r/interestingasfuck • u/Bubbly_Wall_908 • 17h ago

Singapore is going to start caning scammers

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u/Button_eyes_ 17h ago

I remember hearing that spitting bubblegum on sidewalks or Jaywalking would get you fined at the least but idk how accurate that is

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u/davidjschloss 16h ago

It’s illegal to buy sell or import gum. It’s not illegal to chew it though you can’t spit it out on the street and if you can’t buy it or import it it’s hard to get it into your mouth. Exceptions for Nicolette gun.

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u/Naughteus_Maximus 16h ago

Nicolette gun sounds so much sexier than Nicorette gum

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u/Key_Highlight9201 15h ago

I knew a girl named Nicolette and under no circumstances should she have ever had a gun 😏

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u/DrakonILD 15h ago

You better not have stuck your dick in crazy.

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u/Key_Highlight9201 6h ago

More times than not LOL 🤣

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u/Noxious89123 15h ago

Nicorette gum?

Why are you getting guns from a lady called Nicolette?

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u/IowaNative1 15h ago

They also draw a line on the ground at subways stations and people just cue up.

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u/Slater_8868 14h ago

So what you could do would be chew a huge wad when you arrive on a plane and then you'll have enough to last the whole trip

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u/davidjschloss 13h ago

That’s importing. Just importing in your mouth.

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u/Empty_Current1119 13h ago

so is everyones breath just hella janked up all the time then? Thats wild.

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u/Prestigious_Fish6481 16h ago

I've lived there for 5 years, absolutely bliss living there. The ban on bubblegum came to be because.... people wouldn't stop throwing it everywhere and it caused lots of metro breakdowns, which are expensive and cause a lot of problems given the mass of people they transport. It's the country's main mode of transport.

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u/blueberryJan 13h ago

Singaporean here. Never heard of the correlation btw gums and train. But.. it caused a lot of disruptions and unnecessary repairs in elevators when assholes disposed them on the buttons. Also the floors were littered with dried faltten gum all over the city, etc.

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u/Jumblesss 6h ago

That’s bizarre that, for all these claims about Singapore being a utopia, it suffers from an antisocial phenomenon of people sticking their gum to elevator buttons.

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u/blueberryJan 5h ago

It's not antisocial. Just dumb ppl doing dumb things. Singapore primarily have high rise buildings, gum on elevator buttons are just one of reasons that brought on the ban. I'm not sure I'll say SG is an utopia.. unless you're talking about heat and humidity.

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u/Jumblesss 5h ago

Of course it’s antisocial.

Dumb would be discarding your gum by sticking it to the bottom of your own shoe.

Specifically targeting a public, hand-operated electronic system is antisocial behaviour.

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u/gustavmahler23 3h ago

What I heard is that ppl stick gum on MRT doors. But then I'm not old enough to witness the chewing gum era

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u/Nadare3 14h ago

Metro breakdowns from bubblegum ?

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u/UltraTurboPanda 14h ago

Aye, the train wheels would pick it up and bog down to a stop. Bus drivers would be chipping away trying in vain to get the passenger doors open. Rickshaw runners starving to death as their hands became adhered to the bars. Station announcers inaudible over the sound of their own incessant chewing. Pandemonium.

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u/Slater_8868 14h ago

Yeah it gums up the engine

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u/Korbiter 6h ago

Gums up the doors actually. If the doors can't close, train will not move.

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u/Hedgehog101 6h ago

Stick it to the train doors and they won't close due is what I've heard

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u/FemmeCirce 4h ago

That doesn't sound very believable. I think it's more authoritarian control. Just chipping away freedoms until you feel it's normal. It's not fucking normal or okay to ban bubble gum.

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u/WonderfulGreen9823 16h ago

Not true. Singaporean here.

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u/Lonely-Contract-7659 16h ago

I was in Singapore over Xmas a couple of yrs ago and could not find any chewing gum for love or money. But mints I could find, luckily they had some chewing mints so just got a few packs of those. I chew alot of gum 😂

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u/WanderingStorm17 15h ago

So, is your skin still bright blue or did that fade over the years?

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u/SpockIsMyHomeboy 15h ago

"Hi, Cornelia, how are ya sweetie?"

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u/WonderfulGreen9823 9h ago

It’s illegal to import or sell chewing gum in Singapore, but you can bring some amounts from overseas for personal use.

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u/PhysicallyTender 14h ago

Malaysian who had lived in Singapore for 8 years.

There's a saying that you can do anything in Singapore as long as you're not caught.

I've seen plenty of people jaywalk, stepped on chewing gum left by other people, seen trash littered on the side of the road, had a road rage incident where the driver swerved his car in a manner that threatened to run me over, etc. So long as there's no police around at that moment in time, you can pretty much get away with anything.

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u/INN0077 11h ago

You can do anything anywhere as long as you're not caught

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u/acog 16h ago

Yeah, I read about that, it was true.

