On excessiveness

I've had some seriously bad flu for the past one week and in between trips to the toilet, I've often lashed out at those automatic water taps that are installed in pretty much all modern office buildings. They don't work perfectly and it's as if the designers imagined something that'll work 80% of the times and for the other 20%, users could just do all kinds of acrobatics around the tap to make it work. I'm a huge fan of the technology but the experience has to be better than or atleast the same as the manual option.

Anyway, this got me thinking of some fun little advice I got before I came down to Singapore. One of my relatives had stayed on-campus in NUS before. The week before coming to Singapore, I went to speak with her about the dos and don'ts of Singapore in general and NUS in particular. Apparently, the most annoying thing for her in Singapore was the water tap (mosquitoes was number 2). Not the automatic ones but the push-button manual types that shut off after being open for about 5 seconds. She suggested I take a bucket with me and fill it up to use it whenever I had to!

It was annoying at the start to use those taps but you know humans adapt to all situations. But consider the other side of the equation. Using regular open-once-for-as-much-water-as-you-want taps back home in Karachi this year reminded me of the excessiveness inherent in different cultures (or countries if you may). Can you imagine how much water we waste? For brushing my teeth, I'd have the tap open for 5 minutes before I came to Singapore, now I'd wager that I manage the same in about a glass of water. So, based on my experiences, let's consider some of the instances of excessiveness that I've noticed in different places:

1. Gas in Pakistan: There's little doubt that Pakistan has huge reserves of gas. Unsurprisingly gas is cheap and now we find an increasing number of CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) cars on the road (remember, oil's still a lot more expensive). Once in India, I accidentally left the stove on for long after I'd finished making tea. Suffice it to say I was sufficiently chided for that since the common practice there (or atleast what I'm aware of) is of gas delivery via cylinders in the kitchen. At home in Karachi we have a direct line. Thinking back at this, I realize that knowing there's plenty of cheap gas available in Pakistan definitely has a huge impact on its usage/watage.
2. Food in Pakistan: Man the servings are big. And the ratio of meat to vegetables in the servings is just preposterous (guess which way it tilts). Pizza Express was shut down in Karachi in the late 90s. I suspect it was because their pure-style less-meat smaller-serving pizzas just couldn't cut it in the meat-loving market of the city. It was because of the wastage of food and the huge costs incurred in marriage ceremonies that the serving of dinner at weddings was banned during the late 90s.
3. Air conditioning in Singapore: This I just don't get at all. In a temparate climate, it's acceptable for us to ramp up the aircon just so that we can sit around wearing jackets! Back in NUS, LT7A (main engineering lecture theater) was notorious for its almost subzero temperature. I think the reasoning is that it's better for people to wear warm clothes in a freezing atmosphere than to run the risk of them sweating if the temperature is just about normal.
4. Fast food in Singapore: Burger King, KFC et al everywhere you look. I won't even talk of the one that's been featured in its own movie! It's either having food at proper restaurants, food courts for cheap good food or fast food. There are just too many of these places around and even on the best of days convenience trumps everything else for me and I break down to have a quick packaged meal. One or twice a month is ok but when you live here and you don't cook food (that's an entirely separate story) you want to have a lot more of the good options (small restaurants and food courts) than the bad ones. I don't know, I might be going out on a limb here for some but I do think that there are far too many fast food places here than should be around for a healthy nation. Ironically, obesity doesn't seem like a big problem here as it is in the U.S.

There're some huge caveats to this post. Remember, when I talk about my experiences in these places there's a hefty dose of generalizations and the possibility that I could've noted things in error is there (that's what the comments are for below). Also. when I talk about Pakistan in these general terms, I probably speak about the 1% of the population there that has a high standard of living. Excesses in food servings or gas that I speak of are relevant only to this select part of the society and they'd do better to note these for the sake of the other 99%.

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