Passive Aggressive Littering

You know how you read something and start punching the air "yes, yes, yes", not so much because of a new insight but because you suddenly realise someone else has the same frustrations as yourself? For me, this occurred when I read passiveaggressivenotes.com, a site dedicated to notes, signs and e-mails written in the passive aggressive style, usually about annoyances or asking people to stop doing things.

The one about cat fur posted in the letterbox hits home:

“okay, so i’m not sure if i’m in the wrong on this one,” says melanie from sydney. “i have a long haired cat who sheds a lot, so i just used to pick up the bits of fur and throw them out the window. i’m on the third floor and look out over the street, so i didn’t think it would upset anyone. but then i found this clump of cat fur in my Mailbox.”

This story is great on so many levels. There's the obsessive collection of a few hairs each day over weeks. The voyeurism of waiting for the falling fluff. The implied threat with shades of Fatal Attraction and bunny boiling.

For devotees of the obsessive genre, they also point out other sites dedicated to singular abuses of the word literally, apostrophes and quotation marks, to which I would add the work of Lynne Truss.

This week my local council sent a letter to each flat (must be important, normally they just post up a single copy on the notice board). Subject: LITTERING.

We have received feedback that some residents are throwing CIGARETTE BUTTS, UNWANTED FOOD, TISSUE PAPERS, etc out from their windows. Some of them are also littering the common corridors, staircases and open spaces.

Town Council takes a serious view of their irresponsible act and would like to appeal to all residents to immediately stop littering at the common areas, especially throwing litter out from the windows.

We wish to remind you that it is an offence under the town council by-law (COMMON PROPERTY AND OPEN SPACE) to litter the common areas.

I could rat out the guy opposite with the purple windows who smokes by leaning out of the window then flicking the butt down onto the grass, or the people above me who throw tissues out, but they didn't mention the Q-Tips. One narrowly missed me as I was walking in front of some flats a little while back and there was one in the lift the other day. What do you do with a Q-Tip in a lift? I used to use them to clean the heads of cassette players with denatured alcohol, and now I clear my ears with them, but neither activity has ever occurred in a lift. I feel a letter coming on...

Guess What I'm Pointing At

Number #2 on a list of 10 travel faux pas is to pat someone on the head in Thailand; it's a Buddhist taboo where the head is considered to be sacred, the seat of the soul. Not one I'm likely to be troubled by but carrying on the same theme, and abandoning the numbered list format, it warned about pointing with a finger in Malaysia. You notice this as they sort of close their fist but leave a little bit of the thumb sticking up. A bit like Bob Dole when he was campaigning for the presidency before he lost badly to Clinton.

At least this gesture works because the fist and vestigial thumb are at the end of an arm which has of the directional effect. The article continued with the Filipinos' habit of "shifting their eyes or pursing their lips and pointing with their mouth". And I thought they just fancied me.

My contribution would have been self delusional Asians who point with their noses, or more precisely, their nostrils. The action is to tilt the head back slightly and then jut forward with the neck. Using a gesture, while no doubt suitable for Romans, but adopted by people whose noses can hardly hold a pair of eye glasses is a cultural miss and makes "looking with the eyes" seem inspired.

Turks use a similar nose up gesture (imagine a kind of mildly disgusted tut) as a way of indicating "No". The Japanese apparently say "Yes" but mean "maybe, probably not". The French say "Non" just to be awkward. Working at the United Nations must be an absolute riot.

Accidental Re-cycling

Discarding things by throwing them out of the HDB window is a seductive habit. It starts innocently with some speck of fluff or a hair. Easier to just drop it out of the window than walk to a bin. No harm, no foul, right?. It might have been blown in from outside anyway. For me, it stops there, but I see others with fewer inhibitions.

First up are the smokers who can't be bothered to walk downstairs but don't want to smoke in their home, so end up stood by the window for 5 mins. No prizes for where the cigarette butt ends up. The ultimate of this is the chap who emptied his ashtray out of his 12th floor window, causing a confetti of ash and butts to float down.

