Singapore Public Announcement Thursdays!

This is the inaugural post for my newest (And first.) weekly segment on my blog.

So the basic point is that Singapore has a tendency to point out the obvious, sometimes the blatantly obvious.

I had an earlier post that alluded to this phenomenon before, where a cardboard police officer was giving advice to observant customers at a mall. But now that I have been here longer I now realize this is an epidemic of extremely simple public announcements, normally accompanied by a cartoon character.

The above picture is pointing out the obvious; don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you. But it’s the nonchalant delivery of this information that makes it odd to me.

In America a poster providing the same information would say something similar to, “Under penalty of law do not remove personal property other than yours from the premises.” Or “Royce Kids Gym is not responsible for the loss of personal belongings while in use of our facilities.”

To me the way Royce Kids Gym seems to put it makes the act of stealing something like an accident, or if it was done on purpose then an act that is frowned upon and the punishment is going to bed without your diner.

From a country that has on its disembarkation ticket stub, “Warning death for all drug traffickers under Singapore law” this seems like a very lenient warning for the crime of theft.

But then I am reminded that this is a private business most likely run by a Singaporean family, and in Singapore courtesy is a very important virtue. So a demanding or overtly aggressive message just wouldn’t be culturally correct.

This is a country where people actually move over in the subway when other people need to get on and where people will still hold open doors for others (Chivalry isn’t dead, it just moved eastward.)

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.

Exotic, America

Maybe it’s just me but I feel that whenever you go to a new place or country the general idea is that you’re going someplace “exotic”. Somewhere you never thought you could go or would go. For me that place is Singapore, obviously. It’s literally half a world away from where I live in America. Go ahead check it.

So that would make America normal or ordinary. I wouldn’t go so far as to say average but it’s in the dictionary as the antonym of exotic so it’s possible.

Which is why this shocked me.

Spooky.

Yeah as ignorant as it seems I was shocked to see America being advertised by this travel agency as “exotic”. But then again this place where you get used to the humidity, the fast and easy MRT or the food here, I guess I can see how it might be a drastic change from the “ordinary” for the average Singaporean. Who am I to judge, here near the equator something as simple (to me at least) such as snow IS exotic. (Bold, italics and caps so you know I’m being super serious.)

Now saying all that, I have to admit I let out a giggle or two when I read this. Then after having embarrassed myself calmly walked away from the store front, circled around and quickly took this picture. As if I didn’t look like a tourist already I was doing laps around a small mini mall while giggling and taking pictures.