I was just slightly disturbed over an incidence that happened before the movie start; I saw a guy resting his legs over the top of the seat in the row in front of him. Looking on the bright side, at least he bothered to take off his shoes before doing that inconsiderate act.

He put down his legs only when the seats in front of him were taken up. How would you feel, if you were the one taking those seats? I just hope that the guy takes good care of his legs’ hygiene.

Do Singaporeans really have no sense of self-respect as was criticised by Jackie Chan, in a recent speech he made during the Boao Forum for Asia?

At first I was furious when I learned that he made such a senseless remark. There is a saying by Abraham Lincoln that goes something like this, “I am not bothered by what others said about me as long as I know they were not speaking the truth of me.” So I shouldn’t be bothered right? Not exactly, because I know that there are some truths to what he said.

Look at the example of the guy I saw in the cinema over the weekend. Not to mention, the amount of litters you can see around the mail box when there is a trash can just besides it. And then there is the usual rushing into the subway’s cabins whenever the subway reaches the station and the cabin’s doors open. Couldn’t they (the people rushing in) allow the people inside the cabin to come out first?

Back to the mail box area, was it really easier to throw the junk mails on the floor than to throw it into the trashcan, which is just about a metre away? Or is it as what Jackie Chan said, that Singaporeans really have no sense of self-respect?

Instead of saying that Singaporeans have no sense of self-respect, would it be more appropriate if I should say that Singaporeans have no sense of civic-consciousness? Now the next questions are, “Is it true only in the case of Singaporean or do you see such lack of civic-consciousness in your country too?

I believe that civic-consciousness voices down to the individual and it is not an unique characteristic of a particular nation. Education, cultures and upbringing play a part in forming the civic-consciousness of the individual. Laws and regulations are sometimes made to force through the civic-consciousness.

In the example of Singapore, anyone caught littering can be made to do Corrective Work Order (CWO); the litterbugs are basically made to clean up parks, beaches and house estates. Many never made the same mistakes again.

Jackie Chan may ridicule the laws in Singapore but some times these laws are there to protect the majority from the minority. And most time, whether certain laws are there or not, they never bother the majority at all because I believe that most people are civic-conscious.