A memory of the TSA.

Americans have come to loathe, in many ways, the changes that have had to be made to their society, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One of those changes was the founding of the TSA (Transport Security Administration), to look after transport security, specifically, the airports. The question is, do these changes improve security or are they an illusion?

I recall travelling to America after 9/11. I was passing through one of the New York area airports (I forget which, whether it be Newark or JFK) and it was my turn to have my bag checked.

I duly loaded my bag up into the machine and waited for judgement to be passed on it. However, I found myself rather surprised at the behaviour of the TSA staff. Rather than paying attention to the screens in front of them, that were revealing the contents of my bag, to them, they just stood there, chatting amongst themselves. No one was doing their supposed job, at all.

“Excuse me,” I began, at a comfortable volume.

They ignored me and carried on chatting.

“EXCUSE ME!”, I said, rather more loudly, to the oblivious TSA staff. “Why aren’t you looking at the screens?”

Something dark entered their faces, as they realized they were being criticized.

One of them said something to me, but it was so badly pronounced, so mangled by an incompetent use of the tongue, that I have no idea, to this day, what they were trying to say to me. It didn't look good, however. I carried on, nevertheless.

“By not doing your jobs, you are putting everyone at risk. Why aren’t you checking the bags properly?”, I said, firmly, but not so impolitely as to stir them further.

They stood still, looking at me for a moment, and one of them just dismissed me with a wave of the hand and, again, said something incoherent, but which I gather was to get me to move along.

I could see I wasn’t getting anywhere. I moved along, took my bag and left. As I departed, I cast a glance behind me and saw the TSA staff standing there, continuing to talk amongst themselves. My words had been nothing more than an irritant to them. They had not changed their behaviour at all.

Now, I learnt something from this. It seems to me that simply creating a body to take care of transportation security and actually taking care of transportation security are two completely different things. I have no doubt at all, that anyone could have smuggled anything past those chattering TSA staff. They were being completely inattentive to their role. They also were clearly unaware of the critical importance of what they had been tasked to do. Lives depended on their competent performance – yet, for them, gossip was more important than plane loads of innocent passengers.

If this level of staff competence is common across the TSA, then it is doubtful whether America is any safer because of the creation of this body. The only thing that is certain about the TSA is that it has made the lives of every traveller less convenient, and less pleasant. Other than that, its supposed effects on security are likely to be limited.

Admittedly, my experience was but one incident. However, even that was one experience too many. It shows that the TSA staff are not under enough oversight and are not monitored for competent performance, in the way that they should be. Then again, that doesn’t surprise me. A lot of what America does seems to be an indication of a once great nation in decline. I think the TSA is just another symptom of many an underlying problem.

A thought occurs to me, however. If every traveller monitored the behaviour of security staff and reported them, when they seemed not to be doing their jobs, perhaps their competence would improve. The travellers themselves can do the monitoring that the organizations are not doing. So, the next time you travel, do keep an eye on the security staff…and don’t be afraid to speak up if they are not doing their jobs properly. One warning: keep it reasonably polite, otherwise they might just respond by abusing their powers on you.

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Efficient School Administration: an unmet need.

There is a tendency, in many cultures, to pay little for the work of a receptionist. Being of a lower salary, the receptionist is, in turn, frequently of lower ability. I think this is a mistake. Just because the job does not, in theory, require much intelligence, this does not mean that intelligence, in such a role, is without its utility. In fact, it seems from my experience, that greater intelligence is required in such staff, than is usually present.

Today, we needed to make arrangements for our son to come home at an unusual time. I wanted to leave a message for his teacher that he should be allowed to leave the class to go down to a bus that could take him home. There was only one opportunity to catch this bus.

I called the school office, around lunchtime. Someone picked the phone up - and immediately put it back down again.

I was somewhat surprised.

Then they picked it up again and started to dial out.

I said: "Hello!". Whether or not they heard me, they put the receiver down again.

Then they picked it up again. I said: "Hello!"

They said: "Hello?"

I repeated myself: "Hello."

They put the phone down.

Then they picked it up again and tried dialling out again.

I gave up and replaced the receiver. Clearly, whoever was on the reception at lunchtime was unfamiliar with how to use a phone. Such people still exist in the early twenty-first century. They were also unfamiliar with what you must do when you find someone on the other end of the phone: speak to them.

I decided to call back a bit later in the hope that someone with a functioning central nervous system might pick up the phone instead.

Sometime after 2 pm, I called back.

The conversation seemed quite straightforward. I explained that my son was to leave at a particular time and needed to catch the bus. I asked for a message to be delivered to his teacher to allow this to happen. She assured me that all would work out just fine. My son would catch the bus home.

Later this evening, I got home and discovered that Ainan, who should have been home about two and a half hours before, was still not home.

I called the school and began: "Where is my son?" without introducing myself, precisely because I rather suspected that the person I would be speaking to would be the person to whom I had entrusted my message.

"The boy, ahh?" she replied, eloquently.

"Ainan: my son."

"Ahh...here, ahh. In the office."

"Why did he not take the bus home?"

"Mum get him...or something." she said, with meaning, but without regard for the conventions of language.

I couldn't speak to her anymore, I was too irked - and let my wife handle the rest of the conversation.

In brief, she denied being the person who had taken the message - and denied knowing who might have taken the message. It must be an awfully big reception.

When I finally got to the office to collect Ainan, who had been waiting for three hours to be collected, rather than taking the bus home, the receptionist was on the phone. She didn't even look at me in the several minutes I stood in front of her. It was as if I didn't exist.

