Hard To Be Polite In The City

Sometimes, I find myself hard to be polite in the city. Sometimes you get an odd stare for being polite and sometimes some pretty young things will mistaken you as a pervert. Once I greeted a security guard "good morning" inside a lift. I got a blank stare in return. Those days, I had just returned from a smalltown in England and I was used to the culture of greeting people I saw in the morning including strangers. It was a norm to thank the bus drivers as well. I miss those kind of politeness in Malaysia, especially in the city like Kuala Lumpur or Petaling Jaya. Certain people say that the Westerners are not sincere in their politeness. In my opinion, who cares? It's better than being rude.

Today, I was coming out from a junction at a petrol station/gas station. I noticed a car purposely increased the speed to prevent me from coming out. When I was driving behind it, I saw a brown skinned hand coming out of the car with a middle finger. Since it's a muslim fasting month and the driver was a muslim, I had to prevent him from destroying his purpose of fasting. So I returned him the international hand signal. I was just doing him a favour.

Once a friend told me about a Canadian using his car horn less than 3 times in his life. In Malaysia, I guess an average driver may have to use at least 30 times per year. Are we the impatient rude Malaysians? Obviously, we cannot beat drivers of certain countries but bear in mind that in some countries, they do not honk at anyone of of anger the way Malaysians do. Sometimes, we are forced to use the horns because there are simply too many psychotic drivers on the road who think the road belongs to them.