the REAL me.

So there was this point in time when there was the topic: What makes us Singaporean? One of the things I believe is unique to Singapore is our array of courtesy campaigns. From the Singa the Courtesy Lion in the past, it has evolved into the Singapore Kindness Movement this year. But truly, if a country as advanced as Singapore needs campaigns to remind its citizens of how to act, I think there's seriously something horribly wrong with the ethics and morals of our society.

Exactly one week ago, I was at the Arts canteen queuing up to buy a waffle. So it came to the point when I was second in line, waiting for the girl in front of me to collect her order. And out of nowhere, this guy appeared beside me and asked, "Hi, I just want to buy a few curry puffs, so is it okay if you just let me go first?"

I found myself in an unexpected situation and it took me a second or two before I could process the question and generate an appropriate output and finally out came the reply: "No". And in case you were wondering, I made it sound in a very "duh" kind of way.

And it's no surprise that I was rudely shocked when I heard his reply: "No?"

I mean, did he expect me to say yes? I guess he did. But that reaction from him was totally uncalled for. And then I gave him a very stern reply, "NO". (And yes, this time I showed some frustration in my tone.) And then he quietly went to join the back of the queue.

So the question is, why did he believe that I should let him enjoy the privilege of cutting the queue, when there were quite a few people waiting to get their food behind me? At first I was thinking if I should allow him to do so, but then I figured there's no reason why I should. Firstly, he's not underprivileged. It's not as if he was physically handicapped and would be distressed from queuing. Neither was he doing the society a favour by buying food for the elderly, or something along the lines of benefiting the less fortunate. Well, I might have relented if he was female, but, too bad..

I believe it is one thing to expect people to be kind to you, and another to expect others to bestow undue privileges upon you, when you clearly do not deserve any form of special treatment that may induce others to suffer instead, i.e. DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH. And if you do wish to expect more than you deserve, then don't make it so obvious when you don't get privileged. People will get pissed off and blog about you.

But that's considered quite a mild case. At least he didn't purposely try to piss anyone off, but was simply thinking of making things convenient for himself and neglected others in the process. There was a really horrible incident I encountered a few months ago, in which the perpetrator had no shame at all whatsoever.

So I was on an MRT train a few months back. There was this humongous, gargantuan, obese fat woman whom, obviously having failed at birth control, did not bother educating her children at all.

She had a child in a pram, while another 2 were seated. However, one of the two who were seated kept playing and having fun on the train by swinging around on the pole. He ended up hitting a lady numerous times while swinging around. At first, the lady just took a glance at the child and ignored the little nuisance, but after the little brat child failed to practise self-control after some time, the lady glared at him. The boy, seemingly frightened, ran to the side of the elephantine woman his mother and cowered in fear.

The next thing you would expect in such a situation would be for the mother to apologize on behalf of her son for the misdemeanor. So you can guess how appalled I was when I heard her tell the lady, "Why? People cannot bang you, is it? Don't want people bang you then take taxi lah!" I was DISGUSTED. Totally.

There was also another time, also on an MRT train, when there was a mother who blatantly gave her son, who was in a pram, a packet of potato chips to munch on. I think it's already bad enough how some teenagers enjoy their food on the train so conspicuously. And here's a mother in front of me who condoned such actions. I actually took a photo of the scene and wanted to post it online, but ended up deciding against it, since it wouldn't be very nice of me. Not that the mother deserved better, but still, I guess it wasn't as if she was committing some major crime.

These are the people who make me feel ashamed of being a Singaporean. But as what I like to say: "We need such people around us to make us realize how good others are, so that we can treasure our friends."

To end this off, I noted that on the Singapore Kindness Movement website, there have been 3114 people thus far who have made it their resolution to be kind. It's been 7 hours since I started writing this post, (no, I wasn't writing this for all 7 hours) and the number hasn't changed at all. I believe it is safe to say that those who could be bothered have already made their resolution on the website. I couldn't be bothered, since I know I don't need such a reminder for me to be kind, or at least act kind. And since the current population of Singapore is roughly 4.8 million, I'm glad there will be at least one kind person in every 1500 people I meet. There sure are many kind people out there.
1 comments