Abortion destroys families and the nation

Posted on April 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Abortion destroys nation building’, 2 April 2013, Voices, Today

(Edmund Leong Meng Tsi): It is indeed “Time again to review abortion laws” (April 1), considering the long-term emotional harm on post-abortive women. Some of them are adversely affected and are easier to identify, as they suffer visibly. Much is known about the treatments for them.

Literature on abortion suggests that “unaffected” women harden their hearts instead. Cognitive dissonance hinders their ability to love properly because they had denied love to their closest kin through abortion, and yet must continue to extend love and show compassion to others throughout their lives.

They feared a tiny human so much as to eliminate it, and will subconsciously guard against bigger humans by building walls around their hearts. I believe that when the heart of the family is compromised, the entire family is affected. Emotional strains can tear families apart, and the effects can be passed to future generations.

Singapore’s nation-building efforts are inadvertently being foiled not only because 12,000 babies are aborted annually, but because women are offered an easy way out of adversity.

Abortion is biased towards self-interest by eliminating another’s interest, thereby destroying families and the nation. We must instead utilise all means to keep babies and their mothers alive, physically and emotionally. Adoption is the better choice.

The issue of legalised abortion has been fought over by pro-lifers, pro-choicers, feminists, religious folks, moral philosophers, doctors and politicians for ages, and we will probably never understand enough about the human consciousness or even what ‘life’ means to come to a consensus on the ‘rights and wrongs’ of terminating a ‘potential’ human being. So instead people focus on abortion as a matter of disrupting the natural order of how society traditionally grows. Even more so now that we’re facing a dearth of babies and on surface it would seem logical to assume that one unaborted baby equals to +1 population. If only it were that simple.

In the eighties, loss of babies who could be borne of educated couples was deemed a shame and a loss of productive citizenry. A writer known only as PGT lamented the loss of ‘educated genes’ which would have given rise to ‘smarter babies’. Husbands whose wives went for revenge abortions decried them for ‘the break up of an otherwise happy marriage and family relationship’. Our ‘over-liberal’ abortion laws would also supposedly encourage more people to ‘change bed-partners without any sense of responsibility’. The fact is we have been promiscuous and having unwanted babies way before surgical abortion even existed. The difference is being skewered with a blade on an operating theatre vs drinking some awful tasting folk remedy concocted by your witch-doctor that would scramble your foetus into a bloody pulp before you shed its mushy corpse out through your genitalia. Even today, you’d find dead or barely alive infants in toilets, rubbish chutes or buried in the ground. We always had a means of killing the unborn if we wanted to, with varying success, but nations didn’t get ‘destroyed’ and families still thrived.

If one could ‘destroy’ a nation by depriving it of babies and have abortion turning us all into promiscuous devil-may-care lunatics who scrimp on condoms, neither is it a good idea to have children borne out of mothers who wanted them eliminated out of their uteri in the first place. The simplistic answer to unloved babies would be adoption, but that’s assuming every rejected baby will automatically be shuffled away from a ‘hardened’, emotionless mother and nurtured in a warm, loving home where stepparents make them Eggs Benedict for breakfast everyday.

There are as many complications of reluctant birth as there are to terminating pregnancies. What if no one wants your baby? If your chronically depressed mother told you she had wanted to abort you but was forced to relent at the last minute, and she couldn’t find anyone to take over maternal duties because you were such an ugly infant with all sorts of respiratory problems, how would that make you feel? Even if you found yourself a home, what if your foster parents, though initially enthusiastic about the whole adoption thing, turn out to be really terrible people who wish they had picked someone else from the orphanage? What if you found out that you were conceived after your mother was gang-raped and she couldn’t bear to put you down? Neither choice is, as the writer proclaimed, an ‘easy way out of adversity’, nor do women who face the abortion dilemma necessarily FEAR that tiny human like it was the devil’s spawn. Tell that to the rape victim, the single unemployed mom with quintuplet foetuses, or the mother who realises her baby’s got a monstrous physical defect or severe Down’s syndrome.

We can do little about sex-starved teenagers and religious attitudes towards contraception, but it’ll take more than a nasty pre-abortion video, or haranguing anti-abortionist men who speak about post-abortion psyche as if they’ve been through it themselves, to keep the deaths of the unborn in check.

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Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Babies, Funerals/Death, Parenting, Sex | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

SIA steward arrested for smuggling heroin

Posted on March 24, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘SIA steward arrested in Sydney for alleged drug offence’, 24 March 2013, article by Ng Jing Yng, Today

A Singapore Airlines (SIA) cabin crew member was arrested last Sunday at Sydney International Airport after he allegedly tried to bring in 1.6kg of heroin.

