What you never knew about the ATM
What we are wired to think is : A short queue equals to a short wait; but not necessary with the ATM. You know, no matter how few buttons an ATM has, it really doesn't mean that it is easy for everyone to use, sometimes the myriad of possibilities after selecting your preferred language could be baffling to others, especially the 'techno-befuddles'. I was rushing for time one day, and in a queue (if you could call it one), there was this middle aged woman straddling with her nursery child, and on the left was another queue with 3 young looking people. Naturally, when instincts took over, I rushed to the 1st queue, and goodness knows what she was fiddling with the machine. Did she purposely choose Tamil as her preferred language, in the hope of automated navigation by memory through the system?
It happens that I've known cases of people possessing the phobia of technology (What's the fear of technology?) Like for example, how some old folks simply refuse to use the lift, for fear of being trapped in it. Once I was taking the overhead bridge linking Far East Plaza to the opposite side, and apparently this old osteoporosis-stricken woman stopped the whole traffic of commuters walking down the escalator by going against the flow of traffic. She was grumbling incoherently, oblivious to the menacing stares by some, as she stumbled with each step upwards the escalator, whilst totally abandoning the thought of using the other escalator, which was traveling upwards. Perhaps she had the fear of automated staircases, that seemed unbelievable, as each step is sucked into an abyss and another step appears (as it from nothing) from the foot of the escalator.
Why don't we have a bevy of sweet smiling pulley-aunties escorting fear-stricken old folks up the 2nd floor? You remember studying the 2-pulley system? The old folks are the load, dump them into a barrel, and get the pulley-aunties to pull a tight rope, the resulting tensional force will carry the old folk upwards. With such an obsolete system of transporting loads up to a height, it matches the mindset of the 'techno-befuddles'
The Durian
I can almost safely guarantee that I will now refer to the Esplanade as the Durian, as how many of us Heart Landers have so affectionately called it. Well, I was rushing again, so I decided to take a taxi. I told the taxi driver, a middle-aged man probably in his 40s, that I wanted to go to the Esplanade. I tried all sort of pronunciations with 'Esplanade' to the point of even trying to spell it out, to the brink of even trying to describe it, when suddenly I remembered that it is called the durian. Okay, he finally got the drift.
For some reason or another, he got quite irritated with me, because I told him to alight me on a side of the road with double zigzag yellow lines (another taxi driver alighted me there before and he didn't make a noise), and when I fished out a 50 dollar note, he became even more grumpy. At that point, I just felt like getting down the taxi without paying.
What we are wired to think is : A short queue equals to a short wait; but not necessary with the ATM. You know, no matter how few buttons an ATM has, it really doesn't mean that it is easy for everyone to use, sometimes the myriad of possibilities after selecting your preferred language could be baffling to others, especially the 'techno-befuddles'. I was rushing for time one day, and in a queue (if you could call it one), there was this middle aged woman straddling with her nursery child, and on the left was another queue with 3 young looking people. Naturally, when instincts took over, I rushed to the 1st queue, and goodness knows what she was fiddling with the machine. Did she purposely choose Tamil as her preferred language, in the hope of automated navigation by memory through the system?
It happens that I've known cases of people possessing the phobia of technology (What's the fear of technology?) Like for example, how some old folks simply refuse to use the lift, for fear of being trapped in it. Once I was taking the overhead bridge linking Far East Plaza to the opposite side, and apparently this old osteoporosis-stricken woman stopped the whole traffic of commuters walking down the escalator by going against the flow of traffic. She was grumbling incoherently, oblivious to the menacing stares by some, as she stumbled with each step upwards the escalator, whilst totally abandoning the thought of using the other escalator, which was traveling upwards. Perhaps she had the fear of automated staircases, that seemed unbelievable, as each step is sucked into an abyss and another step appears (as it from nothing) from the foot of the escalator.
Why don't we have a bevy of sweet smiling pulley-aunties escorting fear-stricken old folks up the 2nd floor? You remember studying the 2-pulley system? The old folks are the load, dump them into a barrel, and get the pulley-aunties to pull a tight rope, the resulting tensional force will carry the old folk upwards. With such an obsolete system of transporting loads up to a height, it matches the mindset of the 'techno-befuddles'
The Durian
I can almost safely guarantee that I will now refer to the Esplanade as the Durian, as how many of us Heart Landers have so affectionately called it. Well, I was rushing again, so I decided to take a taxi. I told the taxi driver, a middle-aged man probably in his 40s, that I wanted to go to the Esplanade. I tried all sort of pronunciations with 'Esplanade' to the point of even trying to spell it out, to the brink of even trying to describe it, when suddenly I remembered that it is called the durian. Okay, he finally got the drift.
For some reason or another, he got quite irritated with me, because I told him to alight me on a side of the road with double zigzag yellow lines (another taxi driver alighted me there before and he didn't make a noise), and when I fished out a 50 dollar note, he became even more grumpy. At that point, I just felt like getting down the taxi without paying.
posted by Christopher | 6:55 PM
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