Does Singapore deserve its 'miserable' tag?

[chris_pilgrim]

http://m.bbc.com/news/magazine-26546169

i say "aye"

u think?

[nutnut]

She's bang on. A country void of empathy

[x9200]

Marcus, her friend is very right, but then they were sort of engineered this way adding the worse to already badly money focused Chinese culture.

[nakatago]

Yes. A thousand times yes.

[Wd40]

I read that article. The whole essence of that article is that she was pregnant and nobody gave her a seat in the MRT. I can't really believe that. I mean, I have seen people not giving up seats for elderly but they always give up their seats for pregnant and women with children.

May be she didn't really have a big enough and noticable baby bump. Using this one single statement she made a big article out of it.

[x9200]

My wife was pregnant too in this country and have somehow similar experience. Not that bad that she was squatting on the bus floor for 15 min being completely ignored but for the priority seat? Sure. A number of times.
Sitting in the priority seats and pretending they are sleeping or reading and you expect they would give the seat to anybody. Really, they should give you a PR of honoris causa WD40.

[sundaymorningstaple]

^^This. lol

[singapore eagle]

To provide some balance - given, as wd40 says, the BBC article is borne our of anecdote - my 4-year-old and I took the MRT last Saturday afternoon. On both the way there and the way back, someone offered their seat to my daughter. On the way back, the lady who ended up sitting next to her was insistent that I take her seat.

I hereby declare Singapore to be a country overflowing with empathy.

[bro75]

In my experience, more often than not, obviously pregnant women and the very elderly are usually offered seats in the bus/mrt. On the other hand, able bodied individuals are still hogging the reserved seats and pretending not to see anyone else. Those that offer are from the non-reserved seats.

[rajagainstthemachine]

I don't think the collective empathy of a country is decided on the basis of giving up MRT seats alone. There are loads of other factors,however consideration for others is quite low priority here.

Another eg: a bunch of Pinoys were figuring out how to get to their hotel from the MRT and another didn't have sufficient change to get a ticket, not one person offered to help, I offered to help them and when I was done there were 3-4 angry looking people in the queue behind looking at me as if I had committed a sin on this planet by taking a bit longer at the ticketing machine.

[Steve1960]

Those angry people are probably also the lazy as* idiots that canny take out their EZ link card to use it at the barriers they have to waive their wallet or handbag back and forth over the sensor holding up everyone else

[Primrose Hill]

what's the big deal

[rajagainstthemachine]

I'm in Hong Kong on work.. situation at lunch today, there was an extremely busy cafe and I walked in, there were no empty spots....
waiter noticed a group of three sitting at a table with one seat vacant. She went over and pointed to me and asked if it was ok for me to join their table. They readily accommodated me and smiled..I wouldn't see this happening in a dine in Restaurant in Singapore...
HK 1 SG 0

[Steve1960]

what's the big deal

Ah, you are a handbag waver me thinks

I just think its lazy and inconsiderate

[sundaymorningstaple]

I don't take my card out of my wallet, but I don't wave my arse over the turnstile either. I do take the wallet out of my pants pocket though and pass it over the card reader.