I Pissed Off Some Casino Bosses in Singapore...
And they're probably looking for me.
The first person we met in Singapore was Jing, and damn, that lady would not stop talking.
Jing was our hotel liaison. A not-too-tall-not-too-short lady in her late thirties. Originally from China. Went to college to study English. Two kids back home, one is 7, and the other is 5. Moved to Singapore three years ago for greener pastures. And I learned all of these within the first ten minutes of meeting her without asking a single question.
She’s fast-spoken and quite energetic… overly excited, too, as if she had been waiting two years for us to arrive.
Her vibe was good overall. But for someone like me, who values silence, it was too much. She spent over 30 minutes walking us through the hotel. The amenities, the facilities, and the room. At some point, I stopped processing her words and just started nodding strategically, hoping my rhythm of agreement would speed things up.
Then she said something that would haunt me for the next few days.
“And the casino is right there”, she said, gesturing towards a random escalator that goes down from the lobby into what looks like an underground cave.
“Casino?” I said.
I had never seen one in real life.
Welcome to Singapore…
Our room was on the 52nd floor of Marina Bay Sands. Ocean view on one side, city skyline on the same side. The kind of view that makes you stand still and forget you’re holding a baby.
“You guys need to hire a better photographer”, I said. “This is way better than the photos on your website”.
“Oh, we just renovated, and in fact, you’re the first guest to check in to this particular room after the renovation”, Jing explained.
We were in Singapore for seven days. And the mission was simple: celebrate Mimie’s birthday.
The 1st Attempt…
The Singapore timezone hit me like a truck.
I couldn’t tell what time or day it was. My body was on Dubai time, my mind was in Nigerian time, and my brain had apparently decided to split the difference by refusing to function at all.
That first night, I was up until 6 am, staring at my laptop.
Somewhere in the haze of the next day, after eating one badass noodles, around 4 pm, I made my first move.
“Let’s check out the casino”, I said to Mimie.
She looked at me like I had suggested we should go rob the place.
“What do we want to do at a casino?” she asked. “Do they allow kids there?”
“Why would they allow kids at a casino? It’s 18 and above”, I replied.
“So you want us to dump our baby in the room and go gamble away like irresponsible adults?”
“We’re not dumping her”, I said. “She’s with the nanny.”
“It’s still irresponsible.” She denied the request. We live to live another day.
Another Day…
On the third day, we decided to step outside and roam around the city. And while at that, I concluded within me, that… Singapore is the most beautiful country I’ve been to.
I mean… There is green everywhere. Trees, plants, gardens, and walls covered in vegetation. Everywhere you look, something is growing. It takes an absurd amount of effort to maintain that much green in a city, and Singapore has clearly decided it’s worth it.
Coming from Dubai, I understood the contrast. Dubai is flashy-beautiful, a city that says look what we built. Singapore is nature-beautiful, a city that says look what we grew.
If I had to describe Singapore in three words, it would be: the green city.
We didn’t spend more than a few hours on the streets before heading back to the hotel. Mind you, the timezone was still winning. And the world felt like a simulation running on the wrong settings.
But this casino was still on my mind.
“I’ll be done with work around 1 am,” I said. “The baby will be asleep. We just sneak out, take a look at the Casino, and sneak back in. Nobody has to know.”
Mimie stared at me.
“When did you become an addicted gambler?” she asked. “Being this persistent about gambling for two days straight is giving addict vibes.”
“It’s not gambling,” I said. “It’s called gaming. It’s entertainment.”
“But it involves money,” she said. “What if we lose?”
I replied, “What if we win?”
She was unmoved.
Request denied. Again. I can lose a battle, but I must win the war.
The War…
The day before Mimie’s birthday, we went to Universal Studios, which was one of the places Jing wouldn’t stop yapping about.
Before going, we had purchased an $88 fast-track pass online. The promise was that it’d help skip the queues and maximise our time. Smart thinking and strategic investment, you’d say?
We arrived at Universal Studios. There were no queues.
The entrance was practically free of humans. The $88 fast-track pass was the most useless purchase of the trip. “They don scam us”, I said. But the game is the game. You win some, you lose some.
We went on a ride, not a roller coaster, because I hate roller coasters, just something that lifted us gently into the air and moved us around. Enough thrill to say we did something.
Then this rain started, proper rain. The kind that sends everyone scrambling. We ran in a random direction, and the strategy was simple: enter the first door you see.
Luckily, the first door we saw led to a 3D cinema. We sat in there, 3D glasses on, watching some animation I can’t remember the name of, dry and entertained while the storm raged outside. I didn’t know 3D movies could be that fun. The rain had accidentally given us one of the highlights of the trip, now I’ve been searching for how to watch 3D movies on my laptop.
By the time we got back to the hotel, it was evening. Mimie was in a good mood. Extra hyper, the way people get the night before their birthday, well, some people.
I saw a window of opportunity.
“Let’s go to the casino now”, I said.
She didn’t immediately say no. That was new.
