Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

The Singapore government is extremely proud of its train network. With ever-increasing wait times, and more frills added for the usage of a minority that I hardly see as a frequent train passenger, the local transport system looks set to head for greater heights.

The fare prices, I mean.

But the bone today hasn’t to do with fare prices (which had already been done to death; to deaf ears). Rather, there is something that I have contended for a long time, even as the local population has tacitly recognised as acceptable. Introducing: the ban on eating and drinking on trains and buses.

I have completely forgotten when the ban took effect, because I remember being able to eat curry puffs on the bus back when I was a young toddler. Then again, cockroaches were rampant, and you could get one creeping up your body if you were not careful.

Of course, I feared that creepy crawlie, and could jump whenever there is one hanging anywhere within a metre of me. I would pinpoint it down to a phobia that I had when a cockroach crawled happily up my legs in the middle of the night. In those days, I slept on a sponge mattress laid on the floor. For some reason, the disgusting creature managed to sneak up on me in the middle of the night, yet dug so deeply into my flesh that I awoke with a start.

I woke the whole household, and refused to sleep the rest of the night. I even went to the extent of lubricating the door gap with insecticide. Could you say that I, as a young boy, was MOLESTED by a cockroach? I was certainly scarred for life.

Definitely, as a result of that incident, for a few years, I supported the clamp-down on eating and drinking on public transport.

The years of self-centred thoughts soon gave way to an extensive re-think, back in my junior college days. There, we had to examine issues to determine the effiacy of policies, and the argument for, the state of the world. To hide all the mind-wrangling from outsiders, it was packaged nicely as a barricade, labelled: current affairs.

I began to reconsider my earlier support for a complete ban on food consumption. After all, people do get hungry, and the hectic pace of life here means that many don’t get proper meal breaks. They would have to stave off their hunger on the move. While those rich enough to be driving their own set of wheels can eat inside their beloved, public transport users are left high and dry by the ban on eating.

Surely the transportation companies were not simply being difficult to passengers with the claim? After all, the results were magnificent: I could safely sleep on a bus without being over-run by a mob of dark feeler-ed creatures; but the ban looks draconian, especially if you see that bus and train systems in many countries do allow grazing on buses.

Perhaps it has something to do with an over-zealous attempt to curtail food consumption when the pest problem became too tough to curb? I would most probably call this an over-kill in theory, in line with typical Singaporean reactions to all things foreign to their comfort-zone. A better choice might be to opt for a law mandating the upkeep of public transport by users to make sure that they clean up after themselves. Not only would this allow hungry travellers to munch on the go, it will also fosters responsibility on their part to keep public transportation clean.

Yet, underneath it all, I know that deep in my heart, such a theory would not work. Why? Singaporeans are far too selfish to keep their own public transport clean. What for? We have MAIDS!

Filed under: General