Right side, wrong side
In the US there are many, many things that you just get used to like hot dogs, fireworks or driving on the right side of the road.
While I’ve seen hot dogs and fireworks, although very little of them, in Singapore I am terrified to see someone driving on the right hand side of the road. That is, in case you didn’t know, because the majority of the world operates its motor vehicles on the left side of the road.
Seeing as I am only in Singapore for a short time, and do not have a car like the majority of people living in Singapore, you would think this really wouldn’t affect me very much. But what the “average person” who has never been in a society where driving on the left side of the road is the norm doesn’t know is that it (driving on the left hand side of the road) has serious trickle down effects on daily living.
For example, if you live in America and you are walking down the street which side would you move to if someone was walking towards you in the opposite direction? Generally you would say to the right, because you are so used to that being how you would act driving a car, it becomes muscle memory to you. And if you said to the left you cheated, somehow.
Now moving to the right instead of the left isn’t all that big of a faux pas (Wow. That’s a fancy word.) but this becomes more of an issue when other factors are involved. For me personally this happened when I was walking one afternoon and a grandmother bringing her granddaughter home from school was coming from the opposite direction. (This little girl couldn’t have been more than four or 5 years old.) And I was faced with a decision; move to the left or to the right.
Unfortunately I was mid-way through a text before I saw them, and by that time I didn’t have the time to mentally make the connection that this was Singapore and not America. So my decision was instinctual, jump to the right to avoid hitting them. Unfortunately the grandmother had move to her left to avoid me. When this happened it aligned the granddaughters face perfectly with my knee cap, which would not have ended well so I continued on my awkward jumping motion further to the right and eventually right onto my ass. Making myself look like a jerk, but also very uncoordinated.
Literally running away from the scene probably didn’t help either.
tylerkellyon 