Romantic gestures are well and good, but it’s best not to hang out at the departure gates in Singapore to do that whole everyone-at-the-end-of Love, Actually thing if you’re not getting a plane.
Now, we assume that you already know not to run headlong through security to pledge your love to someone like that kid did, because if you did that you’d be in prison being denied access to phones and computers.
But if you were thinking “hey, I’ll go through security like a normal person, pledge my love and so on, and then not actually get on a plane” then be advised that you’ll still get arrested for doing that in Singapore.
And to be fair, recreating Love, Actually is to be avoided under most circumstances, especially if you’re macking on your friend’s partner with cue cards. That’s just… no. No no no.
It turns out that Changi airport – home of the mighty butterfly dome! – has laws which govern access to the terminals. And in a nutshell, it’s that if you’re not getting on a plane, you can’t go gate-side.
And this even applies if you buy a ticket without intending to fly, as one 27 year old man recently learned to his cost when he did exactly that in order to farewell his wife at the gate, and was then pinged for misuse of a boarding pass when he didn’t subsequently fly anywhere.
It’s no small potatoes either: breaching the Infrastructure Protection Act can cost you and fined up to S$20,000 ($21,225.20 in current Australian coinage) or spend up to two years in prison.
It’s unclear what the penalty for being a British PM firing a staff member and then pashing them at a school concert is, but clearly it should also be incredibly harsh, and without parole.
In any case, the answer is clear: when in Singapore, don’t recreate Love, Actually. Although the law is less clear on re-enactments of, say, 2 Fast 2 Furious so why not give that a shot?