“Baby is sleeping anyway”, I continued. “Let’s just see what they do there. Just a look. We don’t have to play.”
She paused. Considered it. Three days of rejection had led to this moment.
“Fine”, she said. “Let’s go see.”
It was already 11 pm, and off we went.
The Marina Bay Sands casino was massive.
Multiple floors, and what looked like a thousand screens and machines spread across a space that seemed to have no end.
The sound was a low hum of electronic beeps and the murmur of people either winning or losing money, mostly losing 😂
The KYC to get in was serious. Facial ID, passport scan, and multiple checkpoints. They also said no pictures or videos allowed inside, which I understood. Because if I’m losing money, the last thing I want is some rando capturing my down-bad moment.
Mimie had been expecting the movie version of a casino, serious men in expensive suits sitting around a table, faces unreadable, pushing chips toward the centre with the gravity of people deciding the fate of nations.
Those tables were there. We saw them. We even saw one where the betting pot said $502,000. Those were the big dons.
But mostly, it was regular people sitting in front of slot machines, pressing buttons, hoping. And, funnily enough, a lot of old people. It seemed casino nights were just a normal Tuesday activity for the elderly there.
Once Mimie saw we could just sit at a machine and play casually, no serious dons involved, she relaxed. This wasn’t so intimidating.
I found a machine that looked almost like an ATM with a seat. Something on the screen looked like Monopoly. I sat down. I thought casinos used chips. This one used real cash.
“Let’s get the gaming started”, I said.
I fed the machine $100. It chopped it.
Note: ‘Chop’ means the machine ‘ate’ it. Like, I LOST it.
Within three seconds. Maybe less. The money was just gone. I stared at the screen, waiting for something else to happen, some continuation, or some second chance. Nothing. Just a prompt asking if I wanted to insert more money.
Is that it? I thought.
I could see the “I told you” look forming on Mimie’s face.
“Give me another $100”, I said.
She handed it over. I fed the machine. It chopped that one as well.
The “I told you” look on Mimie’s face upgraded to “what an idiot”.
“Another $100”, I said.
She almost refused. I could see the hesitation, the part of her that wanted to say “absolutely not, we are leaving right now”. But she handed it over., reluctantly.
“You are just wasting this money”, she said.
I knew this was it. The last attempt. If this failed, I would not hear the last of it.
I fed the machine the third $100. This time, I pressed every button I could find. I had no idea what I was doing. There was no strategy, just desperation and fingers moving across the interface like a possessed stupid man that’s owing rent.
The numbers on the screen started going up.
Up.
Up.
Up.
Then, suddenly stopped at $1,095.
I thought it was a glitch or a mistake. Something the casino would correct any second.
I quickly pressed a button that says COLLECT before THEY could change their mind. By THEY, I mean the big casino bosses in the control room trying to make sure no one was winning.
The machine spat out a ticket with the amount printed on it. We rushed to the counter, gave them the ticket, and they gave us real cash.
We had only been inside the casino for less than 15 minutes. And we ran out immediately.
“I can’t believe we won,” Mimie said.
I looked at her.
“Who is WE? I won”.
She ignored me.
On the walk back to the room, she started making those weird Snapchat videos. “We won!” she kept saying. The same woman who had called me an addicted gambler forty-eight hours ago was now documenting the victory like she had been there all along believing in the vision.
I thought about going back to the casino. Riding the hot streak. But I am a reasonable adult, and I understand how gambling works. In the long run, the house always wins. The only real strategy is to take your money and run the moment you’re ahead.
At this point, I began to imagine things…
What if the big casino bosses were eating some spicy Chilli Crab while we were playing, and didn’t noticed we had won and disappeared. And by the time their system alerted them, we were several minutes gone. They scrambled through their CCTV footage, only to realise it was two black kids from across the world. Damn, I must have pissed off the big casino bosses.
“Who are those two kids? How did they just come in, win $1,095 by mashing buttons randomly, and disappear into the night? That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Who let them in? Who let them out? Scorpion, take the crew, go and find them and bring them back”.
I imagine that’d be their conversation 😂
“If they leave the country, they might not come back. We can’t lose that money, we might go bankrupt, find them!!!”
Bye Bye…
A few days passed, and it was time to leave.
However, the Singapore airport deserves its own mention.
The immigration was fully automated. No humans. Just machines scanning your passport. The whole process took less than a few minutes. I cannot overstate how much I value having no human interaction to get something done.
At the currency exchange counter within the airport departure terminal, we converted our winnings from Singapore dollars to UAE dirhams. It was about 3,100 AED.
When the cashier handed over the money, Mimie snatched it from my hand before I could even count it.
And then, I remembered the universal law called the ‘girl math’.
If you lose, it’s “you lost the money”.
If you win, it’s “we won the money”.
Three days of “irresponsible”, “addicted gambler” and “you’re just wasting this money”, but now the winnings were in her bag, claimed without hesitation.
I didn’t argue. Because you can’t argue with girl math.
We’ll be back in Singapore.
Hopefully, by then, the casino bosses we pissed off would have moved on.
