Sunday, August 3, 2008
chapter 6: the art of corporate entertainment
I personally feel that this is the most interesting topic out of the 8 topics. Thus, I will be doing a detailed reflection in my later post. Let me just do a summary.
The various
general etiquette mentioned in the lecture was common sense. Yes, but people still do not practice it. Simple gestures like men
holding the doors for women are really rare to teenager now. Many girls believe that finding a gentleman in Singapore is really difficult. Okay holding the door is a small issue, however,
giving up your seat to someone who needs it more is a big issue. It is commonly seen in the papers and forums that Singaporeans do not give up their seats to elderly and pregnant ladies, instead they pretend to be sleeping.
I refer to the article below (Extracted from The Straits Times):
July 28, 2008
Seats on trains and our graceless society I AM writing with frustration, especially as, like most Singaporeans, I commute by MRT every day.
Time and again, people write in to share 'horror' stories of discourteous and inconsiderate people who rush into the train to get their coveted prize - a seat. I wonder how many more campaigns are needed in simple courtesy and common sense.
Last Wednesday evening, there were
two heavily pregnant women standing in a crowded train during evening peak hour. No one gave up his seat. A man shared with a fellow commuter how ungracious society had become over a mere seat.
Despite his clear message which could be heard throughout the cabin, all pretended they had heard nothing. I was tempted to approach people and ask them to be kind to give up their seat, but it looked as if the pregnant woman (the other had managed to get a seat, though it was competed for by another commuter) was resigned to the situation. The commuters just looked at one another, or pretended to be on their phone, and some even closed their eyes.
But not one moved to do anything. We are so fortunate to have a good transport system that gets us to our destination on time, yet simple graciousness is so hard to accord. How then does one teach them?
Do we need more automated voice messages in trains to remind us to give up our seat to those who need it more? I hope we do not come to that to save us the embarrassment.
Two weeks ago, my son fainted in the train on his way to school. He
blacked out completely for a few minutes, but no one came to his rescue. He shared this with me when he got back from school and I was appalled by this behaviour. When it comes to freebies and complaints, these people are first in line.
I will end with a quotation by Christian missionary Stephen Grellet:
'I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.'
Priscilla Kumari (Ms)
Reference: http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BForum/Online%2BStory/STIStory_261899.html
I was
appalled when the writer mentioned about her son blacking out in the train and nobody actually went to his rescue. Deep inside me there is a voice screaming, “What the hell are those people doing?! What had all the education taught them to be? Pretending to be blind?” *Shakes head*
Seeing people pretending to be sleeping on public transport is not a rare scene anymore. I believe people taking public transport everyday would definitely agree with me. I did witnessed people giving up their seats, but some did it quite involuntarily.
There is a funny but embarrassing story I would like to share with everyone. My colleague, Ayshah, was
pregnant and was taking the MRT one fine day. She was already 6 months pregnant, hence it is very
OBVIOUS that she is pregnant. But, like what the writer mentioned above, nobody gave up his or her seat for her. Guess what did she do. I was laughing quite hard when her sister told me about it. She actually screamed in the MRT cabin,
“Please don’t pretend to be sleeping people. Can’t you see that I’m pregnant?” People were so embarrassed that they had no choice but to give up their seats to her. Yes I could be laughing at her guts, but deep inside me, I felt that it was a total
disgrace to Singaporeans.
However I do have some comments regarding the part on
everyday etiquette. “Do not rush in” for public transport. Yes this is obviously the “right” way to behave. However, if you do not
rush in during the peak hour period at Temasek Polytechnic’s bus stop, there is no way you are going to go home. I had never seen a bus or bus stop that could be so packed until I came to TP. The moment you see a bus arriving at the bus stop, it is a natural instinct that people will start pushing and rushing, hoping the bus would stop at where they were. If one doesn’t rush, especially at 6pm, he or she would still be at the bus stop at 645pm. This is not a joke. Sometimes it is really not that we do not want to practice basic etiquette. It is the circumstances that had forced us to be so “aunty”. Live with it, this is life.
But I was really impressed with the
Taiwanese after being on a holiday in Taiwan for 5 days in March 2008. Firstly, all of them were queuing in such an orderly manner while waiting for the MRT. Lines were drawn on the floor to indicate the queue and surprisingly, no one dared to queue outside the queue. What about Singaporeans? We also had lines drawn to show us the queue for both the North South and East West Line. But how many actually follows the queue? We practically just rush up to the door and rush into the cabin. What really surprised me was that, they are so unlike Singaporeans! They do not snatch the seats like nobody’s business. Instead, we could see a lot of free seats available. Also,
no one dared to occupy the seats reserved for those in need. That was really impressive. Do take a trip to Taiwan and experience this. It was such a pity I did not took any pictures down though.
Posted by STEFFI at 6:23 AM
