Found to Carry Contraband at Singapore Airport

choi

Justin Tyler Clark, In a Foreign Land With Something to Declare. New York Times, Feb 14, 2016 (in the column "Modern Love").
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/1 ... -vacation-ring.html

Note:
(a)
(i) CV. Justin Tyler Clark, undated
http://media.wix.com/ugd/aaa59f_ ... 8369335aa258ac4.pdf
("present ([since] Spring 2016) Lecturer, Division of Humanities, Yale-NUS College; PhD in history Univ of Southern Calif 2014, MS in journalism Columbia Univ 2004, MFA California Institute of the Arts 2000)
(ii) Yale-NUS_College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale-NUS_College
(in Singapore; was established in 2011 as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore)

(b) Singapore Changi Airport "is located in Changi [樟宜, a district], at the eastern end of Singapore."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changi
(section 1 Etymology: various theories)

(c) "The officer counted out the 20 packs of cigarettes and told us we would be fined 100 Singaporean dollars for each. For two graduate students, it was a staggering sum."
(i) Singapore Dollar  1981-2016. TradingEconomics.com, undated
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/singapore/currency

Above the chart, there are two rows to choose from. In the top row, "Intradays" are ranges of exchange rates for the past several days. Select "Historical" instead. Then turn to the second row and the duration of interest (10 years or maximum).

Six years ago, the exchange rate was about the same as this year's: 1 SGD = 0.7 USD
(ii) The fine at $70 a pack for 20 packs of cigarettes totals $1,400.

(d) "We were now deeply in debt and unlikely to go anywhere. There would be no grand proposal in a rose-petal-strewn room overlooking the terraced rice paddies of Ubud."

Ubud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubud
("The town was originally important as a source of medicinal herbs and plants; Ubud gets its name from the Balinese word ubad (medicine)")