing up and out of those voids.

Yep, from down on the ground I can clearly see the green of leaves swaying in the wind and from some of the better angles I can definitively see those are tree branches, not bushes. There is literally a forest of green several hundred feet in the air.

And it doesn't stop there, the floors that do have continuous domain over their section of the structure actually have balconies and even pods hanging off of them, each with a fully grown tree or garden to support it.

On the ground it is about the same, any space that is open seems to be bursting with plant-life. Buildings are covered in creeping vines, tall palms cluster every patch of ground and special care is used to maintain them, to make it appear during your ride down the highway that you've suddenly driven into the rainforest.

When polled, almost 80% of Singaporeans voted for more urban gardens, more parks, less restrictions on community gardens and more buildings that actively incorporated a common area dominated by nature.

In fact, the idea is so popular the new EDITT Tower being built in the heart of the city will be the first of its kind, a paragon of “Ecological Design In The Tropics”. Read more here.

I will also admit I've noticed the animal life is missing and tragically I know that even these tiny patches of green are not enough to sustain Singapore's larger fauna. Birds are prevalent, a particular black bird with yellow cheeks seems to fill the niche of Pigeons or Red-Breasted Robins out here... the little buggers also squawk, not sing, so they're all the more noticeable.

But still, anyone who has lived in New York City will note the only real place where you can be considered in a forest is in Central Park, out in Brooklyn's Prospect Park or lost in the horrifying suburban twilight zone that is Staten Island. But these are all finely kept, with lawns that never grow thick and always look like they have been trampled flat into artificial astro-turf. Even the lakes and waterfalls in Central Park are fake, maintained by complex pipes and pumps that keep the waters nearly clear and always flowing.

Yet take one hour to walk around Singapore and you'll notice the residences themselves will install gardens anywhere they can, they will literally cast aside the well manicured lawns in some areas to establish gardens entirely planted in clay pots sitting on the aforementioned lawns, expanding these all the way up to the open air walk-ways in the HBD apartments you'll find the corridors lined with fruit plants and ferns. Plastic trash-cans are left out to collect rain water, which falls amply, and none are ever fenced in or vandalized. Most carry a greater variety of fruits and vegetables than any normal supermarket could conceivably hold either.

There are actually dangers to this type of gardening, as it adds some clutter to the hallway, making movements a restrictive when you stumble in from work or God forbid fire-fighters must rush in to put out a blaze. It can be fatal too, as reports of heavy clay pots absently placed on window ledges, balconies or too close to stairs have fallen, in one case a 12-year old girl was tragically killed instantly while walking home when a clay pot slipped from the window it sat in and struck her in the head.

But this is act of gardening in an urban landscape is a necessity I believe, Singapore's population continues to swell daily but the amount of land is less than New York City and more or less consumed by concrete. Atop this is the fact that Singapore is a single country by itself, New York has the whole of the United States to turn to for economy, work force, population overflow, disaster support and military/police protection. While economically successful, commercial agriculture is near impossible on this island, which hit almost completely urban only a decade or so ago, now speeding on to become a mega-metropolis.

You can really understand why Singaporeans make an effort to grow their own food, to return as much nature as they can when they have to build housing units, to keep their plants maintained with care and to avoid harm when possible, why they try to be as conservative as possible when they use water (Seriously if you shower longer than 15-minutes they start knocking to see that you are okay!). They are a nation that has to import so much from the outside world, including a far chunk of their workforce, while actively trying to be as independent as possible from the same world.

It certainly is a concentrated effort to maintain the semblance of nature in this otherwise city island, one that I wish every single American city would take seriously and begin to encourage their citizens to undertake. Support solar and wind energy, support community or personal gardens, support the usual of local plants in landscaping and to avoid plants that only grow to be beautiful for one season before they wilt in winter.

Be like Singapore, where a forest can be grown on a skyscraper, where a lobby wall can become a pasture, where even the hallway of an apartment can be a garden.