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Sunday, October 25, 2009
May 16, 2009. Saturday: The faces of bullies
This afternoon, I got stranded in a traffic standstill at Suntec City.
Traffic is always messy at Suntec City. First, there is this big roundabout that loops around the “fountain of wreath”, where cars, taxis and buses coming and going in all directions are converged, each pushing its own way through in the absence of traffic control signals. Second, this area is practically a “traffic trap”: easy to come in but dreadful to get out. Two highways, ECP and Nicoll Highway, provide fast and convenient access for incoming traffic. The outgoing traffic, however, has to depend largely on the narrow Temasek Ave which takes motorists for a lengthy detour before reaching the main roads. I always think that this place is a traffic planners’ big blunder.
And this was certainly not helped by someone’s brilliant idea of shutting down one of the lanes of Temasek Ave with some roadside constructions.
With only one lane left passable on Temasek Ave, the traffic in this whole area had effectively come to a standstill. Cars moved in inches between long intervals of complete stoppage. The greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of the idling vehicles were mixed with the air of anxiety, desperation, and discomfort radiated from the people sitting inside them, filling the sky of Saturday afternoon.
At a time like this, everybody’s patience is hanging by a thin thread.
It took me a while just to traverse half of the roundabout circle to reach Temasek Ave. While making the turn, I steered to take the lane on the right side, which was not blocked by the construction site some distance ahead. Since the space was not enough for me to place the car straight in the lane, my taxi was momentarily stuck in a diagonal position across two lanes. For that, I was rewarded with a long, angry beep from the car right behind, a black Honda Civic that looked old enough to have lived since the last millennium. It made me nervous but I tried to ignore it. As soon as space permitted, I straightened my car.
I turned on the radio to kill time. There was “LTA traffic news” being broadcast. The man in the radio said there was an accident somewhere on a highway and advised motorists to “avoid lane 1”, and there was roadwork going on somewhere else, so “please avoid lane 2”, etc. I could never figure out why they have to give advice as such. “Please avoid lane 1?” Isn’t that totally obvious and unnecessary? Whenever I hear or see something like that, (another example being ERP operating over traffic jams that I mentioned a little while ago,) I feel frustrated at not being able to grasp the rationale or the logic of it. Nonetheless, it didn’t escape my notice that there was no mentioning on the radio of the traffic mess at Suntec City, the one we were painfully experiencing right now.
The car on my tail, the Civic, honked again. This time, it was for getting my attention. I peeked in the mirror and caught the driver showing me his middle finger. Staring in my direction, his eyeballs looked ready to pop out. “What is your problem?” I murmured. Again, I looked away. But I felt a knot form in my stomach.
We were still not moving. And then, another honk. I turned my head around. The Honda driver was making hand signals to me and the message was crystal clear:
“Come out of your car and let’s fight a duel!”
I quickly turned my head back around while waved my hand in dismissal. “Crazy guy.” I heard myself saying. I decided to ignore him completely, and hoped that he would soon wear himself out and leave me alone.
To my astonishment, however, the man got out of his car and walked towards me!
I swore loudly. A confrontation was now inevitable.
He came to my side and glared at me with his body trembling in anger. He looked like an enraged black bear on the attack, bent on eating me alive.
He was bigger than I thought. Probably in his early thirties, he was of medium height but a strong build, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a black T shirt, which seemed about to be burst open by his muscular body any minute. His hands were clenched in tight fists and his upper arms were covered with tattoos of what seemed to be characters from Japanese comic books. His face was dotted with acne scars, and his eyes burning with fire. He was a fierce man on all counts.
The danger was hundred percent real. Unlike the lunatic who bullied me last night, this man was a “silver blade made of steel”.
A tamahagane steel!
While my mind raced madly for possible ways to avert what could amount to a life-threatening situation, my hand involuntarily lowered the window in a slow motion. I sensed he was going to smash it with his fist if I didn’t. I was expecting a hit on my face now. I took down my spectacles, and held his stare and waited.
He hesitated, and stood there staring at me with his fists open and shut several times. Then he said through his teeth, “I feel like punch you in the face.”
On that, I saw a slim chance of getting out of this grave danger in one piece. I knew the only way to do that was to talk him out of his anger, to be civil with him.
“Why?” I said as calmly as I could. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“I just feel like punch you.” The man said again, with his eyes still deadly fixed on mine. The flame in his eyes, however, seemed to be shrinking a bit. Or, maybe it was my imagination.
