Complaining: our way of life

Cover via AmazonIs complaining an indicator of our graciousness and courtesy level? We're driving at that, you know!
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A complaint about complainers

by Tabitha Wang

Okay, I want to know who took American author Dan Buettner around when he visited Singapore. Whoever it was, the Singapore Tourism Board should hunt them and offer them a job.

They must have done one heck of a great job selling the Lion City to Buettner for him to conclude that it is the happiest place in Asia in his new book, Thrive, Finding Happiness The Blue Zones Way.

Yes, Singapore. Not even Bhutan, famously known for its Gross National Happiness index.

Buettner says Singapore has all it takes for happiness: Tolerance, status equality, security, trust, access to recreation and financial security.

He based his findings on interviews with Singaporeans from all walks of life - from Community Chest chairman Jennie Chua to housewife Noridah Yusoh.

I don't doubt that his interviewees told him they were happy. But are Singaporeans really happy people?

Just look at all those letters of complaint in the newspapers. Just take a peek at the posts in blogs and responses to online news. These are not exactly all sweetness and light, are they?

I remember once complimenting a store manager about how well her shop was run. She said: "Can you put it down in writing in our feedback slip?"

Apparently, if people were satisfied, they never bothered to fill the slip. But if something annoying were to happen, no matter how infinitely minor, you can be sure those feedback forms would be filled, even posted if necessary.

I think Singaporeans are never happy unless we have something to be unhappy about. Our slogan should be: We moan, therefore we bond.

Try asking a Singaporean: "So how's business/your children/your work/your family?"

The answer is invariably: "Okay lah, can be better."

Coffeeshop talk is never about how wonderful life is. It's always about how badly a chosen English Premiership team is doing, how much money one has lost playing 4D, how the "gahmen" should be doing this, that or the other ...

Nothing can make us happy. If property prices are low, we fret about going into negative equity and how we may never have enough money to retire on. If property price are high, we complain we can't buy a roof over our heads or can't afford that investment home.

If we have a job, we complain about how we're overworked and underpaid. But lose our jobs and we moan even louder.

We have security in the form of low crime rates but still whine that the police can do more. We have access to recreation but grumble that the facilities are not up to scratch.

Maybe it's because there's some superstitious Asian bit of us that never likes to admit how well things are going in case some malevolent spirits take notice and decide to cause mischief.

Or perhaps we, like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, are worried about being too happy because, as he told Buettner: "Then I would be complacent, flabby, and walk into the sunset."

Looking at the blurb for Thrive in Amazon.com, though, I think I have found why Singapore is considered the happiest place in Asia.

It states: "According to Buettner's advisory team, the average person can control about 40 per cent of his or her individual happiness by optimising life choices. They fall into three categories that make up the way we live our lives: The food we eat, the way we exercise, and the social networks we foster."

So simple. It's food.

I'm not sure about the exercise and social network bit but we've always enjoyed our food. For sure, finding the ultimate char kway teow or chicken rice puts me in a good mood for days.

Maybe life's happiness can really be as simple as that.

Tabitha Wang will see you at the kopitiam. You can complain about anything all you like as long as you buy her a fluffy prata telur bawang.


Taken from TODAYONline.com, Voices; source article is below:
A complaint about complainers

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Punctuality in place of friendly service?

Image by Ex-Smith via FlickrThis is the reply from one reader.

Now, the thing to note here is that I have moved to a place where it is a very short distance from the train station. But the bus servicing our area goes on a loop. And it takes about 20-25mins coming out of our place.

And while the frequency is 5mins, there is nothing to compensate for the long travel time just to come out into the faster train service. Should I say, more predictable train service?

But that is nothing at all. I am frequently showing up late for work these couple of weeks, but my wife would tell me otherwise. Your own personal benefit of getting in late can't be the reason for the ignoring of the greater good's welfare.

Bus driver can't simply speed up and leave others waiting for their ride.