Nicholas Tan Ngat Liang, 50, was a leading steward who was believed to be on duty during the flight from Singapore to Sydney. In response to TODAY’s queries, a spokesperson from the Australian Federal Police confirmed that a 50-year-old Singaporean was arrested on Sunday and has been charged with “importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, namely heroin”. “The man was arrested for attempting to import 1.6kg of heroin into Australia,” the spokesperson said.

In Australia, the offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and/or an A$825,000 fine (S$1.1 million). Tan’s case was first mentioned in a New South Wales court on Monday.

It’s not reported how Tan carried his stash, all 1.6kg of it, but he is only one of several  Singaporeans who have tried their luck with drug trafficking Down Under.

In 2008, a Singaporean drug mule was caught by Australian authorities with 91 packets of heroin in his stomach (net weight 286 g of heroin), and was forced to defecate the goods over 2 days in a hospital. In 2009, two of our countrymen were raided whilst in a taxi carrying $4.5 million worth of the stuff. Last year, one was caught by Melbourne police smuggling 5kg of the same substance in a heap of Chinese books, while another 2 Singaporeans were charged for stowing 4.5kg of it in a vehicle and a service apartment (Sydney). The most sensational Aussie drug bust to date involving a Singaporean was that of Tan Wee Quay, who was part of a North Korean ‘Pong Su’ ploy to ship in 150kg of heroin in 2003.  According to reports, he was born in the ‘Golden Triangle’ and once blasted his way (with the help from some friends in the heroin business) out of a Danish prison in 2001. He was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment and remains there till this day, being ‘held in high regard’ for his skills as an interpreter. Tan would have been gone in a whiff if he was caught in his home country.

At the rate of our own citizens being hauled up by Aussie police, the perception of government-fearing, law-abiding Singaporeans making perfect drug mules doesn’t hold anymore, even if you’re part of our prestigious airline crew. In the 1980′s, SIA crew members were detained for suspected smuggling of GOLD, once in Seoul, and another incident in Kathmandu. But bad behaviour wasn’t restricted to sneaking in illicit drugs or precious metals. In 2008, A PILOT captain was snared for having child pornography on his laptop (again in Australia, Adelaide to be precise). A chief and leading steward were arrested in Denmark for using a passenger’s credit card to go on a shopping spree in 1982. In 1995, steward Zaini Jeloni was charged for the rape and murder of his female colleague (and alleged lover), Chang Yu, in Los Angeles. There’s even a hint of the paranormal about Chang Yu’s murder and some spooky association with the SQ006 crash in 2000, Taipei (the deceased was of Taiwanese descent).

Maybe it’s the long hours spent airborne and psychological stress of jetlag, or the wrangling over salary and leave entitlements that have plagued the airline of late that drives some SIA personnel to desperation and wilful wrongdoing.  If I were a jetsetting cabin crew myself, I would imagine my experience with immigration checkpoints giving me an edge in couriering contraband too. But why Australia, with its hefty penalty of life imprisonment and its experience in apprehending Singaporeans? The last count of Singaporeans in Australia stands around 50,000. Nobody knows how many of those residing are dope fiends or crime lords, but if you’ve got connections, and you’re an extreme risk-taker at your wits’ end, Australia was probably still a better bet than, say, the chance of execution by firing squad in Vietnam.

Incidentally, Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged in Changi Prison in 2005 (the first to be executed in more than a decade) for carrying 400g of heroin into the country. Tan Ngat Liang had 4 times that amount with him in Sydney.

Filed under: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2013, Drugs, Funerals/Death, Justice system/Lawsuits, Sex, Singapore Airlines, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Chinatown snake sculpture reminds people of death

Posted on January 20, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Good designs are sensitive to cultural norms’, 19 Jan 2013, ST Forum

(Dr Tam Chen Hee): I READ with interest the report (“Chinatown snake sculptures may slither into S’pore record books”; Wednesday) on the negative feedback some Chinatown residents gave about snake decorations in the area.

One cardinal rule of good design is that the design must be in keeping, rather than in conflict, with the implicit norms and cultural understanding of the local community and/or habitat. Hence, some research and understanding of the local customs and heritage should have been done, and some thoughtful consideration exercised when deciding to introduce avant garde ideas (which are clearly to be welcomed but need to be sensitively and creatively tailored to the local context).

