Little things about Litter

If you want to know how civilized a society is, look at the floor on the street.  The photo below is a grass patch taken just beside a bus stop.  You click on the photo to enlarge it; count the number of cigarette butts littered on this small patch!

Singapore is not yet a FINE country.  (Pun intended) .  My goodness - Singapore has a first world economy but a third world civility!  Some common happenings to ruin your day include:

1. Uncles ( and aunties) still smoking at the section of coffee shops with No Smoking signs clearly displayed; 
   
2. passengers in the bus refusing to move to the rear ( staring at them obviously doesn't help, neither is calling at them); 
   
3. teens blasting their MP3 / mobile phone players ...  

The Singapore government seems to have changed their approach. Fining obviously doesn't help much. Honestly speaking, asking police to catch such petty stuff is an insult to their occupation.  So we resort to the softer approach. Liking putting up signs encouraging people to move to the rear of the bus, asking people in MRT to give up seats to elderly and pregnant ladies . . . and of course by having more dustbin, like this:

A matured society is not one where people obey laws and regulations; but behave so even without having them. I am not sure what else we can do?  For what we have done, it seems like we are taking big steps with very small progress.

On another note...

After being to a number of schools, I realize that to get an indication of how good a school - you look at the canteen during recess.  By looking at whether the students queue properly at the stalls, the noise level, the cleanliness of the canteen after recess etc. we can have a pretty good idea about the school