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fficials in uniform stopped reader Janakan Arulkumarasan outside the door of a shopping mall, saying: '€œExcuse me, Sir. We are checking random bags because of a significant terrorism threat.'€ Janakan obediently handed over his bags. '€œWould you mind removing your shoes, Sir?'€ He took off his shoes. '€œPlease walk around this pole, Sir.'€ He circumnavigated the pole. '€œWould you mind jumping up and down, Sir?'€ He pogoed. As further exercises were requested, a crowd began to form outside the mall in Croydon, UK.

Janakan finally asked to see some ID. The man burst out laughing and told him they were being filmed by a hidden camera for a show about how far people will go without questioning authority. Janakan, a Sri Lankan who works in Hong Kong, told me: '€œApparently I had gone well beyond anything anyone else had done, or they had scripted, so he was improvising.'€

Of course, people say Asians are more compliant to authority figures than Westerners. This is utter rubbish, unless whoever is reading this is wearing a uniform, in which case I agree 100 percent, Sir. Yet the weird thing is that Asian officials so rarely deserve respect.

For example, officials in a city in southern China recently sent phone text messages to residents offering them taxpayer cash to take part in a survey, the China Daily reported. Residents were annoyed, complaining that they had been told to write positive comments, and '€” this was the really irritating bit '€” they were being bribed with their own money.

At roughly the same time, another demonstration of the '€œvalues'€ of officials took place in Thailand.

Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt instructed officials to keep in touch with the needs of the masses by using the public bus system. A few days later a reporter from The Nation newspaper saw him standing at a bus stop.

The minister waited. And waited. And then phoned his chauffeur to pick him up in a limousine, the paper said. '€œThe system'€™s totally screwed up, who runs it? Oh, it'€™s me,'€ the official remarked. Well, no, he didn'€™t say that, but he should have done.

In Japan, the obsession with cuteness makes it hard for officials to generate respect. The Japanese prison service recently decided to '€œexpress its personality'€ by launching a giant cuddly toy mascot.

A human-sized version with an actor inside prances around at prison-related functions. Instead of convicted murderers being dragged off by burly guards, I picture them holding the hand of a giant cuddly toy speaking in a high-pitched voice: '€œHello! You'€™re going to come and live with me from now on, sweetie!'€ Critics say it is '€œsending the wrong message'€ about crime and punishment.

To balance out the cuddliness of the prison service, shopkeepers in Japan are super-tough, and have been fighting a spate of shoplifting incidents by putting up signs saying that anyone caught will be killed. One sign spotted by a Rocketnews24 reporter simply said: '€œShoplifters beware. The owner is a rampant homosexual.'€ No further details were provided, leaving the actual punishment to the imagination.

If a Japanese shopkeeper tells me to jump up and down, I'€™m just going to do it.

The writer is a columnist and journalist.