In a blow to its self-idealized kiasu culture, a Reader’s Digest survey has found that Singaporeans are the most laid back people in East Asia.:
The magazine surveyed 3,600 people across Asia, with respondents in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and South Korea asked to Indonesia and South Korea asked to rate 20 annoyances such as bad drivers and queue jumpers on a scale ranging from “extremely irritating” to “not irritating at all”.
The survey results showed that Singaporeans get most irritated by, in descending order: Spitting in public, queue jumpers, bad drivers and poor personal hygiene. The survey also found that Singaporeans were the most tolerant and Thais the most irritable.
Several Singaporeans that Today spoke to found the results bewildering. Ms Jody Lim, a 29-year-old marketing assistant, said: “It’s a bit bizarre. I was always sure we were an island of complainers.”.
Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser, from the National University of Singapore’s Department of Sociology, suggested a possible explanation: “Internally, we tend to think of Singaporeans as easily annoyed. But in relative terms we may not be so bad. We tend to judge ourselves more harshly than we judge other people.”…
Another associate professor from the same department, Ms Paulin Straughan, suggested the response may be due to the possibility that Singaporeans face fewer irritations. She said: “We have campaigns educating the public on social graces, such as the Keep Singapore Clean campaign. It may well be that these campaigns have worked.”
For respondent Jonathan Siow, many questions simply did not apply to Singapore.
“Ask how irritated I get when I meet the lift-user who lets the lift door shut in my face even as I wave my arms like a drowning rat. This must have happened five times this month. Ask me how irritated I get when Chinese New Year songs start playing everywhere next month.”
For respondent Jonathan Siow, many questions simply did not apply to Singapore.
“The survey just asked the wrong questions. Public spitting doesn’t irritate me because I don’t see it,” the 24-year-old student said.
Image swiped from the website of state-sponsored Singapore Kindness Movement, sponsor of the 2004 Wedding Punctuality Campaign.
(via Double Yellow)
Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, singapore, southeast asia
December 29th, 2005 at 10:11 am
It doesn’t add up. I’ve spent time in most of the rest of Southeast Asia, and can report first-hand that, by almost any standard you care to apply, most of the rest of Southeast Asia is more laid back than Singapore.
However, it is possible that Singaporeans simply have less to complain about. As the one, young Singaporean commenter pointed out, if you don’t see spitting and queue jumping, and the proportion of bad drivers is spectacularly reduced, you’re less likely to be driven mad by these things.
I think what they accidentally measured was quality-of-life.