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...

Knock Knock, Who's There?

Living in a flat 10 floors up, the front door becomes the only portal to the outside world. Almost uniquely, I leave mine open most of the time to let the wind in and so I can see what's going on out on the landing. Indeed, my desk is just inside the door. There's a couple of downsides to this, but not probably the one you imagine, that is, lack of privacy. As a hairy pink foreigner, one glance at me and most people keep their heads down as they shuffle past. Result!

The issues are noise and smell, the latter being the worst offender by far. Let me explain. Noise-wise, it's kids screaming. A feat of human vocal ability that leaves me unable to hear my own radio and yet does not render the little blighters deaf. How's that fair?

The smells are all those of combustion. Incense sticks outside front doors and most bizarrely, even charcoal burners used to boil big pans of water to cook rice, etc. The prevailing Southerly wind blows the smoke through the front door and past my nose giving me an instant headache, the sort I get (psychosomatically?) from smokers. It's all against the rules of course. Open fires and big pots of boiling water on landings are hardly safe or neighbourly but it's just another facet of Chinese domestic life transplanted Lock Stock into an HDB flat, rules or no rules.

There are people who eagerly stop at my open door: charities. Frankly, I get the impression they have a hard time finding anyone to even open their door, let alone talk to them, such is the desperate tone in their voices. Let's see, we've had Ice Cream-selling students trying to fund school books, Boys Brigade (which has girls as members) seeking funds to give Bibles to (Muslim) Malays, the Singapore Cancer Society wanting direct-debit donations and even a plastic bucket-selling Malay lady, though she gave up early on.

Since all doors are supplemented with an additional metal gate, these conversations occur through bars, like an Alcatraz librarian dealing with his clientele. I've never considered myself threatened and prefer the feeling I can get out than fearing someone would come in. Singaporeans say they have Low Crime, not No Crime.

Talking the Piss

Living in flats means lifts, and opening lift doors is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. People, bikes, McDonalds delivery boys, Indian cleaners, hawkers and school children selling ice cream are all pretty standard fare.

In Singapore, there are rules. Elevators have 3 don'ts: Smoking, Littering, Urinating. The odd person unselfconciously smokes, some littering (discarded envelopes and junk mail, cigarette butts), but no big deal. It all gets cleaned up every morning by the ever efficient Indian cleaning team.

That brings up to the third point. A strange diagram of a cherubic child relieving himself with a pair of handcuffs around him and a dire warning of $1000 fine makes the official position clear. The prospect of trying to sneak a quick leak between floors seems unappealing and offences seem thankfully non-existant. A recent conversation with a neighbour sharing a lift suggests an additional motive for high compliance. A slight pool of clear liquid (discarded drink most likely) prompted him to say there were urine detectors installed and if triggered, would stop the lift with the doors closed and raise an alarm.

The sheer unlikeliness of this scenario, even in Singapore whose authoratarian reputation is well founded, didn't dent his apparent conviction.

"You can't see the detectors, they're between the floors". You can't argue with that.