Nirmalya’s Blog

This over-half-mile long queue outside a Shell Petrol Pump along Changi Road was for a 10 cents discount in the price of petrol.

I counted over 50 cars queued up to the petrol pump. Including a Mercedes-Benz 2005 SLK!

Cars don’t come cheap in Singapore. Over the usual taxes/levies, there is a SGD 30000+ (approx. USD 18000+) Certificate Of Entitlement (COE) that needs to be paid for every car owner. Cars are very much a part of the 5 (now 6) Cs.

What struck me as being very odd is that, if one can afford to blow away upwards of 70000 dollars on a car, and yet ends up queuing for a mere 10 cents discount, waiting over half an hour, keeping the engines running, thereby burining more fuel worth much more than the discount seeked.. so how does this all make (economic) sense?

Only in Singapore, can one find people queuing up for just about anything! Be it overnight queues for free Hello Kitties that came with McDonald meals a couple of years ago, to queues outside ATM a few days before an IPO launch, to simple queues at the food-court/hawker-centre. (My colleague once confided that he decides on which food to eat based on the length of the queue in front of food-stall! The longer the queue, then supposedly the better the food!).. short of saying .. “queue first, see later”..

Bit of Googling led me to this copy of the article ‘Oh How Swiftly We Fall In Line‘ (The Straits Times, dated January 26, 2000). Of the 5 quotes quoted, this one was the best

I don’t want to miss out. How, if other people have and I don’t have? If they’re selling something cheap, buy two; if giving away free, try and take four. I don’t think I care about the courtesy campaign. Hello, it could be worse if we weren’t the orderly sort.

No wonder they call it Uniquely Singapore!