Train service can't simply not stop to make time for the train service turning about to ferry a full load of passengers.

And so, what's the solution to my problem? Just wake up earlier, and get a ride earlier. Sometimes the solution doesn't come from the government, but from the people.

Think so?
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Punctuality in place of friendly service?

Letter from Dawn Lee

I REFER to the commentary "Hold bus services to higher standards" (Dec 3).

Sometimes living in super-efficient Singapore can cause us to lose some perspective. Buses are subjected to traffic conditions, accidents and roadwork that all motorists have to deal with. You can stand at a bus stop with a watch and a clipboard and audit your bus arrival times all you want but what does that tell you? That the traffic situation was okay.

I have lived in cities where buses were on time and strict adherence to a schedule can actually compromise service standards. If you stress your drivers out by insisting they have to be on time no matter what, they will have less emotional capacity for kindness.

As for those schedules? Where I lived in Germany, there was only one service I could take to work. It left the interchange every 20 minutes at peak hour and every 40 minutes on weekends. I have many memories of being only 10 seconds late, running alongside the bus, waving frantically and yelling and being completely ignored as it zoomed away.

I have lived in Melbourne, where tram drivers have shut the doors in my face and gone off down the road. Schedules, you see.

I love the buses here at home. I do not even care if they are not on time. It is not like we have to wait more than 20 minutes for a bus anyway or that we do not have alternative routes and connections.

In a city like Singapore, where people are not naturally friendly, it is so nice to have bus drivers who look in the rear-view mirror and wait for that old lady or the schoolboy lumbering along with his heavy schoolbag.

My experience is that most drivers are polite, friendly and patient.

It was such a joy to come back to this.

Strike a balance and do not insist on strict punctuality at the expense of people skills and flexibility and judgement to respond in different sets of circumstances.


Taken from TODAYOnline.com; source article is below:
Punctuality in place of friendly service?

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Hold bus services to higher standards

I am putting up this article, since it is the basis of another noteworthy reply from a reader. Read this one first, then the other one next.
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Hold bus services to higher standards

Let's also employ more technology, set up high-level task force to effect real improvement

by Richard Hartung

Everything seems fine with the buses here, according to the Public Transport Council (PTC). SBS Transit "complied with all the standards," the PTC said in October, while SMRT has only "been fined for three failures" for late departures in the six months until May.

Tell that to commuters, though, and you may hear far different accounts as their stories come gushing out.

One commuter I know taking Service 75 during peak hours in mid-October, for example, waited for 20 minutes one day and then had two buses arrive together as soon as he reached the bus stop the next morning. It is an experience commonly echoed by many.

Another commuter I spoke to compares bus drivers' stop-and-go driving techniques to the rides hurtling people around at Universal Studios. More stories like these abound.

With over three million passenger-trips on buses every day, the impact of small delays or other problems is huge. Not unexpectedly, the Singapore Management University's 2010 Q2 Customer Satisfaction Index found that "customer satisfaction scores for both the Mass Rapid Transit Systems and the public buses sub-sectors have been declining since 2007".

So what can be done? Several steps could make commuting by bus better.

For one, Singapore could start using best practices. Research last year by Imperial College's Mark Trompet, for example, showed that New York set a standard where buses must arrive within three minutes after their scheduled arrival time and buses in Paris must arrive within two minutes. Where schedules in Singapore do exist, he said, buses are supposed to arrive within five minutes before or after their scheduled time.

That 10-minute window can cause dissatisfaction, or worse. As research by University of Arizona Professor Ryan Johnson mentions, a "bus-bunching phenomenon has frustrated passengers in cities around the world". Other research cited by Mr Trompet showed that bus arrival irregularity "discourages commuters' use of public transit".

If we're going to get people to ride the bus and like it, moving to the levels of New York or Paris could help. While the PTC does measure 11 standards, tracking others like "regularity" or "customer satisfaction" as is done in Sydney and setting higher targets such as arriving within three minutes of the scheduled time - rather than "at least 80 per cent of bus services to operate at headway (frequencies) of not more than 10 minutes during weekday (excluding public holidays) peak periods" - could lead to higher service levels.



