Minding My Manners

The first thing you notice upon arriving at Singapore's Changi Airport is just how silent the place is. I mean like church quiet, as though if you speak, someone's going to elbow you and - just like your mother used to do - tell you to use your inside voice. It's so quiet, in fact, that the airport authorities had to put up signs a few years ago reading "No Studying." University students were using the place as a study hall.

The second thing that hits you is just how polite everyone is. Generally, when going through immigration control at a major airport, I expect no less than to be looked at like I owe someone money. As the lady official at Changi was inspecting my passport, however, she motioned to a basket of candy next to her and said in a perfect UK-English accent,

"Fancy a chocolate?"

This place was already freaking me out. This was supposed to be Southeast Asia, the world's hub of noise, pollution and a friendly lack of all courtesy.

It didn't take long, though, to find the Singapore I'd expected, the one of rules and regulations and fines galore for not obeying each and every one of them. Fines for spitting, fines for littering, fines for chewing gum without a permit, for not flushing the toilet, for...christ, I can't even remember all of them. The place is like the Civics class out of your worst nightmare. Even when you're not being reminded of rules, you're the target of 'suggestions:' Forgetful behavior, we're told, has consequences, so be sure to hold the handrail on the escalator. Kindly consider stopping at two children. Don't take your chattel across the Cavenaugh Bridge.

Such strictures cannot but make a person paranoid. Waiting for the subway on my first day there, I found myself jogging down the platform to catch a train and thinking as I slowed to a fast walk, "I wonder if I could be fined for this." Running on the subway platform, afterall, probably qualifies as forgetful behavior.

Funny thing is - and despite all the laws - I didn't see a single police officer for the first twenty-four hours I was there. Are these people golden retrievers, I wondered, so well trained that they just police themselves? Probably, I guessed upon looked at the next morning's paper, the entire local constabulary was at the scene of a recent car accident, wherein one Singaporean man had singlehandedly managed to hit seven cars with his own - in a dead-end alley. He obviously hadn't paid attention in his civics class.

Singapore really is a very pleasant city (they sure as hell ought to get something for all the uptightness). There are parks every few blocks, traffic moves in an orderly manner, the people are generally courteous, streets have proper names and buildings have numbers - basically, things we take for granted in places like Portland, Oregon, but which are strikingly absent in most of Asia.

And although I know I shouldn't do this, here goes my comparison with Seoul. I guess, when people live in overcrowded cities, they have to make a decision: to take the difficult path and be polite to other people, say 'excuse me,' yield to pedestrians, etc., or take the easy route and think of oneself first and always foremost, others be damned. Singapore (a city of five million), in contrast with Seoul (a city of twenty million), seems from my limited observation, to have chosen the former. No doubt this stems from a strong British influence on the place, but goodness it was a refreshing change from having to steamroll my way out of the subway every day in Seoul.

Besides, I really did fancy those chocolates.

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Above pics by Aaron