Incidents for thought (2)

The following 2 incidents took place on different days.

Incident 1 :
At Seng Kang MRT station

A man was pushing a pram, approaching one of the bigger fare gates, when another younger man came in from his blind spot, cut into his path, and went through the fare gate.

The older man was immediately pissed. He turned back to his wife, and said in a loud voice, "Wah, like that also can. He cannot see I'm pushing a pram?" (which by the time, the younger man was already walking away, without even turning back)

I heard the wife muttered something, and the man continued loudly,"So inconsiderate one ah, these Singaporean people." Then he hurriedly pushed his pram and went after the younger man, which at this moment, I didn't know what happened since I was going in the other direction. But judging from his reaction, I won't be surprised that he went to confront that young man.

You know what I find most amusing about this incident?

"Singaporean people."

Incident 2 :
At a family clinic

You know how there are some neighbourhood clinics which share the area with a dentist, then all the patients will be seated together at one area? The family doctor I went to is in such a clinic.

There were about 5 more patients in front of me, and so I sat somewhere near the registration counter for the dentist, since the place was nearly full.

There was this woman with her baby, complaining at the dentist counter about how someone accidentally cancelled her 12 o'clock appointment (it was already 1:30pm at that time) and she had to wait for an hour before someone comes back to the counter after lunch. She was completely incensed, and she was not really a quiet one and the place was not that big.

So, she went on and on and on about how irresponsible that person who cancelled her appointment was, how she still called the previous day to double-check the appointment, how she had to travel and waited one hour, how tiring it was for her to have to bring the baby along, blah, blah, blah. You know how sometimes when people are angry, they kept repeating and repeating everything, until you know the whole story and can even anticipate what she was going to repeat next.

I could see that the dental nurse was ready to leap over the counter and tie the telephone cord around her neck. But she still tried to pacify her and told her to wait since her appointment was cancelled accidentally, and someone already took her time slot. But once again, that woman whined, "Wait?! I've been waiting for an hour, and you still want me to wait?"

Maybe she thought the dentist has two heads and four arms, and can check on two patients at the same time.

Anyway, she calmed down for a while, tended to the baby who was growing frustrated in her pram. Then she turned to the dental nurse,"Who is in charge here? Or do you have a manager? I want to speak to him. I want to complain how come you people can anyhow cancel my appointment." And there it started again.

The dental nurse told her that their HQ is somewhere in Ubi, and she demanded that she called the HQ now because she wanted to complain to the person in charge. While the nurse was making the call, the woman pushed the pram over, and sat on the empty seat beside me. As she prepared to pour out the porridge for the baby, I guessed I sniffed a little, and she immediately turned to me.

"Are you having a flu?"

I nodded.

And with one "aiyoh" that means a lot, she jumped out of the seat, pushed the pram to the corner and started in her not-so-soft voice. "This place ah, all these people... full of germs."

The air around suddenly turned awkward and I was very sure there was a full minute of absolute silence.

Anyway, she finished feeding her baby and the call to the HQ was through, and once again, everyone in the clinic got to hear her story for the 53rd time. Then suddenly there was a loud noise and I saw her kind of shoved the phone back at the nurse, and it toppled over the counter and hit the nurse's leg.

The nurse calmly picked up the phone and put it back to where it was. And the woman started again, "Why did you hang up the phone? Your manager wants to speak to you."

Like, duh, she didn't even say that the manager wanted to speak to the nurse!

I should have told her I got the bird flu.