Life Through A Lens

The cultural and behavioural differences between peoples, countries and continents are certainly what make life so rich and unusual but also make us baffled and irate.

We took our children to the Sea Aquarium on the leisure island of Sentosa this weekend.  The aquarium is absolutely phenomenal and my 4 year old who is ocean obsessed after getting a set of top trumps on deep sea creatures was beyond excited.

We had a lovely day which would have been perfect if we could have actually seen anything due to the five deep throng of people standing in front of every fish tank combined with their tablet PCs, camera's and phones taking pictures of every single thing in the tank before moving on to the next tank to do the same.  I don't believe anybody actually looked at anything in those tanks with their own eyes.

My husband being a man of little patience lost his temper quickly as my four year old was shoved out of the way by a lady wanting to take a picture of a fish.  He put his arm out in front of her and told her not to push our son using a few choice words, to which her response was "it's okay I am taking a picture" and he said "no, it is not okay to push a child so you can take a picture" plus a few more choice words.  She then said "okay", took the picture anyway and said "thank you" with no hint of sarcasm and moved off to the next tank.

As I tried to find a bucket of cold water in which my husband could douse his steaming head I reminded him that shouting and screaming does not work here and the camera snapping folks of this part of the world will continue to snap away irrespective of how much he stamps his feet.  Nobody is aggressive, just determined.  But when you are being butted out of the way over and over again, the motives are frankly irrelevant.

The UK is a unique place in that we place great store by manners, polite society and our ability to queue for hours without getting even slightly stressed.  However, a lack of manners, impoliteness and queue jumping or being inconsiderate of ones neighbour causes major patience loss within seconds.  Unfortunately due to the "Generation Me" effect sadly sweeping the modern world, I worry that very soon everywhere will be standing in front of a fish tank holding a tablet PC above their heads while small children stand at the back unable to see anything.

The funnier part of this tale was this lady seemed to wander around with us from tank to tank and chat to our children as they oooed and aaaaed at the wonderful tanks of tropical fish and deep sea monstrosities.  My husband was still developing piles elsewhere but I was all forgiveness, particularly when I saw this lady forcibly position her little girls head against a cylindrical tank holding jelly fish to take another picture.  In fact she pushed her daughters head about three times against the glass to make sure she was in shot with the jellyfish.  She then told her to stand on the other side of the tank and whacked her head into it a few more times before getting the money shot from a different angle. As we all know, cylinders don't really have sides.

Of course, with the exception of the inconsiderate determination of the photo obsessed folks of South East Asia we had to wonder when they actually looked at all these pictures.  When pondering this fact all I could do was just feel terrible sympathy for their families at home who would be subjected to hours of boring photo montages of endless fish behind smudged glass squashed against a small child's cheek.