Strange Priorities

There was once when I went for my grocery shopping in City Mall. As I was pushing my cart out of Giant Supermarket, suddenly there was a commotion. The alarm was blaring and people were running all over the place. Evidently the huge generator in the basement floor of the building had caught fire. Black smoke engulfed a major portion of the basement floor. Those of you who're not familiar with City Mall, the basement floor also accommodates the car park.

There's the so-called "travelator" which Giant's shoppers can use to bring their shopping carts from the ground floor to the car park in the basement floor. But because there's fire in the generator room, all access to the basement floor was blocked for safety reasons. Although I have paid for my groceries, I decided to abandon my cart, and although my car was parked in the basement, my first instinct was to just get out of the mall into the street. 

On my way to the front entrance of the building, however, I noticed a woman arguing with the security guard. She wanted to go to the basement floor to get her car, but the security guard said nobody's allowed to enter the basement until the fire has been put out. The woman continued arguing though. Then the guard raised his voice and said something profound in Malay. 

He said, "You value your life or your car?"

One would expect the woman to change her mind about rescuing her car, but I was surprised to see her insisting to go get her car anyway!

I find it rather strange that some people take very lightly the circumstances which may be life-threatening. They would ignore all well-meant warnings of danger, and go about doing the things they're doing as if there is no danger at all. I guess that that shouldn't bother me if they're risking their own lives, but I sometimes get very annoyed when my life is put into danger too because I have no control of what other people are doing. 

For example, it's quite common that there will be the announcement in the airplane that all cellphones are to be switched off because they may cause interference with the aircraft's equipment. But all too often people don't really care—they won't switch off their cellphones anyway. And I can't help thinking that if the plane crashed because other people have failed to heed the warnings, I may also lose my life due to something that's beyond my control.

How important is it that the cellphones must be left on? I'm guessing maybe it's because people don't really believe that the cellphones can really cause an interference with the aircraft's equipment; or if they do, perhaps the effect won't be significant?

Some people, I've noticed, get their priorities all wrong. These people, for example, demanded to fly home despite a "No. 10 typhoon" warning, i.e. the highest for Hong Kong storm warning system, because their priority is to "return immediately for work or school". I was, like, what's the point of work or school if you end up dead? There are some risks just not worth taking for the sake of work or school. There will be other jobs to secure; there will be other days to learn in school, but when you are dead, you are dead—period.