Threshold?

During the last few weeks that I went to Intech 2005 (International Conference on Intelligent Technology), on my way back home during our transit to the airport along with other distinguished guests and speakers, one of the conversation caught my attention during the course of the journey. It has to do with two distinguished educators in the science and engineering field, one from a private university and the other from a public university. Though there are many topics that of interest, I'll just recall one of the topics which would probably interest general readers than all the hardcore problems underlining the educational system in Thailand (the majority of the discussion was on there).

The topic that was somewhat funny, and in quite close to everyone is the problem about parking space. As you all know, with our government quite happy to boast about reaching the million car mark, I think the regular driver would ask themselves where in the world are we going to find enough parking spaces? In the example of where I work, during peak times (registration), the baskteball field is actually converted into a makeshift parking space to handle the huge spike of cars coming to the university. Even with that, there is simply not enough parking space in the premises. One of the policy that our university has pursued was that if a reserved car park has been parked by an unauthorized person, the car would be locked by the wheels. To take out the lock, a huge fine has to be paid, and that really worked effectively against cars that try to sneak and park in unauthorized sections of the university.

Anyway during one of the topic discussed between the two educators, the one from the public university complained bitterly about the parking space. After talking for a while, the educator from the public university mentioned that alot of students park their cars in the places the lecturers should park. Surprised, the educator from the private university asked that why didn't the university just simply lock the wheels of the cars to teach those students a lesson? The educator from the public university just shook his head and pointed that it was impossible. The reason was simple, the university is public property, and due to that reason, everyone has the right to park anywhere they want as long as there is space and conforms to driving regulations and locking the wheels of cars in the university was actually against the law. In other words, the lecturers have to hope the students don't find that out that they can actually park in the lecturer's parking space according to law.

Strange...

Talking about it, it reminds me about the elevators at the subways. The elevators were initially designed so that people with handicaps (e.g. wheelchairs) can use. At the moment its just used by normal commuters once a few lazy-bums decided that it would be faster to just get up the handicap elevator. At the moment, it turned into a norm. Talk about how low threshold and order in our society these days.

When talking about order, at least its Christmas and New Year coming up soon, and then not much order is in order, lol.