The students were trying to be creative, which is good, yet they also need to be taught to create sensitively and with care to local knowledge. This will serve them well when they design for overseas markets. The Chinese, even the Peranakans, avoid sharp edges (for instance, a round dining table is preferred) and indeed, the cubic lantern boxes in the snake sculpture (above right) do remind the older generation of Chinese of funereal objects.

Another lesson from this episode is that good designers should always look out for good examples by others. In the report, one student said that as the snake is symbolically ambiguous, unlike the dragon, it is harder to design decorations appropriate to it.

I saw one good snake design in Taiwan recently – snakes circling around pillars (showing movement and vitality) and looking skywards with their jaws open, spewing golden showers of coins for the new year or cherry blossoms for new growth. I hope the students have learnt something useful from this and take the well-intended criticism in their stride, so they can better themselves next time.

8-bit snake

8-bit snake

In an earlier feature on the potentially record-breaking snake design, the SUTD students were told by elderly folks that they didn’t like to have ‘snakes all over the place’. I wonder how they would feel if it weren’t the Year of the Snake but the RAT instead. Then again, you already see live rats any time of the year in Chinatown, not just during CNY. I’m no expert in art and crafts but the boxy sculpture looks like it was inspired by an 8-bit Nintendo game. Giving the snake a ‘pixellated’ look may nullify the primal fear we all have of a slithery mythological creature that has inspired centuries of dark villainy, sorcery and Samuel L Jackson swear words. But if you overdo it and give the fearsome Serpent a smiley face like the other hovering Chinatown snake, you risk having people mistaking it for an overgrown flying tadpole, or a happy Sperm deity. It’s a Chinese Zodiac icon, not a Japanese sex festival mascot. Even the resident Pokemon reptiles Ekans and Arbok look more terrifying than this.

La Mamba

I don’t know about the Taiwanese Snake, but it sounds like a rip-off of the Caduceus, the symbol of the medical profession. Entwining pillars may signify ‘movement and vitality’, but that’s also the way the reptile suffocates its prey. More like ‘torture and death’, especially if you’re at the receiving end of a snaky cuddle.

Not one to follow customs or shy away from taboos even though I’m a Snake Baby myself, I’m not sure if traditional Chinese refrain from sharp lines or using sharp objects only during auspicious festivities or run for the hills (not mountains, these have jagged edges) every single time we sit at a square jutting table as the writer suggests. In spring cleaning rituals, the use of sharp objects like scissors may ‘cut off’ your fortune. But I’m not aware if there’s a taboo over dining tables, boxes or HDTVs, though some Chinese may take offence towards PLANTS. In 2011, a pair of squabbling neighbours were deflecting bad luck off each other with curtain hooks and pointy leaf blades. Guess I should start checking on my neighbours’ flowers to make sure the thorns aren’t facing my doorway.  That explains the sharp pain in my skull every time I step out for work. I should also avoid walking behind people with earrings. Damn you plants and jewellery!

This fear of edges explains why wedding banquet tables are round but I haven’t seen any couple cut the cake with a truncheon (rather than a knife), signed off their marriage certs with thumbprints instead of pens, nor has anyone banished forks or bony fish from the dinner package. In fact, I don’t think one can even live without sharp edges or objects unless you live in a ballpit. As for lanterns, they have been used as skyborne vessels for well-wishes and good fortune too, not just to light up a trail for visiting spirits at a wake, something I’m sure the writer should know having visited Taiwan. But wait, maybe there IS one thing with sharp edges that every married adult should avoid during the New Year: ANG POWs. Those dreaded things can give you the most gruesome papercuts other than burning holes in your pocket and can be used in place of Ninja throwing stars. If this superstition is to be applied across the board I think we should do away not just with the scissors and other pokey things, but also over-crisp 2-dollar notes, red packets, expensive bak kwa, and give out coins, balloons and pineapple tarts instead.

Filed under: 2013, Art, Chinese New Year, Funerals/Death, Superstitions | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

We’re not ready for a world without LKY

Posted on August 10, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Singapore heaves huge sigh of relief at Lee Kuan Yew’s NDP appearance’, 10 Aug 2012, article by Melissa Aw, Yahoo News.

…In the past week, rumours swirled online and offline that the former Singapore Prime Minister’s health was fading quickly. Day by day, the speculation grew stronger and wilder.

…Although a quick check by Yahoo! at Lee’s Oxley Road house on Wednesday showed nothing out of the ordinary, rumours continued to grow online and offline. Soon, the health of Lee became a topic of national debate and the “will he or won’t he appear at NDP?” question grew into a audible chorus ahead of National Day.

