What I am going to describe next was observed during my national service. During that time, I have to book in every week on Sunday night. The book in time of mine coincided with the time of the foreign workers returning to their dormitories located in the same area as my camp. On the train ride of the east west line, it was not only packed with those foreign workers but with their voice as well. They were talking loudly even when they are standing next to each other.
I think that this behaviour may be due to the habit they have picked up back in their hometown where they have to shout to each other to communicate when working in the field. Another reason could be they worked in a place where there is high level of noise therefore when communicating with each other they have to shout so that they can be heard. After all, not many of us have this kind of experience before hence we would not be able to fully understand them.
If you think that after alighting the train would be the end, then you are wrong. On the bus ride back to their dormitories the bus would be fully packed. Usually on a fully packed bus, the bus driver would not open the front door immediately but just the rear door first for people to alight. Along the way, there would be some foreign workers trying to board the bus from the rear door, the bus driver would then have to wait for those foreign workers to get down from the rear door then board from front door. The rational in doing so is probably that the bus driver needs to ensure that passenger boarding the bus tap their ezlink card on the card reader. The duration of waiting those foreign workers can sometime take a very long time as some of them are too drunk to understand what the bus driver wants them to do.
I feel that this is probably due to a lack of knowledge of bus system in Singapore where back in their hometown, there may be someone stationed at the rear door collecting the bus fare.
In conclusion, we should consider ourselves fortunate to live in a country like Singapore. The actions of those foreign workers are not on the purpose to irritate us but something that they have been doing in the past which they feel that there is nothing wrong with. In gratitude of their contributions in taking jobs that the locals do not want, we should give them sufficient time to accustom to our environment.
