aerasio

Civility in Society

I was on the way to church yesterday, going for the weekly youth meeting. The bus was 67, and as the ppl who take it along that stretch know, it tends to get REALLY crowded. Unfortunately yesterday wasn't any different and I boarded the bus barely having room to stand. Behind me was a kind of old-looking man. As the bus proceeded to empty abit of its cargo along the next few bus stops, one of the seats near the front was left empty. I didn't take it seeing as there was an old dude behind me and the other seats were all taken, and I went to stand in the corner next to the bus' exit. As it turns out, he didn't take the seat and some other guy got it.

This got me started thinking about courtesy and stuff. Often you don't see Singaporeans giving up seats, or saying sorry when they bump into people, or apologising for spilling drinks in food courts and making a mess for the cleaner.

Then as I stood in the corner preoccupied with these thoughts, the bus got to Little India. Like a flash flood, the bus was suddenly filled with Indians minding their own business. At the back of this sudden crowd was a large Indian family inclusive of little toddler-age kids and 2 old grannies. The bus was fairly full and there were no seats for them anywhere. Then to my suprise, 2 Indian men who occupied the seats near the front of the bus gave up their seats for them. A young indian punk-like teenager did the same, suprising me even more (I say punk-like because he had a mow-hawk an extremely irritated and bored look and dressed like a punk).

This really suprised me although I guess in retrospect it shouldn't really have. The thing is though that I don't think i've ever seen any chinese guys doing the same, there was even this young chinese dude there who didn't give up his seat despite the fact that the mother of the kids (at least I assumed her to be the mother) was still standing and despite the example shown by the Indian dudes. In my school you see quite afew Indians, but aside from afew small exceptions, you don't see them mixing with the chinese dudes. The result is that conversations with my friends can get pretty racist at times. One long running joke is that all Indian men are big, hairy and have stupid sounding accents.

I also feel abit bad about stereotyping. As you can tell by my phrasing, I completely didn't expect the punk-like dude to give up his seat. I figured him for one of those image-obsessed poser types who I normally wouldn't have anything to do with. I think this kind of mindset should change. People always quote the famous saying "don't judge a book by its cover". However, they only do it in situations convenient to them and don't truly apply it everyday in real life (myself included). Granted, we can't be perfect, but I think Singapore would be a better place if we at least tried.

Everybody in Singapore seems to think that being nice is out of ordinary and we are greeted with shock, question and sometimes criticism when we do try to provide help and courtesy unconditionally. I don't know about you but I think that ain't right.

What do you think?
(If you have comments or complaints, feel free to voice them. I'd rather you scold me to my face than leave some secret disatisfaction with me to fester in you. Also my tagboard is abit dead and needs people talking on it aside from me and Dylon to give it abit of life. Also, I DO NOT think that Indians are in any way inferior or superior to Chinese people as a result of my observations. I refer to their races as a reference to my current stereotyping of Indians as something that is bad, not because I think Indians are more or less considerate than Chinese.)

Ok, thats all for now

So said Aerasio at 06:53