“I don’t know why you are angry with me.” I said sincerely. “I am just driving my taxi and that’s all. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
At this time, another man walked over from their car. He came out from the passenger side. He was short and thin, and a few years younger. He wore a T shirt with a picture of a ferocious transformer robot on it, something that compensated his superficial frailty to some extent.
He, however, proved to be much fiercer than he looked. If the other guy was like a bear, this one a certifiable hyena. He wedged himself between the muscle man and me, leaned to get close to my face, and shouted. “You shit! You piece of shit! The way you drive, we all saw it! Take two lanes same time! You shit!”
He was showering his saliva on my face. He also made a posture as if he was going to hit me as well.
“This is a traffic jam.” Again, I had no choice but to be calm and civil. “You can’t go anywhere anyway. So try to be patient, okay?”
“I don’t have patience!” The small man shouted again. But he stopped waving his fist in my face. He stood straight up and put his hands on his hips, looking like a replica of the robot on his shirt, equally furious and equally comical.
Up to this point, the traffic had remained standstill all along. But now it began to move slightly. When they saw the car in front of me had gone a distance of two car’s length, they were itchy to go back to theirs.
“This is your lucky day.” The big man said as he nudged his companion towards their car. “Your fxxking lucky day.”
During all this while as the drama being unfolded, people in the surrounding cars were watching us with intense interest. I guess some of them might even feel a little disappointed at that it finally ended undramatically. Unaware to them, however, they served as my defense line that may very likely have helped prevent a dramatic result from occurring.
As the Chinese saying goes, 祸不单行。(Bad things always come in multiples.) Last night, I had the misfortune of meeting a maniac who proved his superiority by exhausting himself yelling abusive words at me, and I let him get away, due largely to lack of a witness. Today, I just escaped by a hair’s breadth from what could have been a nasty, nightmarish experience. Apart from my “civil defense” strategy, an important factor in the turnaround in today’s event is the presence of witnesses, which would have made the husky man think twice before he swung his fist at me. Even if they did harm me, at least they wouldn’t get away with it. With witnesses present, I could count on our system to protect me, to uphold justice for me. This is the difference between the events of today and yesterday.
Now comes the cruel part. The very system that we rely on for safety, justice, and many other aspects of our lives, can sometimes become the biggest bully of all.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
May 16, 2009. Saturday: The faces of bullies
This afternoon, I got stranded in a traffic standstill at Suntec City.
Traffic is always messy at Suntec City. First, there is this big roundabout that loops around the “fountain of wreath”, where cars, taxis and buses coming and going in all directions are converged, each pushing its own way through in the absence of traffic control signals. Second, this area is practically a “traffic trap”: easy to come in but dreadful to get out. Two highways, ECP and Nicoll Highway, provide fast and convenient access for incoming traffic. The outgoing traffic, however, has to depend largely on the narrow Temasek Ave which takes motorists for a lengthy detour before reaching the main roads. I always think that this place is a traffic planners’ big blunder.
And this was certainly not helped by someone’s brilliant idea of shutting down one of the lanes of Temasek Ave with some roadside constructions.
With only one lane left passable on Temasek Ave, the traffic in this whole area had effectively come to a standstill. Cars moved in inches between long intervals of complete stoppage. The greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of the idling vehicles were mixed with the air of anxiety, desperation, and discomfort radiated from the people sitting inside them, filling the sky of Saturday afternoon.
At a time like this, everybody’s patience is hanging by a thin thread.
It took me a while just to traverse half of the roundabout circle to reach Temasek Ave. While making the turn, I steered to take the lane on the right side, which was not blocked by the construction site some distance ahead. Since the space was not enough for me to place the car straight in the lane, my taxi was momentarily stuck in a diagonal position across two lanes. For that, I was rewarded with a long, angry beep from the car right behind, a black Honda Civic that looked old enough to have lived since the last millennium. It made me nervous but I tried to ignore it. As soon as space permitted, I straightened my car.
I turned on the radio to kill time. There was “LTA traffic news” being broadcast. The man in the radio said there was an accident somewhere on a highway and advised motorists to “avoid lane 1”, and there was roadwork going on somewhere else, so “please avoid lane 2”, etc. I could never figure out why they have to give advice as such. “Please avoid lane 1?” Isn’t that totally obvious and unnecessary? Whenever I hear or see something like that, (another example being ERP operating over traffic jams that I mentioned a little while ago,) I feel frustrated at not being able to grasp the rationale or the logic of it. Nonetheless, it didn’t escape my notice that there was no mentioning on the radio of the traffic mess at Suntec City, the one we were painfully experiencing right now.