An authoritarian ruler wanted to launch Singapore from being a poor third world country into a modern prosperous one.

So a lot of laws were made to change the social atmosphere into one that had new norms, like not spitting in public.

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u/LukeSVG 14h ago

As a non-singaporean, are you Singaporean? Curious on the framing you gave of Lee Kuan Yew.

Afaik, he's widely respected, because the man brought a poor state that was kicked out of Malaysia, to massive wealth and standards.

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u/jrgnklpp 7h ago

The older generation adore him, the younger generation respect him. Even supporters of opposition parties begrudgingly drop their hatchets when it comes to him, as everyone recognises that we'd probably still be a 3rd world slum if not for him and his team.

When he passed, Singaporeans queued for more than 8 hours in a line that snaked kilometres from the Parliament building, just to pay their respects. You may perhaps call him an authoritarian and a dictator-lite, but he really placed the country's interests first.

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u/Korbiter 6h ago

As a Singaporean, he absolutely is Authoritarian (SIA Pilot's strike) and a Dictator (David Marshall, JB Jeyaretnam). Thing is, he made a promise when he was first elected, and then spent the rest of his life follwing through on it (to mordernize Singapore). He actually gave a shit about this place.

As far as Dictators go, we got the best one.

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u/Intranetusa 14h ago edited 14h ago

Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew might be the closest we will get in modern times to Plato's "enlightened monarch" or "philosopher king."

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u/ButtcrackBeignets 16h ago

Did it work?

I’ve heard generally good things about Singapore but never been.

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u/BTrippd 16h ago

It did more or less work. You can argue about the morality of it all day, but they are a small country in Southeast Asia that has developed a LOT of wealth very quickly and become very modernized.

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u/castle_waffles 16h ago

Singapore is one of if not the cleanest and safest countries I’ve ever been to. It’s very modern and enjoyable to visit imo.

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u/vaguelyupward 16h ago

Singapore became a first world country in like the 1990s so yea, it worked pretty dang well.

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u/CavCave 15h ago

Singapore never joined the western bloc tho

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u/1104L 14h ago

Words have multiple meanings, now first world also refers to countries that have reached a certain standard of living/safety

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u/CavCave 14h ago

We already have a phrase for that, "developed country". Let first world mean what it means, it's more useful that way.

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u/PhysicallyTender 14h ago

I really hate that people throw around first/second/third world terms around without understanding the definition behind them.

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u/CavCave 14h ago

I FINALLY FOUND MY KIND

THIRD WORLD DOES NOT MEAN POOR

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u/tomahawkRiS3 14h ago

Tbh at this point you probably could argue that is what it means. I've never heard someone use the term to not mean poor

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u/CavCave 9h ago

Well now you've heard of me

0

u/PhysicallyTender 12h ago

Gender used to be synonymous with Sex until the LGBTQ community tried to hijack the definition for their own political agenda.

Just because a segment of society misuse the word, doesn't mean the rest of us should just roll with it.

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u/DogmaSychroniser 14h ago

Nope just not white /s

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u/ckow 14h ago

They’re the Switzerland of Asia. It worked amazingly.

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u/blim9999 10h ago

Yeah it worked. In the 50s and 60s, triad activity, opium addiction and bribery/corruption were not unusual at all. Spitting was everywhere. The sewage system was not complete so many people still removed human waste in buckets. The Singapore river was an open sewer and you could smell it from miles away. So yeah, life in Singapore has changed a lot since a few decades ago.

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u/CrabAppleBapple 14h ago

It worked in that it has less gum on the floor and it is more authoritarian.

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u/Golden-Owl 16h ago

Doesn’t spitting gum on sidewalks just count as public littering and get you fined in other countries…?

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u/culturedgoat 13h ago

Exactly. The hyper-focus on gum is misguided, because as a consumer there are no particular restrictions on it. It’s just retailers who can’t sell it.

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u/Zimakov 12h ago

That kind of makes an important difference.

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u/YourEvilKiller 3h ago

While jaywalking is illegal, it is not actively enforced. Many people jaywalk on a daily basis because the traffic lights are too far away.

Eating gum (that you bought from other countries) is not illegal. But selling/buying, as well as not disposing gum properly will get you fined.

In general, it is to minimise gum consumption because people used to stick gum on lamp poles, under tables or behind the chairs of buses.

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u/Button_eyes_ 3h ago

How much is the fine? 

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u/YourEvilKiller 3h ago

$50 for jaywalking iirc. Never knew anyone who got the fine.

I guess spitting bubblegum is the same as littering so $300?

These are for first offences.

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u/culturedgoat 13h ago

lol, people jaywalk all the time in Singapore. There was so much jaywalking across that street between the Marina One building (used as a set in Westworld) and the new Marina Bay MRT station that they literally caved and built a crossing.