Singapore's Beautiful MRT: The Tamils Are The Last To Know

by HijabMan :: posted 18 July 09

If you told me that within two months of my first trip to Southeast Asia, that I’d be going back for another month. I’d probably point and laugh at you.

But it is true. Here I am, writing to you from a couch in Singapore, after a long, delayed Air China flight through Beijing. Another 30 hour journey. Yay. :-)

Just a few days ago I was in a balloon hat in Washington, DC at booth 606 at the Islamic Society of North America convention. At my booth, I put up a big “Free Hugs” sign, just to see what would happen.

I hugged approximately fifty people. Mostly college-aged Muslim men and women. The most noteworthy hug came from a man named Abdul Hai, who looked to be in his mid-to-late 70s. He came up to my booth when it was relatively silent.

“HijabMan, I’ve come for my free hug.”

I walked out from behind my booth, and gave him a big squeezey hug.

“It is wonderful to meet you Abdul Hai, my name is Javed.”

“It is great to meet you too, Javed.”

Thank you for all the hugs and giving the HijabMan booth another successful year.

Without further ado, three beautiful things about Singapore’s MRT!

The MRT or Mass Rapid Transit System in Singapore is clean, efficient, and wonderfully air-conditioned (much cooler than the trains in Kuala Lumpur). It is not without its peculiarities, however.

1. Language. Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-religious society. I love that there are signs for just about everything in four different languages. English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil— always in that order. How cool is that? Even in the MRT [Public Transport System], all the announcements are made in those four languages. As you can imagine, it takes a while to go through each announcement first in English, then in Mandarin, followed by Malay and Tamil.

A friend pointed out that in the unfortunate case of a fire on the train the Tamils would be the last to know!

badum dum ting!

2. No Durians allowed! (See Photo Above)

3. An excerpt from my friend Anusuya’s blog: “If Delhi gave me the impression of being the land of tombs, Singapore does a good job of coming across as the land of malls! And its not only Orchard Road…it everywhere. It’s very rare that you wont get out at a MRT stop that is is connected to some form of a mall! There are malls everywhere in Singapore, and so many of the MRT stops are indoors.”

Anusuya doesn’t look like she gets many visitors, so go stop by and say hello!

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