THE TECH IS OUT THERE

Another step would be to leverage leading-edge technology fully. In the United States, University of California Professor Alex Bayen's research group is merging radar, lidar, detectors embedded in roads and video with input from GPS devices to "detect patterns and build a prediction engine".

One initiative in Sydney, according to the New South Wales Auditor-General, is a real time bus monitoring system that "can also provide traffic light priority for late running buses". While technology is used here, too, bus companies still have staff standing at bus stops monitoring bus arrivals with a watch and paper!

Steps like changing bus priority real-time, using better prediction models for scheduling and using technology to help enforce bus priority in bus lanes could result in higher service levels. While usage of some of this technology may already be in the pipeline here, employing more of it and communicating the results could also be beneficial.

Improving bus transport is important for reducing commute times, raising productivity and increasing usage of public transportation, among other reasons. Despite efforts to do better, Land Transport Authority data until 2008 showed that bus commuting times had remained static at about 42 minutes for a decade. Even though it turns out that SMRT is a member of the International Bus Benchmarking Group that shares global best bus practices, data still indicates that arrival times and other results lag best-in-class standards.

Actually solving the problems may take more focus than what has been the case so far. For example, the situation in Singapore may be serious enough to warrant an independent and high-level task force to develop and implement strategies that lead to real improvement. Setting and achieving higher standards as well as taking steps to leverage technology even better could also make a big difference. There are a multitude of other opportunities.

Public transport here has the potential to be world-class and improvements will benefit productivity as well as commuter satisfaction levels. The critical next step is to make the change happen.


The writer is a consultant who has lived in Singapore since 1992.



Taken from TODAYOnline.com; source article is below:
Hold bus services to higher standards

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Pesticides and dementia

And hopefully this findings won't be easily forgotten...
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Working with pesticides linked to dementia

PARIS: Long-term exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, according to a study released Thursday.

Workers "directly exposed" to bug and weed killers while toiling in the prestigious vineyards of Bordeaux, France were five times more likely to score less well on a battery of neurological tests than those with minimal or no exposure, the study found.

As revealing, this high-exposure group was twice as likely to register a significantly sharp drop in a key test -- frequently used to diagnose dementia -- repeated four years after the initial examination.

The drop "is particularly striking in view of the short duration of follow up and the relatively young age of the participants," mostly in their late 40s or 50s, the authors said.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that chronic use of pesticides in agriculture boosts the risk of neurological disorders.

France has the highest use of insecticides and herbicides in Europe, and the fourth highest worldwide after the United States, Japan and Brazil.

More than 800,000 people in France are exposed in the agriculture sector, as were another 800,000 who are now retired.

Worldwide the number of labourers who work regularly with pesticides is counted in the tens, if not the hundreds, of millions.

In the Bordeaux study, led by Isabelle Baldi of The French Institute for Public Health, Epidemiology and Development, 614 workers were enrolled in 1997 and 1998 and re-evaluated four or five years later.

On both occasions they completed a detailed questionnaire on their work history, along with nine tests designed to measure memory and recall, language retrieval, verbal skills and reaction times.

The subjects were divided into four groups depending on their level of exposure to pesticides over the previous 20 years or longer, ranging from "directly exposed" to "not exposed".

"The mild impairment we observed raises the question of the potentially higher risks of injury in this exposed population, and also of the possible evolution toward neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or other dementias," the researchers concluded.

The same cohort is undergoing a third evaluation, 12 years after the baseline examination. Results will be published in 2012 or 2013.

"This time lag should enable us to better understand cognitive impairment and its evolution, and observe the first cases of Alzheimer's disease among a population close to 65 years of age," the researchers said in a companion briefing paper.

-AFP/ac


Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Working with pesticides linked to dementia

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