What do I mean? For instance, a few months ago I was swimming early in the morning before I went to work. This meant swimming in my condominium pool at around 6am, as I had to be at work by 7am.
For a week or so I was undisturbed. Then suddenly one fine day, one of the security guards came over and asked me, "Hello, boy, which unit are you from?"
Me: "XX-XX. Why do you ask?"
Guard: "You are not allowed to swim in the pool you know."
At which point, I was quite incredulous: was my swimming disruptive to the public peace? The nearest block is about 75 metres away: for my swimming to wake up a sleeping person in that block, I would have to be as loud as a ship's horn while in the water.
It turns out that the pool is only open from some arbitrary time, like 7am. Swimming before that is not allowed, for "safety reasons", said the management. Which is a bullshit answer, because as a big sign there stated, any swimmer will be swimming at their own risk: the management is not liable for any mishaps. So they are already washing their hands off the individual swimmer's risk.
In which case, why can't I assume the risk of swimming in the pool at 6am in the morning? When we approached the management corporation, they refused to budge, and basically asked me to swim later, at around 7am. Which was the time I had to be at work anyway.
The problem was eventually solved by a change of my working hours (due to a work situation that cropped up), but this set me thinking about how rigid a lot of Singaporeans can be with regards to rules, even absurd and nonsensical rules, without question.
Worse, my experience has often been that when you confront people (especially Singaporeans) with questions about the status quo, they start becoming defensive, and just become disagreeable.
Interesting experience I've has before too. For a lot of these folks, they are so afraid to step out of the box because they are black and white rules written in your condo guide book to say only swimming after 7 pm.
ReplyDeleteThese security guards hv families to feed too, and the last thing they want is to lose their jobs in case someone bloody drowns at 645 am while they on duty! Imagine that ... what is he going to say? He bend the rules for the person who swam at 6 am?
I fear there's nothing we can do to change the culture as a whole, just when you think singapore is progressing by leaps and bounds, we hear stories like that in the streets and neighbourhood that our THINKING hv not progressed the same way the economy supposdly has ...
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It's a bit of paranoia on their part, isn't it? Especially when there are signs everywhere that you "SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK".
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