You can be here by four-thirty

[austin_dern]

From the Department of Pretend Security: the Singapore MRT system has removed all trash bins from inside and around their stations. This will serve as a lesson to anyone planning nefarious and evil schemes that they'll have to wander as much as twenty meters away from the station to throw out the wrapper from their Vitamin C tablet.

In a slightly more realistic move for security they've hired guards to watch over stations and bus interchanges, with permission to wander around and ask people if they may check your bag please sir or madam (I hope they'll mean the ``check your bag'' as much as they mean the ``please'') and otherwise watch out for suspicious type suspect activity. I knew I should've been faster in my project to take pictures of all the stations and their vicinities. I believe -- I have to check -- I only have two more stations to photograph on the MRT lines, although my coverage of the Sengkang Southeast LRT line is spotty. I hope guards aren't assigned there; the LRT stations are frankly boring, and see little traffic.

Despite the new security guards, a child was injured on an escalator at Dhoby Ghaut when his arm got caught by the guard rail. It took twenty minutes to free him; naturally, this all was during the morning rush hour. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates -- and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accepts -- that in the United States alone around seven thousand people are injured each year on escalators, and not one of them receives a minute of honest sympathy from any of their friends.

Trivia: Dhoby Ghaut is named for the Bengali and Madrasi dhobis (Hindi for ``washers'') who used to wash clothes for local residents along the ghaut (Hindi for ``riverbank''). Source: Street Names of Singapore, Peter K G Dunlop.

Currently Reading: The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber. I am putting this on my list to make a formal review about, as the book should be of interest to furry audiences.

Comments

Searching.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

When I was on a Greyhound bus trip from Ann Arbor, MI to Phoenix, AZ (fifty-six hours, never again) the bus was detained briefly at one stop by security officers of some kind. I don't know why, they didn't say in specific, I don't even remember any details about them. What I remember is that as each officer worked his way through a section of the bus, they were asking people if they would allow their bags to be searched. For some reason, possibly light heat stroke, I decided that since I had the option to say no, that I would take it, and I did... and I was passed right by.

To this day, I have no idea what was really going on, but I still firmly believe that every American should have the chance to say 'no' at least once before succumbing to fear of authority and fear of 'bad people'. I will not be searched, because I have nothing to hide.

Of course, that only gets as far as the metal detectors at the airport or the courthouse.... And really, I'm just a wuss nowadays, because I have somewhat more to lose now than I did then. Some civil disobedient I am....

Re: Searching.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I've thought about just answering ``no'' to such a screening, although like you I don't feel like pushing my civil liberties that far. It doesn't help that I only get really prodded except when entering the United States, which ends up at the end of a day and change of travel, at which point I'm so jet-fatigued that I don't have the active mindpower to fuss with anything. Going to Singapore, mind, there's no real fuss or fuming, they just scan my green card and passport and let me through. The U.S. asks to look through my bags every time; Singapore never.

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

As a person who got pulledno DRAGGED down an escalator (Shoe got caught on one of the teeth of the steeps); I can assure you escalator accidents are no fun. I hate the damn things! :) Chulo!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten about that, and I'm sorry. And I was, in fact, sincerely sympathetic to your injury. I just hope this won't feed my mother's phobia about escalators.

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

*chulo* Reasonably normal people shouldn't have no problems with escalators. It's only people like me that have a problem. :)

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Logically, then, the mascot for the Dhoby Ghaut station should be a raccoon. I trust you have the matter in hand?

And I'd have to sympathise with EK's comments above.. the notion of random searching is deeply unappealing. Thankfully, I've only been through the full works once, when entering the US at Minneapolis/St Paul, several years ago.. not a terribly enjoyable experience, though the atmosphere remained pleasant and civil throughout. (On another occasion of slightly more routine luggage inspection, coming into Ottawa, the Customs inspector seemed to want to end the matter quite soon after realising that yes, I was coming along for a company sponsored QNX/Photon course, and yes, that was a red panda in the big box she was opening)

I also came upon an odd inspection point: in the middle of Oklahoma, I think it was, quite literally miles from anywhere or anything, apparently wanting to check for illegal immigrants. (At least with the obnoxiously imposing Checkpoint Charlie on I-5 between San Diego and LA, I can understand the logic, if not agree with what drives such interdictions; but that's another kettle of platypi)