There's a whole middle area of sweet wrappers, bits of food but the one that intrigues me are Q-Tips, you know, the double-ended cotton buds on a stick. They are the second most common item seen on the ground, indeed I was nearly hit by one but I can't figure out what they are being used for. It is personal hygiene or cleaning a mobile phone earpiece? It's proving tricky to find out.

Since most people have their living room windows open most of the time, I imagine those on lower floors are getting a raw deal here with junk thrown out above being blown or sucked back in. I've found thngs on my kitchen floor that I know are not mind so it's real scenario. If I then threw it out the window, the cycle could repeat. Litter that does reach the ground is swept up by the cleaning crew who are out by 6am but I wonder what is the record for the number of times it was thrown away?

Kiasu Or What Lah?

Kiasu is an Hokkien adjective meaning fear of losing, although before I read up on the word, I would have defined it as "pushy, edgy". It's been called a uniquely Singaporean national characteristic but I've worked in China and they have something very similar. It's described as pejorative because of its negative connotation but locals will freely acknowledge it so I would say it's just an accurate description.

One widespread expression of kiasu is a keen interest in offers, cheap deals, gifts, vouchers, discounts, lower interest rates, investment schemes, stock trading, lotteries and any other method to get something for less effort. MLMs ("hey, it's MLM not a pyramid scheme") abound and get pushed at work.

The immediate impression for ang mo is one of general pushiness and lack of courtesy. Queuing is a bit hit and miss. Bus stops are a free for all, lottery ticket queuing is patient and ordered. The Free Fruit table at work turned into a melee of pawed fruit and people leaving with armfuls (some brought bags) despite the 1 piece per person intention [I ended up hanging back and just asked someone leaving with a whole bunch of bananas for one - how kiasu is that?]. The supermarket is Okay although if a new till opens up there'll be a stampede. MRT platforms have lines marked for queues either side of the doors to permit people to exit first but it's poorly heeded and at rush hour you can end up being pushed back on the train. Trying to reserve seats or tables at busy eateries with umbrellas or packets of tissues is another trick.

An interesting side effect is that it works reciprocally; people expect you to push your way though as required, so in elevators, if you are at the back when the doors open, you'd better push your way out or someone playing the control panel like a church organ will have the doors closed on you. I've had people leap in at my destination floor and press the Door Close button before I've even got off. Same with buses & MRT; any notion of having a quick look round to see if someone wants to get past is rare - I've heard people actually complain "Why didn't they get off sooner?". Bus drivers will drive past a bus stop unless someone at the stop makes it pretty clear they want to get on - it really is a Demand Stop system.

Kiasu presumably contributes to the reliance on mobiles and text messages. Customers expect to be able to talk to you anytime (so every meeting is interrupted by someone's mobile) or called back instantly otherwise. Managers expect their staff to behave this way. It sounds like a Customer-Comes-First attitude but I think it's just culturally-validated impatience.

So Singapore is an experiment in interpersonal capitalism. In theory, the pushier people out compete the others, but what if everyone is equally pushy? You would be back to equality of opportunity but with fewer social graces. Hmmm.

Moan, moan, moan ...

This is about personal hygiene, noise, anti-social behaviour and pet hates. It had to come up at some point and since it will probably sound racist, or at least xenophobic, I might as well get it over with in one go.

The first time I went to China in 1991, it took a while to realise that the glazed bowls around the place which seemed to be covered in wax were in fact spittoons. I'd never seen one before and it was a while before I saw anyone actually use them (as in, get the spit in the pot rather than just nearby). So the cultural background here is that Chinese like to expectorate - to get foul liquids out of their bodies. Spit, snot, you name it, it's gone. So how is Singapore doing? Not that badly in public. Few people spit on the street but (Chinese) people still noisily clear their throats and noses in toilets and in their homes. And it's that last point which is the most distressing. It's like a dawn chorus in HDB land with ritual throat clearing echoing from the bathrooms. You think I exaggerate? I do not.

You might think I would be all for personal grooming. Yes, but not on the bus.Today's example was an older Chinese lady, carefully giving all 10 fingers a nail clipping with a practised 3 snip (left side, right side, middle) for each nail. The moon-shaped clippings cascaded down onto her handbag, lap and seat, and were all swept onto the floor before carefully replacing the clippers back inside her bag. Nice.

