Thursday, April 07, 2005
Flashing Lights
I was discussing the Indicator Phenomenon with my best buddy sometime back. (This is the same guy who once decided to patent a Food Mask, that electronically stimulates your tastebuds, since his idea of paradise is to lie down and have food shovelled into you by an infinite conveyor belt, only that would involve the messy problem of satiety, so in theory at least, an electronic system would do away with that little hitch, meaning you could just sit or lie down and have an enormous multi-food-orgasm. Anyway, moving swiftly on.)
(Sorry bud, if someone steals your patent rights now...)
So the indicator phenomenon is thus. In fact, I just encountered it yet again tonight for the billionth time.
1) Singaporean Drivers are just plain allergic to their indicator lights.
2) They will never, even upon pain of death, ever indicate when they are about to change lane
3) Unless they are bus drivers, who always indicate even when they are not going to change lanes, just to keep you guessing where they are going to go next.
4) Taxi drivers always indicate before they change lanes, but don't give a rats ass whether you take notice or not, ergo (I watched the Matrix...) all drivers give way to Taxis.
5) When a non-Taxi indicates, other cars speed up to cut them off. It doesn't matter if the road in front is straighter than the average local girl's bustline, there's ample room for the car behind to react, and there's no traffic for miles in front or behind either vehicle. It's a spinal reflex - eye sees flashing light, foot presses down on accelerator pad. Simple as that.
6) If non-Taxi changes lane anyhow (I'm a fast learner), The Singa Driver (tm) does make way but honks indignantly.
My best buddy heard me out and told me I was doing it all wrong. You have to keep em guessing (like the bus drivers) - don't indicate, ever. You gotta make it so they don't know what hit them... just edge into lane, maybe keep stuck to the road divider lines for a while to make them think you're changing lanes, then swerve around suddenly and unexpectedly into the other lane when the other guy's guard is down... ha, then you get your spot in his lane.
It's all a mind game...
*****
He settles into the chair at the hairdressers and dreamily answers the barber's question about somethingorotherunimportant.
The barber recoils for an instant.
"You're... not Japanese!"
"Err. No?"
Can I still get my hair cut?
Bemused.
*****
She stepped in the elevator and I couldn't help staring. She noticed me noticing her and looked me square in the eye. It seemed rude to continue staring, so I glanced away at... nothing in particular.
One of the new medical HOs is rather attractive...
*****
This guy limps into clinic and halfway through the consultation (for something else entirely) I can't help but ask him if there's something wrong with his foot.
He says he's gone to sleep in a funny position sitting up, and when he wakes up he can't walk properly...
I complete his sentence for him; you were leaning against something like-so, your knee was pressing against the wall, and now your leg feels numb when I touch it here, here and here right?
He gasps in astonishment. "Wow, how did you know?"
Roll eyes. It's one thing for me not to expect myself to know anything doctory, but another thing entirely when its the patients doing the doubting.
Anyway, as is always the case, this guy came in too late to be used as a guinea pig in the MBBS finals. It would have made such a brilliant, difficult-to-miss yet genuinely interesting case of foot-drop.
*****
The psychotic father glares at us and barks out "How do you take blood?" as we're walking by.
"Excuse me?"
"Is there a protocol. Do you have to wear gloves."
He then babbles on and on about some doctor taking blood from his daughter with his/her hands dripping with blood, and about all the VRE bugs in another hospital, how we all lay our bloodied hands on other patients and how we're all heinously irresponsible vectors for vile disease.
I'm tempted to slap him, then and there, but fortunately the more senior doctor on the team pipes up and says "We'll look into it".
We then walk off, and don't look into it.
It's amazing the half-arsed stuff some people come up with.
It's not the gloves that will stop bugs being transmitted - there are people who don't change their gloves between patients.
It's the handwashing.
Not wearing gloves puts the blood-taker at risk.
(Sorry bud, if someone steals your patent rights now...)
So the indicator phenomenon is thus. In fact, I just encountered it yet again tonight for the billionth time.
1) Singaporean Drivers are just plain allergic to their indicator lights.
2) They will never, even upon pain of death, ever indicate when they are about to change lane
3) Unless they are bus drivers, who always indicate even when they are not going to change lanes, just to keep you guessing where they are going to go next.
4) Taxi drivers always indicate before they change lanes, but don't give a rats ass whether you take notice or not, ergo (I watched the Matrix...) all drivers give way to Taxis.
5) When a non-Taxi indicates, other cars speed up to cut them off. It doesn't matter if the road in front is straighter than the average local girl's bustline, there's ample room for the car behind to react, and there's no traffic for miles in front or behind either vehicle. It's a spinal reflex - eye sees flashing light, foot presses down on accelerator pad. Simple as that.
6) If non-Taxi changes lane anyhow (I'm a fast learner), The Singa Driver (tm) does make way but honks indignantly.
My best buddy heard me out and told me I was doing it all wrong. You have to keep em guessing (like the bus drivers) - don't indicate, ever. You gotta make it so they don't know what hit them... just edge into lane, maybe keep stuck to the road divider lines for a while to make them think you're changing lanes, then swerve around suddenly and unexpectedly into the other lane when the other guy's guard is down... ha, then you get your spot in his lane.
It's all a mind game...
*****
He settles into the chair at the hairdressers and dreamily answers the barber's question about somethingorotherunimportant.
The barber recoils for an instant.
"You're... not Japanese!"
"Err. No?"
Can I still get my hair cut?
Bemused.
*****
She stepped in the elevator and I couldn't help staring. She noticed me noticing her and looked me square in the eye. It seemed rude to continue staring, so I glanced away at... nothing in particular.
One of the new medical HOs is rather attractive...
*****
This guy limps into clinic and halfway through the consultation (for something else entirely) I can't help but ask him if there's something wrong with his foot.
He says he's gone to sleep in a funny position sitting up, and when he wakes up he can't walk properly...
I complete his sentence for him; you were leaning against something like-so, your knee was pressing against the wall, and now your leg feels numb when I touch it here, here and here right?
He gasps in astonishment. "Wow, how did you know?"
Roll eyes. It's one thing for me not to expect myself to know anything doctory, but another thing entirely when its the patients doing the doubting.
Anyway, as is always the case, this guy came in too late to be used as a guinea pig in the MBBS finals. It would have made such a brilliant, difficult-to-miss yet genuinely interesting case of foot-drop.
*****
The psychotic father glares at us and barks out "How do you take blood?" as we're walking by.
"Excuse me?"
"Is there a protocol. Do you have to wear gloves."
He then babbles on and on about some doctor taking blood from his daughter with his/her hands dripping with blood, and about all the VRE bugs in another hospital, how we all lay our bloodied hands on other patients and how we're all heinously irresponsible vectors for vile disease.
I'm tempted to slap him, then and there, but fortunately the more senior doctor on the team pipes up and says "We'll look into it".
We then walk off, and don't look into it.
It's amazing the half-arsed stuff some people come up with.
It's not the gloves that will stop bugs being transmitted - there are people who don't change their gloves between patients.
It's the handwashing.
Not wearing gloves puts the blood-taker at risk.
