Hi, its Kevan again and in this post I will be ranting about a particular incident that happened last year, that is etched so deep , SO DEEP , in my heart that I feel morally obliged to share this in my blog, because that's what bloggers do.. Oh Yeah.
So, you look at the title of this post, and think: "No wat, I do my classroom cleanliness duty without anyone prompting me, and I also do a heck a lot of self initiated ACE projects.?" No, this is not the type of self initiative I am talking is being dragged out from your comfort zone, thrown into a real-life situation, then doing the right thing without anyone pushing you. That is the type of situation I experienced last year.
It was 7+ at night, and I was on my weekly trip home from Japanese class in Ghim Moh. Squashed against a pole dead centre of the MRT carriage, I'm exhausted, hungry, and definitely annoyed by the fact that no one in the carriage has a heart to let this poor, Secondary 1 student, with a tortoise shell of a bag just have even 1/10 of a MRT seat. Yeah right, as if reading The New Paper upside down is all that interesting. So I'm just standing there, holding up my eyelids to stay awake, when a woman in front of me faints and collapses to the ground.
Yeah I know what you're thinking : " Gee what a great way to shock yourself awake", but its really a lot less comical then you probably think. She was a middle-aged, Indian woman, who had looked perfectly fine, other than looking rather pale, just before that, when suddenly her eyes rolled towards the back of her head, her legs buckled below her and she crumbled towards the ground. You would have thought that since the carriage was so packed someone who try to support her or something, but rather ironically the passengers around her kind of cleared a space for her to faint and her head to land on the ground with a dull and rather loud thud. I WOULD have at least tried to hold her up, if it wasn't for the fact that I was shell-shocked and being pushed back by the other people trying to get out of the way.
So you guys can probably guess what most people around her started doing. THAT'S RIGHT, they started crowding around the fainted woman, staring at her like the newest attraction at the zoo, with the occasional "tsk tsk" and "aiyoh" being heard. Here's the catch: NO ONE WENT TO GET HELP. Yup, no one bothered to use the emergency call button thingy to get help. No one even tried clearing space around the fainted woman to let her have some air. So after getting over my initial state of shock I , being the heroic and civic-minded gentlemen I was (and still am), dumped my heavy bag to the ground (no regrets there) and rushed over to the emergency call button thingy to call for help. So after a brief conversation with the female SMRT staff about what had happened and the carriage number and all the other details.
To my extreme relief, the Indian woman had already regained consciousness when I turned back to look at her. Except for her face looking rather pale and her rubbing the back of her head in pain (because she landed on it)she seemed perfectly fine. At the next station a SMRT staff in green promptly arrived to help her out of the train. At this juncture I would also like to commend SMRT'S efficiency in resolving the situation.
However, what I would NOT like to commend would be the lack of self initiative that was displayed on that day. What IF , the Indian woman's condition had been one which was potentially life threatening and required immediate medical attention. The consequences would have been unthinkable if everyone in the carriage was as unresponsive and irresponsible. It is also with greatest regret that I have to say that it is undeniable that such traits can be seen in 2o1 as well. The CNY decorations was just one of the many incidents where this has been seen. Though I myself have at times been irresponsible and just not bothered to help out, I really hope that there is just a little bit more self initiative coming from each and everyone of us. If each of us just puts our personal interest's aside once in a while, I'm sure that this world will certainly be a better place.
Signing off,
Kevan
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