When I first touched down…

After making the tough decision to quit my 14.5 years job in a bank, I packed and gathered all my excitement to join my husband for his overseas posting.

After more than 12 hours of flight and transit, the pent up excitement was huge. After I collected my bags, i struggled to walk towards the custom departure gate. Imagine me with 1 cabin size bag and a large 25kg bag. I couldn’t lift the large bag to a trolley, hence I decided to kick and push the large bag (whilst pushing the cabin bag) until I exit the gate where my husband would be waiting for me.

In a short distance ahead, i saw a man who looks like a guard with kind eyes walking towards me. I was thinking thank goodness someone’s gonna help me. But alas, he said, pls follow me inside for custom check. Being a compliant and by the books person, I gleefully complied. He opened my haversack, touched my stuff toy, opened my cabin bag, moved my bra around. And I have a folded thick envelope which contained photo momentos which my colleagues put it together for me. It was thick and heavy but I decided to lug it there. The man asked me when he held the white envelope in his hands, “did you bring euros here”, I was like no as he must be thinking that is a huge wad of money I’m smuggling in. He asked again and I said no as he opened up the envelope and almost flipped every page of the photo book. Then I said oh yes I have €300 euros. And he said you see? I was thinking ya right. Who in the right frame of mind comes to Europe with not at least a couple of hundreds.

When he finally released me, I had already turned black face as I felt he was quite rude. And I felt singled out as I was the only Asian at the luggage belt and i don’t see anyone else being checked.

He didnt say thank you nor at least apologize for the inconvenience or welcome to his country. Instead he said, YOU ARE WELCOME when I did not say thank you. 😡

I exited the gate having the blackest face ever. My husband brought me upstairs for this Macdonald’s breakfast whilst I tried to calm down from the unpleasant incident.