Singapore OK... or Not? Episode 4: Singapore Kindness Week

Welcome to the yet another episode of Singapore OK... or Not? Today, we will just sit down and talk about the event that's starting on 5 April 2009.

It's the Singapore Kindness Movement Week! Look no further for more information. In lieu of that, TODAY has published another article titled "Gracious, really? 90 per cent of Singaporeans think so". Indeed, it surprised me when I saw the statistics provided. They are categorized into four groups. But I'm not going to mention all of them. All of them are on what habits Singaporeans found most annoying.

In Public
Firstly, we have the "in public" category. Apparently, 93% and 76% voted for "Not clearing plates" and "'Chope-ing' seats" respectively. The good news is I don't see much of these problems now, thanks to the cleaners and the better attitude Singaporeans have now.

On Public Transport
Secondly, "On Public Transport", 3/4 of us don't like others not making way for people to alight, board. I find that quite hard to avoid. This arises during the peak hours when commuter load is high. After all these years of complaints, nobody did anything, leading to the frequent jamming on buses' aisles. When the two transport companies refuse to increase the frequency of the bus, how can we avoid this?

A little less than 7 out of ten people find people not keeping to the left of escalators annoying. What most teenagers do now is they hang out in groups. And when they do, they definitely stand next to each other on escalators and talk. This is a problem which I don't think will be rectified in the near future.

The last thing I would like to mention is that quite a large number of people dislike the idea of people talking and playing music loudly. For those who plays music loudly, here's a piece of information for you. If the noise level is so high that the person who sits beside you on the bus can hear it, you're in trouble. Research shows that that if you are doing that all the time, you will be deaf 30 years before normal people do. Shocked? I don't know how they got the number, but if you just think about it, maybe it's not so hard to imagine it after all. Perhaps the next time, you want to blast some music, be more gracious - someone may need that period of rest after a long day.

We have come to the end of another episode of Singapore OK... or Not? As usual, you can send in your thoughts as comments in the box below or click on the link! Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next episode.