But Singapore is so full of self-praise that these incidents become instructive in their own way. Our government and government-owned companies regularly boast about how superior and efficient they are, how everything is world-class (or nearly so), and how all this justifies steadily rising costs to the public.

Indeed, much of the hardware we see in Singapore is impressive, but the people who operate or use them are too often a disgraceful lot. As a society, we don't seem to aspire to any standards in good civic behaviour, nor even job competence, as in the examples below. Hence, all this investment in fancy hardware still leaves the boast of world-class standards empty.

Here, I look at some real-life observations of the levels that Singaporeans sink too – commuters, bus drivers and others – and how that affects people all around.

* * * * *

She sat astride 2 seats even as many others had to stand.

It was mid-afternoon, and I was riding the metro downtown. Being off-peak, the trains were not jampacked (as they are every morning and evening), but still, there were about twice as many people as seats, thus about half the passengers were hanging on to straps.

This woman in this picture had probably got on board at the start of the route, and for the entire journey – we passed 8 stations – she sat across two seats. Even as the carriage got more and more crowded, she refused to budge, showing no consideration for other passengers.

I took out my phone camera and snapped a few pictures of her, without attempting to hide the fact that I was doing so. I was quite prepared to hear a protest from her, to which I had a reply ready: "If you were not sitting across two seats, I would not be taking your picture."

Other commuters saw me raising my phone camera. From their barely suppressed smiles, they seemed to agree with me.

* * * * *

 
On the weekend of 26 and 27 November 2005, the Singapore Dragon Boat Association held its annual Singapore River Regatta. A neighbour of mine was competing, and a week earlier, he had said to me, come and watch, and if you can, take some pictures of my team.

Well, since he had such a lovely smile and an even lovelier bod, how could I refuse?

So there I was outside Dhoby Ghaut metro station wondering which bus would get me down to the river, when bus number 124 pulled up. Vaguely, I knew it would head in that general direction, but to be sure, I needed to verify with the driver before paying.

Me: "Do you go to the bus stop at the Supreme Court?" -- the nearest stop to the river.

Driver :"Huh?" -- he clearly didn't recognise the name 'Supreme Court'.

The bus stop before that one would be Capitol, named after an old cinema across the road, so I tried again, "Do you go to Capitol?"

His face remained blank. He didn't recognise the name 'Capitol' either.

"Do you go to North Bridge Road?" which would be where the Capitol and Supreme Court stops were.

To my considerable amazement, he didn't recognise the name of what was a major road in Singapore either.

Finally, he blurted out, "City Hall, City Hall."

Well, for a moment, he made me feel out-of-date and over the hill, realising as I did that the current generation of Singaporeans tended to refer to the Capitol bus stop as the City Hall bus stop. The cinema had closed down about 5 years ago, and the old name had gradually lost currency. Only old fogies like me call it 'Capitol'.

But if he was going to City Hall/Capitol, this meant his route would take him down North Bridge Road and necessarily past the Supreme Court. Now, how was it that a bus driver, driving that route every day, knew neither the name of the landmarks, nor even the name of the very road he trundled down?

What if I were a tourist hoping to get some help?

* * * * *

 
Later that same afternoon, I had to go back to the river again. My neighbour boy's team qualified for the grand finals, which would take place between 5 and 6 p.m., so even though I had shot a few pictures of the semi-finals that had been held around mid-day, I somehow felt obliged to take some pictures of the final race too, if only to enjoy the treat of the boy's smile when I would give him the photos.

Oops, I digress.

Coming back to the story,  this time, I boarded bus service 174 from Marriott Hotel. A kilometre or so into the journey, the bus came to the same Dhoby Ghaut bus stop where a few hours earlier, I had met with the unbelievably ignorant bus driver.

This time, a middle-aged couple -- probably British, going by their accents -- asked the driver for some help before they boarded. They wanted to know whether his bus would be heading towards the World Trade Centre. The driver replied that it wasn't on his route.

"Which bus should we take?" they asked.

