Not being a meta-sociologist or a meta-thinker about anything, really, the big things about my homeland (overly-traditionalness, political uniformity/quietism, mental roboticism among the citizenry) don’t really make me lose sleep. Instead, I obsess about the little things, such as “If I move back to Singapore will I ever find a date again?” (sorry, Evil Editor Chick). I tend to find the little things that make Singapore different from JP, Massachusetts very, very odd, and they feel like an itch between the shoulderblades that I can’t scratch.
FOR EXAMPLE, I notice that Singaporeans act very weird when parking their cars in the parking lot (known as the “car park”). Specifically, when there is “head-in” (i.e., not parallel) parking, Singaporean drivers don’t put just drive their cars into the spot nose first. Instead, unlike Boston drivers, 90% of Singapore drivers drive PAST the spot, put the car in reverse, and then back into the spot butt first.
My mother explains this phenomenon by the fact that Asians prefer to “chi ku“(1st tone, 3rd tone; literally, “eat hardship”) first, and then enjoy life later. To her, the strange parking habit illustrates the “desirable asian value” of enduring suffering at the outset in order to reap the rewards later — i.e., suffer putting the car in the spot butt-first now, so as not to have to back out carefully and painfully in reverse later.
I, on the other hand, think that the backwards parking thing is silly. First of all, it’s easier to drive backwards into a large open space rather than into a tight parking spot. Second, the cars behind you are more likely to hold their horses and let you drive backwards unharrassed and unhonkedat if there’s something in it for them: If you are backing OUT of a spot to leave the parking lot, they are more likely to give way and let you do it since there’s a parking spot opening up for them. If you stop, put your car in reverse and back IN to the spot to park, then everyone behind you gets pissed off.
To me, the whole parking thing illustrates in microcosm a Singaporean tendency to make simple things overly complicated. Just drive into the spot, people, and worry about getting out later.
Am I a bad asian?