I didn't bother to interrupt her call: she would only have denied being on duty earlier, anyway.

From this experience I have come to understand that it is important to ensure the quality and ability of staff in all roles - even those that seem to require little in the way of real intelligence. At my son's school, the reception is unable to answer the phone - and unable to relay a message. Failing in these two functions means that the reception is failing entirely in its role. The proper response to this is either to retrain the staff (I know it seems incredible but some people need training on how to take a message) - or sack them.

I didn't need the surprise of finding my son not at home in the evening when I got home. My first thought was that something might have happened to him. Such worry is unnecessary and was created purely by the incompetence of the school administrative staff.

I worry, further, now. You see, if a school system cannot even do simple things like answer the phone and take messages - how can they handle the vastly more complex challenge of educating a child? The clear answer is that they can't.

I suppose I have been warned. So have you.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Are Singaporean taxi drivers trained?

Singaporean taxi drivers often strike me as among the least knowledgeable of their breed. Indeed, Singapore is the only country I have ever visited, in which the taxi drivers quite often don't know where they are going. It seems needless to add, but add I must, that Singapore is such a small country, that it is, in fact, a modest sized city, and that to not know where you are going, within it, as a professional driver, is quite some feat.

It is apt that I should comment at this time, for the largest taxi fleet is set to raise the flagdown rate of its taxis by a rumoured 30 cents and has hinted at other ways to raise revenue (read: increase pricing), as well. This comes upon the huge rise in call-out charges some months back.

The big question is, of course: are these price rises justified when service is so poor?

Before any prices rise, the taxi fleets need to address the issue of driver competence. Singaporean drivers are often a poorly informed and not particularly honest bunch. They don't know where they are going - or if they do, they deliberately take very circuitous routes. They do anything they can to inflate the fare and cheat the passenger - particularly if, like me, that passenger is a foreigner. I have seen all sorts of ploys - all of them calculated to deprive me of rather more dollars than is justified by the journey embarked upon. Some drivers have even driven off with the passengers' belongings. (Some 20,000 dollars worth of wedding gifts, for instance, in a famous recent case.) So, all in all, a Singaporean taxi is something to be wary of, for one reason or another.

A recent journey brought me to ask the title question. We booked a taxi (and paid the exorbitant surcharges), since we were going to a wedding. Rather than give him our precise location, we told him to drive to somewhere obvious, nearby.

"Jurong Junior College.", we requested, as we got into the cab.

"Where? I don't know.", he replied.

Ah, I thought, he doesn't know where the Junior College is.

"You show me.", he continued, pointing ahead at the mystery of the roads, on which he drove daily.

So, we were to show a professional driver, in a very small city, where to go...

We got to the first meeting of roads and he slowed. "Which way?" he asked, without embarrassment.

It was clear, then, that it was not the Junior College that he didn't know the way to. He didn't know the way to Jurong. That flabbergasted me - for it meant he didn't know the city at all.

As the journey proceeded, this man, who had the nerve to call himself a taxi driver, would ask us for instructions at every single meeting of roads, junction or turning, all along the way. He quite simply knew nothing at all of the geography of Singapore.

Finally, as we neared our destination, my wife said: "Just turn left at Jurong JC."

"JC? I don't know what JC is." he said, in utter mystification.

My wife and I looked at each other. There is something you should know at this point. Only Singaporeans are allowed to drive Singaporean taxis. That means that all were born here, educated here and grew up here. As you have no doubt noticed, JC is the abbreviation for Junior College (which we first asked him for). So, even if he had been a foreigner - which he couldn't possibly be - he should have known what JC was. Yet, he was a native. He had been through the school system - yet he had managed to do so, without knowing the names of the schools.

I grew really uncomfortable then. Was our driver senile? He didn't look old enough to be, being in his fifties at my best guess. Or was he just lying about his lack of knowledge? Was his "I don't know where I am going", just a ruse to ensure that, on average, he always travelled a longer route than otherwise, because his passengers would tend not to have the best route knowledge?

In a way, I rather hoped it was a ruse - for I find it incredible that someone of so little mental competence, as not even to know the most basic things about the society he grew up in - not its geography and not the names of its institutions - could actually be allowed behind the wheel of a taxi.

Was he truly that mentally incompetent? If so, he shouldn't be driving - and a system that can allow such a driver on the road, is seriously flawed. Clearly, there is no real training of these drivers. It is not infrequent to step into a cab driven by someone who hasn't got a clue where he is going. That should never happen. No-one should be allowed to drive until they know their way around.

In London, where I grew up, the cab drivers prided themselves on The Knowledge - an examination in the routing between all destinations in London. All cab drivers had to pass this test. As a result, I never had the experience, in London, of being driven by a taxi driver who didn't know where he was going. Yet, in Singapore, I have that experience several times a week. Singaporean drivers simply don't know Singapore. Furthermore, those that do, often use that knowledge of best routes, to avoid them and give the passenger the longest, most expensive route possible (at least they do to me, a Caucasian). It is truly a disgrace to the nation. Yet, instead of addressing the issue of useless, incompetent and dishonest drivers - what are the authorities going to do? They are going to raise the price of taxis again. That is the second time in a year.

Before they raise prices, they should first take off the roads all the dishonest drivers - and all the incompetent drivers. All new drivers should be exhaustively trained in the ways and byways of Singapore. Then, and only then, should they even begin to consider raising the price. They should remember that it is called a taxi SERVICE - and attend to the service part, first.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)