He tried to be helpful, but he couldn't think of a direct bus. He told them, oh, you'd have to walk to that other bus stop over there, take this number and alight at that place, and change to that other bus....

I couldn't quite catch all the details from where I was sitting, but I caught enough to know it was an utterly unhelpful answer.

Should I go up front and give my far better reply to the couple? Would that embarrass the driver by showing up his incompetence?

It took me a while to decide. I finally felt that if the driver was going to be embarrassed, it was his fault, but if I were a tourist, I'd want better help than he was giving.

So I strode up the aisle, interjected myself as only a domineering personality like moi can be, smiled broadly to the British couple to indicate that I was to be their saviour from all their troubles, and suggested to them, "If you look behind you, you'll see the entrance to an underground metro station. From this station, you can get a train directly to Harbourfront, which is the new name for World Trade Centre. It's the last stop on the line. Taking the train is much easier and faster than taking buses."

They thanked me profusely, though they didn't go as far as blessing my soul and commending me to God.

Coming back to earth, you must have noticed that my advice to the couple raised two questions. How was it that the bus driver didn't know a simple thing like that? Especially as the transport company he worked for, SBS Transit, operated both the bus he was driving as well as the train service that went from Dhoby Ghaut to Harbourfront?

Secondly, why do we keep confusing everybody by changing names? World Trade Centre has now become Harbourfront, much like how the Capitol bus stop has now become the City Hall bus stop.

I knew that the driver might feel slighted by my intervention, but I had steeled myself for that. However, what happened next took me by complete surprise.

Another middle-aged couple -- Singaporean, by their looks -- who were seated just behind the driver then muttered between them in the Hokkien dialect of Chinese, "Why does he want to interfere, giving so many directions. Wasting time. We are already going so slowly!"

I glared at them. I should have taken another picture.

* * * * *

 
Down at the river, things were not going smoothly.

The Singapore River is, I think, less than a hundred metres wide and it does present some difficulty if one holds a boat regatta down the middle, for there will inevitably be conflict between the river taxis -– traditional lighters converted into passenger craft for tourists -– and the racing boats.

The taxis need to cut from one bank to the other and go up and down stream repeatedly.

Nobody seemed to have taken the trouble to coordinate things with them, so they kept getting in the way of the race.

River taxi chugging down a lane meant for the boat race, oblivious to the buoys. Clueless or plain obstinate?

But no. The whole fleet continued to operate and repeatedly had to be shooed off the racing lanes. So, for much of the time, the race organisers were at their bullhorns telling the river taxis to move aside.

Yet even this was difficult, because there was no easy way to know which river taxi the bullhorn was addressing, there being 5 - 10 of them on any stretch of the river at any one time. The boats had numbers painted on, but from certain angles, you couldn't make them out. In any case, the organisers made no effort to identify them by their numbers, so when a bullhorn went, "river taxi, river taxi, move out of the lane, move out quickly!" it was seldom clear which river taxi was being addressed by the command.

(Actually, I wondered if the river taxi boatman even understood English.)

Not surprisingly, most commands were ignored until the race organiser's speedboat came alongside an errant river taxi and shouted, "You, you, you! Get out! Get out!"

But as soon as one river taxi was chased out, another wandered into the race lanes. Were they completely clueless what the buoys signified, or did they simply not care? 

A dragon-boat race. On each boat are 20 rowers, a drummer and a coxswain.

 
Shorn of shiny state-of-the-art hardware, Singaporeans aren't particularly efficient. We're not good at organising ourselves with respect and consideration for others without being yelled at.

Perhaps our over-reliance on technology has led to serious neglect of our social responsibilities. Bus drivers do the minimum necessary to drive from point A to point B, taking little pride in helping commuters with the best possible advice. River taxis couldn't give a damn how they're spoiling the show by chugging up and down and across the river. And few commuters understand what it means to be gracious, to be helpful and considerate without somebody spelling out the rules and penalties.

© Yawning Bread