Sunday, February 26, 2006
perfect timing for an entry on tolerance ya. the sunday times just featured an article on how the number of complaints by residents in hdb houses about their "less than perfect neighbours" has increased over the years. i mean seriously, to whine and moan about that loud drilling noise or the occasional dragging of furniture is one thing. but to lodge a formal complaint or even resort to filing a police report is really making a mountain out of a molehill. have we as a nation developed into a people that expects prefect service, perfect neighbours, perfect enviroments, perfect systems, perfect etc?on my flight back from switzerland, i had the most unpleasant experience of sitting in front of a singaporean mother of what i believed was three kids. well she was not supposed to be sitting behind me in teh first place. but after her youngest kicked up such a big fuss about getting the window seat, the nice gentil indian man behind me decided to give up his seat to her. i dont want to go into how i would have dealt with the situation of disciplining my kid on board a plane, but that wasnt the part that, using a more amiable word, amused me most. after she settled into her seat and had her dinner, i decided that it would eb a good chance for me to catch some shut eye. seeing that the dinner trays were all cleared, i lowered my seat into a more comfortable position. no sooner had the seat begun its decline, i felt an insistant tapping, or rather poking, on my shoulder. [excuse me] she said [i have a drink on my table]. well i wasnt really in the mood to argue with her that airline seats were designed to hold drinks even after the seat in front has been lowered to its maximum. i've flown my fair share of flights since young and have always had drinks on my table with the person in front of me with his/her seat fully declined. and there was never an issue. but i decided to avoid a confrontation by raising my seat back up. i quietly waited for her to finish her drink, which took more than half an hour i might add, before the stewardess clear her cup and she proceeded to the toilet. i then lowered my my chair back and got into a comfortable position for. just as i was enter lala land, i felt an incessant rocking on my chair and that voice again [excuse me!!]. she was trying to get back into her seat. so i raised my chair again to allow her back into her seat and lowered it again. now this is where it got totally absurd. she tapped my shoulder again and with that now etched in my mind voice of hers demanded that i raise my chair again. her reason? the inflight entertainment screen was too close to her face. i mean seriously, every single passenger i have seen has had no problems with viewing or even playing games with teh chair fully declined. i turned around and explained to her that it was designed to be like that and even adjusted the tilt on the screen for her to reduce the glare. and the nerve of her to rebutt me by saying that i should be considerate to her. i was of course fuming mad when she said that, and coupled with my lack of sleep thus far, i retorted that she had to considerate to me as well. and sitting besider her, her husband had no words to offer to this dispute at all. perhaps he did not know wat to say or perhaps he too felt that his wife was a bit too overbearing. but not wanting to create an ugly scene by provoking her, i raised my seat up and that's how my seat had to be for the rest of the journey. perhas i was in the wrong to even get upset over such a small issue, and i acknoledge that i certainly did not handle the situation in the best way possible. but the purpose of recording this down here is just to illustrate how some of us singaporeans have really become so self absorved and self centered. the world must accomodate to our requests (and i'm not just talking about the mother, the son refused to sit down even as the plane was about to start taxi-ing because he wanted the window seat and not once did his parents shout or chide him). is it perhaps a direct result of the speed in which our country's affluence has increased that we now believe that we should demand nothing but the very best from others? can we no accept that there are going to be situations where we will inevitably be inconvenienced? has the concept of taking and more importantly giving been erased from our minds? do we now believe that we are superior to a multitude of people and that we should be accorded greater privillages than others? i know for sure that these are questions that i have posed to myself and i admit i have no answers. every action i take each day, i subject myself to the same scrutiny every night. perhaps humility is something we've really missed out on in all these years of nation building and it is certainly time to start acting on these deficits before we evolve into a bunch of arrogant bigoted monkeys.
The Swedish Curling team - Gold medal winners of the Winter Olympics 2006 in Torino {4:55 PM}
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