Singapore Public Announcement Thursdays – Round 2!

I hope you all enjoyed last week’s posting and found it amusing. (If not then hopefully you thought it was educational, maybe?) Anyways here is this week’s addition!

This is a sign you can find in pretty much all major MRT stations. It depicts a little girl (Let’s call her Sally.) pointing out that she is too tall to ride the MRT for free.

What I think is weird is that the girl is the one pointing this out. I’m used to the, “You must be this tall to ride xxxxx” that can be found in all of America’s theme parks. And having been a volunteer at a local county fair for more than half my life I know for a fact that no one, and I mean no one, be them parents or children, has voluntarily pointed out being over a height limit (Or age limit) if it would cost them more money. You normally have to trick them somehow, like ask them their birthday or how tall they are (When people are put on the spot, odds are they will slip up).

Here in Singapore I could absolutely see a young Sally about to go through a ticket stall but then turning to her mom and saying, “Mummy, I’m above 0.9m tall. I need a ticket to get in.”

And yes in my mind that child has a very British accent when she speaks.

The most dangerous game of Pictionary.

I’m going to share with you my very own secret method for eating food in Singapore.

I like to call it the “Point and Pray” method of ordering.

That is the general scheme of a menu here in Singapore, above every ordering counter is a lit up wall of pictures and numbers. Every once in a while you may see an actual menu, but even then they all have pictures.

The reason they do this is simple, here in Singapore there are just too many languages floating around here. There are four, that’s right FOUR, national languages in Singapore. And each language has its own type of cuisine that has its own culturally named food. So unless you happen to be lucky and speak the same language as the chef you’re ordering from you almost always end up pointing at a picture.

Except sometimes that might not be enough the chef might ask you a question, which could be about one of a thousand different things. Try as you might to understand him or her it all basically comes down to a flip of a coin, because I can guarantee you will just take a risk and blurt out yes or no without really knowing what you’re agreeing to.

It’s like a game of Russian roulette, except you’re playing with your digestive system. Fortunately, like I said previously, Singaporeans take great pride in making their food so I have never had a bad meal here. Which is surprising because in general the flavours (The fancy side of grammar.) of Singapore tend to be either spicy or face-melting-ly hot.

Oh and have I mentioned there’s always some type of egg in your meal?

It’s a small world, after all.

I’ve made reference to Singapore’s conservative nature in the past, and I’m sure you have heard of the laws in place here against the evil chewing gum brands of the world.

This big push for conservative tendencies and for a squeaky clean international image naturally means that there are some strict laws and little, if any tolerance, for breaking those laws. To be honest I have never in my life felt safer than living here in Singapore, the city just seems so welcoming to good law abiding travelers.

You can even ask around Singapore, and in general no one has actually seen a crime being committed. Maybe everyone is just too tired from all the heat, or too full from all the food. I know I’m guilty on both accounts.

I’ve been told the most danger you could actually be in is a car accident of some kind. And that is even extremely unlikely due to the ridiculously high cost of buying and owning a car in Singapore. (Seriously this city has absolutely no traffic, it’s insane.) So in general if you are one of the few who has a car, or are a taxi driver, you take great pains NOT to crash it.

Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining about feeling safe here or the near complete absence of crime in Singapore, but I am more confused at how all this is accomplished. You see that little cardboard police officer I up there? That was the only law enforcement officer I saw for the first week I was here in Singapore. No joke.

Now if I really look I can see a group of two or three police officers in the MRT stations, but only during and after work when the stations are the most crowded. In America if someone wanted to make a place safe, generally I would expect them to try and put the most amount of man power into that area. Please correct me if you think this is wrong, but for example take any sporting event in the US, right on the sides of the field between the players and fans is a small army of police and security officers.

What I have noticed however is the vast amount of CCTVs everywhere you can think of. And then there are the ample amounts of security guards, at least a handful or so for any residential structure and teams within public shopping areas.

The best theory I can come up with is that the Singaporean government operates under the principle of “And when he prepares everywhere he will be weak everywhere.” by Sun Tzu. (That’s some knowledge right there; write that in your book report kids.) Meaning instead of putting innumerable officers out in the streets, why not have the CCTVs cover the city and respond en masse (I’m on a roll.) to the trouble. This way there isn’t the direct show of force by the police, more of an extreme threat of retaliation. Also having a criminal’s face on video tape is a lot more believable than a description by an officer that saw someone’s face.

Or it could just be that Singapore is in fact the real life inspiration for Disney World, the friendliest place on earth. It’s possible.

Evil, evil little robot boy.

I’m no fool, I knew coming to Asia that there would be significant cultural differences between my old life and what awaited me in Singapore. But nothing could have prepared me for this:

That right there is a demonic vampire Astro Boy, and he seems to be a little “too excited”.

I wasn’t ignorant to some of craziness of Asian culture, I had seen plenty of game shows from Japan and even been an avid anime fan as a child. (I’ll still watch a show of Pokemon given the chance, and think that The Last Airbender is one of the best shows to come out on Nickelodeon in a long, long time.) So I thought I was prepared for almost anything.

But given the conservative nature of Singapore I never would have thought that a poster like this would be around, at least not in public and certainly not in a major tourist hot spot. (One impression I have of Singapore so far is they take great pains to make the country look as good as possible, hence the no chewing gum laws)

I couldn’t get a picture of the whole poster but it was around a whole store, and on the other side it featured Kim Jong-il in shutter shades. So the entire thing was generally weird. So as it turns out the poster is for a Japanese beer company named Asahi, which is to be honest one of the best beers you can buy here in Singapore so maybe they have a little more leverage than the average advertiser.

I guess this is more of a cautionary tale in that you should always expect the unexpected and that although you might think a country is really strict, but everywhere has a little bit of a wild side.