Follow Matthew's travels around the world…
They’re very process-oriented here in Singapore. The process is generally followed regardless of whether it makes common sense or not, and fighting against this behaviour is an exercise in futility. This is a country that’s used to following rules.
Which explains why my bowl of wonton soup was accompanied by another smaller bowl of wonton soup. Apparently, soup is included with all meals. Even if the meal is soup.
Well, my quest to find a turkey in Turkey has been unsuccessful. It looks like I’ll be eating the slightly less traditional Thanksgiving lamb kebab this evening.
I filled in my timesheet today. The way that they’ve set up the project codes made me chuckle, but I guess it’s only appropriate that the week of Thanksgiving is all coded to “Turkey Time”!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope that you’re all enjoying a wonderful holiday with your families and friends.
I’m not sure that I’ll ever get my head around life in Singapore. News in this morning’s Straights Times described how a man was stopped by police for dropping a cigarette butt. Rather than face the shame of arrest, he ran away from the police and jumped 15m to his death.
Meanwhile, life has a more pleasant side in today’s Bouquets:
STUDENTS HELPED TO GET PUPPY TO SAFETY
On Oct 31, I was travelling along Bukit Timah Road when I saw a lost puppy running along the right-most lane. I pulled over and tried to get the puppy to safety.
A group of Singapore Institute of Management students stopped to help, and tried to keep the puppy away from the road. Thank you, boys!
– Lynn Chau Li-Ming (Ms)
Awwww…
Another case of “you can’t cure stupid” brought to you by Southeastern Trains.
Our local station seems to have a high incidence of fare evaders, and consequently, we often have ticket inspectors waiting for us at the doors of our otherwise uncontrolled station. In a move to improve efficiency and reduce fare evasion, the lovely people at Southeastern have invested in some automatic ticket barriers which were installed a few weeks ago.
Our station is also unmanned about 50% of the time, meaning that you cannot buy a ticket from a real person. Instead, you need to purchase your ticket from the automated ticket machine.
Now here’s where someone fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch. The automated ticket machine is located inside the station, on the platform by the tracks. This arrangement worked very well before they installed the new ticket barriers.
But now we have ticket barriers outside the platform, and the ticket machine inside the platform. And yes, you guessed it. You need a ticket to get through the barriers and onto the platform.
