Its loud in the jungle. And the jungle lies right in front of your doorstep. To be more precise, the jungle went underground, straight into Singapore’s subway system, the MRT.
In our first four parts of this series we covered the likes of the Poleleaner, Gatekeeper, Backpacker and the dangerous Starrer, where today we take a look at one of the more “mainstream” species. Not so colorful and eye catching but there for more frequent and at least as disturbing as the other species. The Noise Maker.
Spreading Like Wildfire
The Noise Makers can be encountered in Singapore’s MRT subway system on a almost “every time” basis. It is existing through almost all different kind of cultures and age classes. Building a big base for general annoyance.
The Noise Makers only but easily to identify characteristic is … to be loud and noisy. Since we know that there are different ways of how the Noise Maker can achive this disturbance, I will split the Noise Makers species up into several subgroups.
One For Everyone
Noise alone is a very wide definable expression. When it comes to noise in the subway territory however, the definition can be quickly narrowed down to the following types of Noise Making People:
- • The all too common Headphone-Lets-Have-A-Party-In-The-Train type
- • The I-Always-Speak-That-Loud-In-Case-You-Want-To-Contribute-To-My-Discussion type
- • The One-Ear-Covering-Mobile-Phone-Screamer type
- • The I-Let-You-All-Listen-To-My-PSP-Sounds type (which comes close to type number one actually)
The Chain Effect
What do you do if you cant understand your conversation partner, you ask him to speak up or you go and clean your ears (actually another quite common thing to see in the MRT).
Now what if you listen to your favorite song on your mp3 player and you cant understand a word because the guy next to you is playing air guitar to some overly loud heavy metal piece? You turn up the volume of your own device…
Now all this is actually planned and part of the Noise Makers tactic to turn the MRT territory in one loud piece of undefinable noise. And if we don’t stop them they might as well succeed. So whats the best tactic to get your quiet and peaceful subway back?
We Need Help From Above
And with “above” its not our holiest Mr. Jay-Z I am referring to, but the other bunch sitting above the subways territories, in what I am sure is at least as comfortable as what the white guys throne. Yes, our government!
I recently came back from a trip through Tokyo, and I was more then surprised that in this colorful country of never ending technological inventions and an average 3 mobile phones per person… there is pure and sweet silence in every single train. The government actually put up a restriction against mobile phone use in the subway system, having placed signs everywhere asking for silence and even to turn your devices to “silent” mode, once boarded the train.
That you accordingly get killed by the local japan version of Starrers upon talking loud is speaking for itself of course.
So Singapore… how about adding another ridiculous ban to the long list of chewing gums and its friends… this one would even make sense!
by an Asia experienced 26 year young expat living and surviving in Singapore since years!
Discovering new interesting and strange things everyday, he provides guides, news and tips for how to survive Singapore and how to best prepare for it.
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4 Comments for this post
Jan 20, 2009 at 8:33 pm
“….clean your ears (actually another quite common thing to see in the MRT).”
Hilarious and oh so true!
I have to agree with the PSP music playing. Forget the earphones, lets just blast it from the speakers for the whole train to enjoy some random emo tune.
Jan 21, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Yeah… “random emo tune”, hehe, i had to laugh hard reading that ;)
Jan 21, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Yes i hate their insensitivity at times. They could had listen their music peacefully too.
Jan 22, 2009 at 9:28 am
Harmony, listening to your music peacefully? What is that supposed to mean :) You can listen to your music in total harmony to yourself, but still have it on max volume :)
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