Lessons in Civility

People keep emailing and asking why we haven’t updated the blog in a long time. The reason is that our shipment from the USA arrived last month, and we’ve been spending most of our time unpacking and moving in. It pretty easy once you get most of you stuff put away. But then you notice you still have an entire house full of unopened boxes. Not to mention the opened boxes that you picked through and then set aside to deal with later. Since we’ve been spending most of our spare time moving boxes around we haven’t had much time to do interesting things worth writing about.

But even though we haven’t had a lot of time to explore Singapore, it doesn’t mean we haven’t been mixing it up a bit during those utilitarian trips we’ve been making back and forth from Ikea and the hardware store. On one of our last trips, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to teach a lesson in civility to one of my fellow Singapore residents.

In many ways, Singapore is a very civil country. Most people know that Singapore has low crime rates. There are big fines for antisocial behavior like spitting on the sidewalk or dropping trash on the ground. There are also fines for smoking in public buses, taxis, elevators, cinemas, government offices, and in air-conditioned restaurants and shopping centers.

But much of the civility ends when you enter the subway, Singapore’s MRT system.

The MRT can be pretty crowded, and civility disappears when people get mashed up too close together.

We are on the MRT quite frequently. I take it to work every day. We also take it for shopping.

One trip, we were returning from shopping at Ikea. It was late on a weekend afternoon and the MRT was not very crowded. Deanna and I were sitting across from a twenty-something guy. We were resting after shopping for bookcases and shelves to put away all the junk we never needed US and still don’t have a place for in Singapore.

After a while, this guy across from us takes out his cell phone and starts playing a game on it. This happens frequently on the MRT; its nice to have something to help you pass the time on your commute. People talk and play games and listen to music all day long on the MRT. But this guy was playing a game with a loud soundtrack and no headphones. And he must not have been very good at it, because he seemed to be loosing and replying the same round, with the same song starting over and over again every time restarted the round.

And he kept playing. Loosing and starting over. Again and again.

Irritated, I started staring at him. Staring as hard and as intently as I could. I figured if I stared hard enough, he would feel my eyes and realize that he was bothering the whole train car. But he never made eye contact, never took his eyes off the game.

I noticed some older folks also on the train. They had a similar look of irritation. Same look on my wife’s face. I didn’t have my cell phone with me, so I asked Deanna if I could borrow hers. Luckily she had no idea was I was planning, because she handed it over without questioning.

There was nobody else on the other side of the train. So I went and sat down right next to the guy. Like right next to him. Touching. I searched through Deanna’s cell phone menus until I found the "select ring tone" option. It plays each selected ring tone as you scroll through the menu. I put the menu on the first ring tone and held the phone in front of me ringing.

I looked over his arm to watch his game. I started to nod my head a bit to the song, rocking my shoulders and leaning into him. My phone kept ringing and his phone kept playing.

He obviously didn’t get the hint. He looked at me once and just kept playing. By then, I was practically on top of the guy, rocking out to my phone and his phone. I looked across the train and the two older guys were grinning and my wife was trying not to look at me. My phone kept ringing and his phone kept playing.


This all went on for a while, until suddenly he must have figured it out. He shut off his phone and smiled sheepishly at me.

I turned off my phone and went back to sit with Deanna on the other side.

He got up to at the next stop and made brief eye contact. I smiled at him as he got off.