Today (Monday September 21, 2009) my family experienced yet another encounter with Singapore’s hospitality 
We were parking in an outdoor car park, sitting in the car waiting for my son’s friend to arrive. A few minutes later, tired of waiting, I decided to step out to buy a cup of coffee. Apparently, when I was out a car parked next to our car, then the wife opened the back door so hard it slammed the side of our car and left a dent.
My husband gave the wife a look, hoping that she would at least acknowledge that she’d done something wrong and apologized. She gave an empty look back at him, but walked on, repeatedly looking back at the car, obviously knowing that she’d done something wrong and that it hadn’t gone unnoticed.
But yet, she refused to acknowledge it and apologized. That’s all my husband was expecting … an apology.
When I got back and heard the story, I asked them, “Why didn’t you hit the car back and make it even?”
The car that dented ours :-p
[note: that car is a normal sedan. Our car is a rugged Land Rover. If we slammed that car with our door, it would have left a dent far worse --> see picture ]
Note … I am sick of this type of attitude from many Singaporeans. I have seen and experienced a lot of rudeness and curtness among them, and have in some occasions stepped up to make them correct it. This ranges from someone who didn’t flush after taking a dump in a public toilet (obviously thinking that the automatic flush will take care of everything … NOT!!!), a lady who refused to help my teacher get back on her feet after her car door opened and knocked my teacher off balance and caused her to land on muddy grassland, to a taxi driver who refused to answer a few basic touristy questions from my friend who was visiting Singapore for the first time.
Had I been in the car, I would have stepped out, told the lady to look at my husband in the eye and apologized, plus paid for damages, otherwise I would have slammed my door to her car (HARD!) then left a note, “Let’s call it even.”
After all, this is not the first time that someone did exactly this to us and walked away, although they were fully aware that someone is sitting in that car. Did they care? Not for a bit! This is Singapore after all …. :-p
But thank God my husband is more patient on things that make me upset (and vice versa). He just said, “Two wrongs don’t make one thing right….” and that deterred me from doing anything equally (or even nearly as) nasty.
But I just had to write this for the world to read