Men often don't wash their hands after going to the toilet. I end up having to use a tissue on the door handle then holding the door with my foot while I throw away the tissue. It's embarrassing when other people are trying to get into the washroom and I'm doing this Jackie Chan style kung fu move with the door. One more reason never lend your laptop.

There's no way to get through this without talking about eating. It's simple. People lean their forearms on the table edge, hold the spoon pointing towards themselves and move food from the plate to their mouth in a manner reminiscent of a building site tower crane. This style is not well correlated to social class (as in, nicely dressed professional people seem to do it also). There's a small justification in the sense than some food like noodles benefit from a modest lean over to avoid splashing, but the rest is just bad manners and it ain't a pretty sight.

Lastly, there is the shuffle. This is a hot climate; people often wear flip-flops that cannot sustain a normal walking flick of the leg without risking them fly off. People learn early to shuffle, keeping the shoe in contact with the ground, thus keeping it on the foot. At a minimum, this produces a sshh, sshh, sshh sound, but with hard-soled ladies shoes, this turns into a full blown clack, clack, clack of surprising percussive intensity. You're probably thinking I should lighten up, but you would complain too if half the population tied cymbals to their knees when going out.

Top 10 worst habits of Singaporeans

Taken from the front page of Sunday's Chinese paper:

1. one person taking up 2 seats in bus (eg with handbag etc)
   
2. putting snot onto elevator buttons, bus / train seats, etc.
   
3. squeezing fruits at fruit stall and taking free tasters
   
4. aggressive driving, hogging overtaking lane
   
5. sexually harrassing maids
   
6. throwing things from windows of high rise buildings
   
7. looking down on mainland Chinese
   
8. not flushing toilets
   
9. drips from wet clothes hung out to dry in a high rise flat
   
10. spitting
    

My list (soon to be published) has little in common with this one, but it got me thinking about what a similar list for English people would contain? This immediately shows what a blind spot we have for ourselves as I struggled to think of anything like 10 decent entries.

Alcohol seemed to account for half my list (noise, violent behavior, rowdy holidays, football violence, etc). Littering? Aggressive driving? Fly tipping? Xenophobia? Inconsiderate talking on mobiles? Using mobiles while driving?

I don't like either list much. Pointing out a few anti-social habits is shallow and getting at the deeper attitudes & issues can't be done with a simple Top-10 list.

Man Picks Nose

This week's venerable Straits Times featured an expose of bad behavior in public libraries. The lurid piece of journalism, complete with pixelated photographs, described no-nos such as ear digging, nose picking and feet on chairs. Moving up the disgusting scale was beard plucking while reading a newspaper.

Which got me thinking about the behaviors that disturbed (tho' not necessarily disgusted) me on my last visit to the excellent Sembawang facility:

1. Mobile phones. Separating a Singaporean from their mobile would be classed as cruel and unusual punsihment, if you could achieve it. It just doesn't matter where people are, if the phone rings, it gets answered


2. Kids playing combat video game on the public computers. Actually, they were doing a very good job of keeping a boisterous activity pretty quiet, but still, video killing game in a library?


3. People sprawled on the floor between bookshelves as there aren't really enough chairs and very few tables. It's common for school children to use libraries as a cool (ie aircon'd) place to work. But it's hard to browse when you can't walk on the floor


4. Tannoy recorded annoucements exhorting quiet and peaceful use of the facility. D'oh.

Not exactly a Little Shop of Horrors. All libraries I have visited were cool, fairly quiet and exceedingly well run. Book checkout is self-serve using your library card and a chip reader. Returns are fully automatic; just slide the book down the chute at the entrance and the book's chip is read and marked as returned. Payments and fines are cashless using your EZ Link card (train & bus rfid card). Book searches and renewals are online and they stay open until late.

If you want social faux pas, it would be the old lady sat next to me on the MRT using nail clippers to methodically depilate the back of her hands, complete with squeaky sound effects.

The ST article was a lightweight poke at petty rudeness and an attempt to shame into extinction some social errors. It almost certainly missed the mark. The stunningly successful, free, Chinese-language My Paper has the mass readership and has, arguably, taken over as the people's paper.