The car on my tail, the Civic, honked again. This time, it was for getting my attention. I peeked in the mirror and caught the driver showing me his middle finger. Staring in my direction, his eyeballs looked ready to pop out. “What is your problem?” I murmured. Again, I looked away. But I felt a knot form in my stomach.
We were still not moving. And then, another honk. I turned my head around. The Honda driver was making hand signals to me and the message was crystal clear:
“Come out of your car and let’s fight a duel!”
I quickly turned my head back around while waved my hand in dismissal. “Crazy guy.” I heard myself saying. I decided to ignore him completely, and hoped that he would soon wear himself out and leave me alone.
To my astonishment, however, the man got out of his car and walked towards me!
I swore loudly. A confrontation was now inevitable.
He came to my side and glared at me with his body trembling in anger. He looked like an enraged black bear on the attack, bent on eating me alive.
He was bigger than I thought. Probably in his early thirties, he was of medium height but a strong build, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a black T shirt, which seemed about to be burst open by his muscular body any minute. His hands were clenched in tight fists and his upper arms were covered with tattoos of what seemed to be characters from Japanese comic books. His face was dotted with acne scars, and his eyes burning with fire. He was a fierce man on all counts.
The danger was hundred percent real. Unlike the lunatic who bullied me last night, this man was a “silver blade made of steel”.
A tamahagane steel!
While my mind raced madly for possible ways to avert what could amount to a life-threatening situation, my hand involuntarily lowered the window in a slow motion. I sensed he was going to smash it with his fist if I didn’t. I was expecting a hit on my face now. I took down my spectacles, and held his stare and waited.
He hesitated, and stood there staring at me with his fists open and shut several times. Then he said through his teeth, “I feel like punch you in the face.”
On that, I saw a slim chance of getting out of this grave danger in one piece. I knew the only way to do that was to talk him out of his anger, to be civil with him.
“Why?” I said as calmly as I could. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“I just feel like punch you.” The man said again, with his eyes still deadly fixed on mine. The flame in his eyes, however, seemed to be shrinking a bit. Or, maybe it was my imagination.
“I don’t know why you are angry with me.” I said sincerely. “I am just driving my taxi and that’s all. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
At this time, another man walked over from their car. He came out from the passenger side. He was short and thin, and a few years younger. He wore a T shirt with a picture of a ferocious transformer robot on it, something that compensated his superficial frailty to some extent.
He, however, proved to be much fiercer than he looked. If the other guy was like a bear, this one a certifiable hyena. He wedged himself between the muscle man and me, leaned to get close to my face, and shouted. “You shit! You piece of shit! The way you drive, we all saw it! Take two lanes same time! You shit!”
He was showering his saliva on my face. He also made a posture as if he was going to hit me as well.
“This is a traffic jam.” Again, I had no choice but to be calm and civil. “You can’t go anywhere anyway. So try to be patient, okay?”
“I don’t have patience!” The small man shouted again. But he stopped waving his fist in my face. He stood straight up and put his hands on his hips, looking like a replica of the robot on his shirt, equally furious and equally comical.
Up to this point, the traffic had remained standstill all along. But now it began to move slightly. When they saw the car in front of me had gone a distance of two car’s length, they were itchy to go back to theirs.
“This is your lucky day.” The big man said as he nudged his companion towards their car. “Your fxxking lucky day.”
During all this while as the drama being unfolded, people in the surrounding cars were watching us with intense interest. I guess some of them might even feel a little disappointed at that it finally ended undramatically. Unaware to them, however, they served as my defense line that may very likely have helped prevent a dramatic result from occurring.
As the Chinese saying goes, 祸不单行。(Bad things always come in multiples.) Last night, I had the misfortune of meeting a maniac who proved his superiority by exhausting himself yelling abusive words at me, and I let him get away, due largely to lack of a witness. Today, I just escaped by a hair’s breadth from what could have been a nasty, nightmarish experience. Apart from my “civil defense” strategy, an important factor in the turnaround in today’s event is the presence of witnesses, which would have made the husky man think twice before he swung his fist at me. Even if they did harm me, at least they wouldn’t get away with it. With witnesses present, I could count on our system to protect me, to uphold justice for me. This is the difference between the events of today and yesterday.
Now comes the cruel part. The very system that we rely on for safety, justice, and many other aspects of our lives, can sometimes become the biggest bully of all.
