Wednesday 10 October 2007

Such system BOLEH survive-kah in our country?

Have been in Glasgow for quite a while, and I realised something very different about the general public system here (UK and a couple of other western countries we'v visited) compared to the type we have back in our homeland.

I mulled over some incidents lately, three examples to follow...

1) I visited Glasgow's cinema twice so far. Havin' the reputation of being the world's tallest cinema, i thought there would be a strict and rigorous system here. Surprisingly, we were checked for the tickets only at the ground floor before the elevator.

And even more surprising to us was that the door to enter the cinema screen is also the door to exit the screen.

Hey, DOES THAT SENTENCE PROMPT AN INSPIRATION IN YOUR BRILLIANT BRAIN? The corrupted part of us (perhaps “naughty” is a nicer adjective) would have immediately cooked up with some cheeky conspiracy yea? Pay for a ticket worth a movie, and get in and out of the cinema screens as you wish and watch as many movies as you can in that one day. Wow, how cool could that be??

Nah, we didn’t do it.

We don't have this kind of things back in Malaysia, do we? (that is why we exit a cinema screen to some other part of the mall or a car park). Correct me if otherwise. If we do, our cinemas will chap-lap very very soon huh?


2) okay digress. Let's take the train as another example. You see, most (but not all) of the train stations here do not have the check-in kinda machine like the ones we have in Malaysian's LRT/KTM stations.. It's fairly different here. There are some trains which you can board without having to punch your ticket until the conductor comes to you, that also being infrequent sometimes. My own statistics : Out of the 10 times i boarded short-journey trains, i was checked on my tickets only perhaps 4 times? Hey, that is like less than 50% of chance man!

And in this city where i am located right now, there are even trains of which you can just board without a ticket, and buy it from the conductor in the train itself. (If such system were to be reproduced in our country, what would we possibly do if the conductor doesnt come to check on our tickets? Feel lucky, smile silently, and walk out of the train like nothing happens??)

3) Next, this is a classic example. So, one of my housemates’ friend was here in Glasgow for visiting lately. We decided to bring her to the Science Centre since we had not been there before. At the parking lot, we saw the price quotation to enter the Science Centre.. It was pretty expensive, so we decided not to enter the Science Centre, and just walk along the nearby river while enjoying the scenery.

As we walked towards the rear end of the huge building, we saw a cafeteria and we thought of we could find some toilets in there. As we walked in, nobody was really bothered and finally we found toilets, around 200metres down the cafeteria.

After easing ourselves, we noticed a flight of elevator up and the signboard says “To the Science Mall”. We thought, “Hey, sounds interesting wor. Shud be for public view eh? Heck, just enter-lah!” Elated, we went up and it was really cool, we spent so much time in there and played with all the canggih stuffs and experimented almost every gadget we could find in the Science Mall.. After an hour or so, we decided to leave...

Hey dudes out there, have you forgotten mums always tell us NTH IS FREE!? So you could have guessed as much what had just happened yeah?? We, 7 girls, were actually in the Science Centre building itself! Those things we saw and played with were part of the Science Centre! And we didn’t know until we walked past the ticket counter just before exiting the entire building.. lol.. We couldn’t believe it, so we were trespassers for that two hours without knowing?? Blissfully ignorant??


So moral of the story???
1. Keep all your movie-time and watch them abroad in one go?
2. Pretend innocent in the train until the conductor comes to you?
3. next time to any places of interest, enter it free from the rear door?


NO, peeps. They are all wrong. I don't even mean to corrupt anyone. I just want to raise up a point, a very important point, right here. You see, such systems are applicable in western country. Ever asked why? Well, it can survive here because people here are civil-minded. They are brought up in such an environment so much so that they have a more refined mentality. They are generally better educated.

Wow. Taken a deep breath??? Really, education is the key thing. We need education to be civilised. We need civilisation to be developed. We need development to advance. We need advancement to live in such globalised world. If such a basic thing is missing in our lives, how do we progress?

2 comments:

Tas Tecnic Engineering Sdn Bhd said...

it depends on which part is more influential in you, the environment or yourself? there are many educated and civil minded people in Malaysia as well, just that they lose to the environment

p-Ling said...

hiya melvin, thx for writing!

perhaps we both have just seen things from different views. you are right in a way, but i was just thinkin from another point..

an educated person can either be civil-minded, or otherwise. it just depends on how strong the education ground is.. if he is civil-minded, he will not go against the basic norms, and therefore vice versa. so, a genuine civil-minded person by actual sense, would not "lose to the environment", would he? so again, it all goes back to the key thing again, how good the education ground is.

lol. i dun study sociology, so i may unrealisingly ridicule my own sanity. lol..
cheers!