A Piece of Italy
Nostalgia Wormed its Way into My Heart - Sat 10 Dec
I was at Jason’s and could not help buying a pandoro. I saw the Perugina brand of panetonne and felt images of my stay there flooding me.
I went home to cook the pici I had bought in Siena, for my lunch.
We are Singapore - Sun 11 Dec
Singapore is a safe haven. I live here. I am part of the scheme here, and I have to contribute to it. By being the victim of a spot check at Tanjong Pagar MRT station.
Do I look like a terrorist? Ok, so I was alone, and OK, so I was carrying a back-pack.
Most importantly, I had to fulfil the police’s quota of checking X number of people in Y number of minutes’ interval. Singapore’s grand ‘’plan’’, ‘’vigilant system’’ to assure the world we are number one, we are safe, we are a great place to live and invest your business in.
She saw me walking into the station and caught my eye. There was no one else. She had to pick on me. She approached me to see my bag, and I glumly opened it. She cursorily glanced at it for a second and said OK, eager to fill her form, to report back to the HQ that she has done her job, that we are safe: we are Singapore.
We are ‘’Organised’’, We are ‘’Efficient’’ - Mon 12 Dec
That’s what we like to think of ourselves. And when things don’t work according to the way we are used to in another country, we say they are ‘’messy, back-ward, low tech, disorganised, inefficient’’.
Let us look at it from another angle. In Perugia, the queue sometimes is long and ‘’slow’’ to move. The service staff at the counter takes a long time to attend to one customer. But it is one on one, face to face, human interaction and attention. They are ‘’backward’’ – they did not set up ‘’auto/ self service machines’’, they did not encourage ‘’on-line services’’ or ‘’phone banking’’ to avoid queues. So you feel you are wasting time physically queuing.
So, in Singapore, it’s easy right? You call up the hotline. It says, press 1 for ABC, 2 for DEF, 3 for XYZ…. 8 options to press, and press # to speak to an operator. And then you press 2, they say press 1 for D1, 2 for D2, 3 for D3, 4 for E1, etc….. 8 more options. And if you are not sure and hazard a number and it’s wrong, you start all over again, or press 0 to ‘’go to the main menu’’. And when you press # to speak to the operator, it puts you on hold or on more recorded messages, or ask you to key in your account number… and when you key in, and finally get to speak a real person at the other end, the first thing she asks for is your account number….
Or, if you are very ‘’in’’, you do internet instead. But you have to make sure you have the right computer software for that particular service provider’s website, and you spend time understanding and downloading the software, and then your PC hangs, or the downloading was not successful….
The point is – the time spent pressing 1,2 3, ABC, and downloading and un-hanging your PC…is probably a lot more than simply waiting patiently and serenely at the queue….
The marketing lie of ‘’doing it whenever and wherever you want’’ with internet transaction is just that – a lie. What is the percentage of the population who does their transaction at 3 am at the pub? Haven’t you realised why the staff strength at 24 hour hotline call centres is skeletal?!
So what is the problem? To me, Singaporeans do not know how to face silence with equanimity; they must constantly occupy their minds with ‘’emptiness’’. Instead of being sociable or chat in a friendly manner with fellow queue-ers in the line, they prefer to be anti social and look busy with empty talk over sms, or to occupy their mind with stresses like on-line and hotline services.
By being ‘’occupied’’ and busy all the time, we appear more hardworking and ‘’efficient’’.
I was at Jason’s and could not help buying a pandoro. I saw the Perugina brand of panetonne and felt images of my stay there flooding me.
I went home to cook the pici I had bought in Siena, for my lunch.
We are Singapore - Sun 11 Dec
Singapore is a safe haven. I live here. I am part of the scheme here, and I have to contribute to it. By being the victim of a spot check at Tanjong Pagar MRT station.
Do I look like a terrorist? Ok, so I was alone, and OK, so I was carrying a back-pack.
Most importantly, I had to fulfil the police’s quota of checking X number of people in Y number of minutes’ interval. Singapore’s grand ‘’plan’’, ‘’vigilant system’’ to assure the world we are number one, we are safe, we are a great place to live and invest your business in.
She saw me walking into the station and caught my eye. There was no one else. She had to pick on me. She approached me to see my bag, and I glumly opened it. She cursorily glanced at it for a second and said OK, eager to fill her form, to report back to the HQ that she has done her job, that we are safe: we are Singapore.
We are ‘’Organised’’, We are ‘’Efficient’’ - Mon 12 Dec
That’s what we like to think of ourselves. And when things don’t work according to the way we are used to in another country, we say they are ‘’messy, back-ward, low tech, disorganised, inefficient’’.
Let us look at it from another angle. In Perugia, the queue sometimes is long and ‘’slow’’ to move. The service staff at the counter takes a long time to attend to one customer. But it is one on one, face to face, human interaction and attention. They are ‘’backward’’ – they did not set up ‘’auto/ self service machines’’, they did not encourage ‘’on-line services’’ or ‘’phone banking’’ to avoid queues. So you feel you are wasting time physically queuing.
So, in Singapore, it’s easy right? You call up the hotline. It says, press 1 for ABC, 2 for DEF, 3 for XYZ…. 8 options to press, and press # to speak to an operator. And then you press 2, they say press 1 for D1, 2 for D2, 3 for D3, 4 for E1, etc….. 8 more options. And if you are not sure and hazard a number and it’s wrong, you start all over again, or press 0 to ‘’go to the main menu’’. And when you press # to speak to the operator, it puts you on hold or on more recorded messages, or ask you to key in your account number… and when you key in, and finally get to speak a real person at the other end, the first thing she asks for is your account number….
Or, if you are very ‘’in’’, you do internet instead. But you have to make sure you have the right computer software for that particular service provider’s website, and you spend time understanding and downloading the software, and then your PC hangs, or the downloading was not successful….
The point is – the time spent pressing 1,2 3, ABC, and downloading and un-hanging your PC…is probably a lot more than simply waiting patiently and serenely at the queue….
The marketing lie of ‘’doing it whenever and wherever you want’’ with internet transaction is just that – a lie. What is the percentage of the population who does their transaction at 3 am at the pub? Haven’t you realised why the staff strength at 24 hour hotline call centres is skeletal?!
So what is the problem? To me, Singaporeans do not know how to face silence with equanimity; they must constantly occupy their minds with ‘’emptiness’’. Instead of being sociable or chat in a friendly manner with fellow queue-ers in the line, they prefer to be anti social and look busy with empty talk over sms, or to occupy their mind with stresses like on-line and hotline services.
By being ‘’occupied’’ and busy all the time, we appear more hardworking and ‘’efficient’’.
posted by "Jenny" at 4:05 AM
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