Swimming pool in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
On the day when the boy nearly drowned, at the condo where I was staying in Singapore, when I got out of the pool I want over to the security guard to ask him, "Was the boy okay?"
"Yes, he just panic. I ask him his unit number, and he tells me 164. We got no 164. I am afraid he trespass and security risk."
I went upstairs to breakfast, puzzling over the implications. If the boys were not from our complex, how could we find out more? Where could they be from?
They could be from the adjacent HDB (state housing) blocks. Just came in for a swim. Not familiar with the deep end.
If they speak Chinese (Mandarin - or a dialect such as Hokkien) at home, maybe they can't read the English signs - maybe not even the numbers about depth.
They could be from the primary school just up the road. Or from the triple educational establishment over the road. It has secondary pupils, vocational training, and children with special needs. If children with special needs had wandered in, they might have limited understand of the dangers and the directions from security staff.
Dangers of Trespassing
I thought about the dangers of urban exploration. Children and young adults, drunks and down and outs, could wander into derelect or even well maintained buildings. Whilst trying to evade detection, they wander down disused staircases, open doors into empty lift shafts.
For a laugh and a photograph, a selfie, for likes, they clamber for a photo onto high ledges which won't bear their weight . A boy died in the middle of Singapore jumping onto what looked like a marble parapet. But it was painted tromple l'oeuil. It was thin. It collapsed sending him down several storeys.
Trespassers run across glass roftops and fall through.
They get stuck in chimneys and their skeletons are found years later, families finding out what happened to their missing person (USA).
They dive into waters of unknown depth, are not near anybody who might help them.
The day after the drowning incident, I stopped to speak to the security staff. They were keen to talk to me.
Language Translation Difficulty
The clubhouse Security desk man told me, "Afterwards the boy's mother came down. I tried to talk to her but she doesn't speak English or Mandarin. I think she was Japanese or Korean.
I said, 'You can identify the Japanese language even if you only speak one word of Japanese. That word is 'deska?', the question word at the end of a sentence, like 'ma?' in Mandarin, or 'really' in English.
I offered to translate any sign or report form they needed into Japanese and Korean. I planned to used Google translate and then put the translation onto the polyglot page on Facebook. I could send it to Japanese or Korean friends - and bilingual Japanese and Korean people I met in the lift in the block where we live, since it concerns them and helps their neighbours. I could put it up on Facebook for automatic translation.
Every city, every country, should have an emergency number for translation. Manned by volunteers. Or put through to the embassy.
Another number could be available for general assistance, eg shoppers trying to buy clothes in their size, return goods, find out the time of the last train or order a taxi home to their hotel.
If you are able to translate, already have photos of bilingual warning signs, or have other suggestions, please contact me.
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