Please don't let foreigners teach us civic and moral education

Today after mugging at the NLB at bugis for 4 hours, I boarded a very crowded train home. Right smack next to me, there was a baby crying uncontrollably and the caucasian dad was carrying him in his sling while trying to get him to stop. After a while, his mum (a Singaporean woman) tried to take over from the dad's futile attempts. But to do so, she had to transfer the sling from the dad's shoulder to her's: a nigh-impossible task to carry out seeing that the dad was carrying the baby's folded-up pram in one hand and the mom was carrying a clutch of bags. So the poor mum had to kneel down on the floor and try to put the complicated-looking sling on!

Thankfully, this woman beside me (whom I thought was from China due to her speaking heavily-accented chinese to her 2 kids) came to her rescue. She turned to the pple on the train, and said (in really good accented english): "Isn't anyone going to give up their seat to the poor woman who needs it more than u?" Several guilty looking people scrambled to give up their seats. Finally, with one executive-looking woman the first to stand up, the Singaporean mother finally had a seat. Obviously the Caucasian dad was grateful. Thanking the China woman, he added loudly, "Either there are no more gentlemanly S'porean men around, or they are all already standing." This obviously had an effect on this young fella (around my age) who stood up and walked to the door(at 1st, i thought he stood up cuz he was getting off, but he didn't till 3 stops later).

The Caucasian man was harsh, but he had a very gd point. Why are all you Singaporeans sitting when a mother with a few-months old baby is standing! Have we all lost our compassion for our fellow man?

Funnily enough, there was one extra seat available cuz no one dared to sit in the seat the young man had vacated. I would have thought there was a ghost sitting there. The China woman asked the Caucasian dude to sit but he declined and said: "I shouldn't sit when there are others who need it more then me. Anyway, I should stick up for what I say." He explained that his 70-year old dad would never sit down in a train unless every woman and child had a seat.

K, i know some guys out there may think the Caucasian guy was showing off- but i think he was teaching everyone on the train a valuable moral lesson.

Well, fyi, i did find out through litening in on their conversation that the China woman had actually lived in Canada for a couple of years (hence, the strong accent) and the caucasian guy was an American who had come back to Singapore for a month so his Singaporean wife could stay with her famiy.

Yup, and to think that i dun have a gd opinion of Americans (cuz of bad experiences in 222 last sem) and China people (cuz of some bad experiences in general). Not all people of a culture are bad eggs. Rather than criticize people of other cultures, we shd look at ourselves 1st!