What is the Singapore smack? Well, actually I had no idea what to call it, but it only occurs in Singapore, and it consists of repeated smacks.
Basically, it occurs when people are just about to take a seat on public transport, like a bus or MRT. The person will look at his/her seat, and inexplicably, smack it loudly a few times before sitting on it. I was taking a snooze on the MRT when I was rudely awoken by this 60ish old lady smacking the seat beside me 5 times in rapid succession.
I notice this a lot among Singaporeans, especially the older generation. I have no idea why they do it. I'm going to try coming up with a few possible explanations.
1) The seat is dusty, so by smacking it, you get rid of the dust. Well, that might be plausible on a bus seat, but a seat on the MRT? Have you ever seen dust on those? What's more the seats are so hard. How would smacking remove any dust from them?
2) The seat is dirty, so by smacking, they sterilize it. I'm guessing that by doing this they think it can kill the germs, like how they kill mosquitoes. Or maybe they just don't feel secure using a seat that was previously occupied by some unknown person, even if they are only too happy to take it on a crowded train. I'd like to ask them, people put their backside there you go and use your hand to smack, your hand not dirty meh?
I seriously wonder what they do to toilet seats. Or maybe I don't want to know.
3) They feel a need to assert their territory. Like how dogs take a piss to demarcate their territory, they feel that by smacking the seat, it is a declaration of how the seat now belongs to them. This probably came from the old days when people were less civilised and they had to fight for seats on buses. When they finally got the seats, they would smack it to intimidate other people from trying to get the same seat. The more violent and repetitive the smacking, the better.
Or maybe it is a remnant from childhood catching games, where there is a safe house called "Home", and when you smack it, you are safe. When they grew up, they could not get rid of that behaviour. They had played too much catching because in kampungs they had nothing better to do.
Actually, all that is just bullshit. I still really don't get why they do it.