Even members of the media were not immune to the frenzy.  The Straits Times’ political journalist Tessa Wong addressed the rumours on Twitter, dismissing claims of a cover-up and that Lee was alive and well.  Channel NewsAsia editor and presenter Glenda Chong also stepped up to clear the rumours on her Facebook wall on Wednesday.

Without mentioning names, she wrote, “So a lot of people have been asking me a question! He’s alive and please watch NDP tomorrow… Trust me he’s alive, otherwise I will be extremely busy!”

The reporter above was kind enough not to pose the REAL question on everyone’s minds this past week leading up to NDP. Did LKY DIE before the parade? Then there are the conspiracy theorists and their ‘body double’ explanations for his miraculous appearance. The truth turned out to be stranger than the fiction one sees in typical Dictator stereotypes or madcap movies like Weekend at Bernie’s; the old man’s still alive, though to say that such rife hearsay kept everyone tense on the edge of their seats and emitting a huge gaseous sigh of relief is probably pushing it. The nail-biting twisty climax to what appears to be a bad M Night Shyamalan political thriller is an apt image of LKY looking dapper in red, giving a victorious double thumbs up. It could have been two middle fingers instead.

Leader in Red

Don’t these internet gossips know that if they’re trying to start a fire online they’re equally likely to get burnt? Yaacob Ibrahim just added one more reason to this list of ‘Reasons to Regulate the Internet’ in his push for a Code of Conduct. But what’s interesting about the Yahoo article is not so much its content, but the title of its weblink in full:

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/spore-not-ready-for-a-world-without-lee-kuan-yew-.html

Which raises the question: What will become of us when LKY is dead and gone? Will we be like sheeps without a shepherd? A rock band without a drummer? A brothel without a mama-san? Sewer rats without the Pied Piper?

It’s not surprising that LKY has ‘used up’ one of his 9 lives before. In 2010, ex-Singaporean and now American lawyer Gopalan Nair admitted in his Singapore Dissident blog to publishing a hoax that LKY had ‘suffered from a massive heart attack’:

Even though I made up everything I said about Dear Leader about his heart attack, and none of it is true, I can assure you that the scenario that I painted assuming that he dies is completely correct.

So what scenario was Nostradamus here talking about? According to his original tall tale, ‘such a happening can destroy the business confidence and cause total destruction in the small island city state.’ There were also ‘peaceful protesters and demonstrators… holding placards reading “Democracy” and “Down With the Dictator” and chanting slogans.’ As far as I’m aware there were no ‘Hurry up and Die already’ campaigns going on in the build-up to NDP aside from the scatterbrained hullabaloo and white noise in social media. If the sources were in fact reliable, I would think most of us would have been stunned at first, but gradually come to accept and carry on with our lives. We wouldn’t be thinking of packing our bags and, like Gopalan, seek asylum in a country where you can get gunned down by madmen while watching Batman in a movie theatre or praying to your gods in a temple. In fact, Gopalan is still drilling in our heads even in the midst of this gonzo media circus that we’ll be hapless without LKY, that the stock market would plunge, and the Sing dollar would be worthless. WORTHLESS, I tell you. Woe is me!

If LKY did have a major coronary, the media would have jumped on it like a rabid coyote, as how they have done in the past reporting on the state of the elder statesman’s health from minor infections to bladder evacuations. We really didn’t need to know. Telling me that LKY was ‘ill’ before the parade is nothing new, so someone decided to up the ante and say ‘Hey, why not have him DEAD for a change?’

2011-Peripheral neuropathy (as revealed by daughter Lee Wei Ling)

2008 -Abnormal heart rhythm (article above)

2003- Prostate Surgery 

1998 – Infection arising from minor surgical procedure (SM in hospital, 23 Nov 1998, ST)

1997 – Acute respiratory tract infection (SM Lee in hospital due to infection, 7 Sept 1997, ST)

1997 – Elective evacuation of the bladder (SM Lee to undergo elective evacuation of the bladder, 11 Jan 1997, ST)

1996 – Balloon angioplasty (SM’s balloon angioplasty op a success: PMO, 16 March 1996, ST)

It’s easy to spin insensitive yarns about someone’s father and grandfather when you’re based overseas and still persist in egging LKY’s lawyers to sue you for slander, but more importantly, bad taste. Gopalan had it easy compared to Twitter users like ‘izreloaded’, who got name-dropped in the Yahoo article above as one of the perpetrators of a highly contagious rumour. But it’s one thing to plant a lie in the national psyche for your own sick indulgence, another to condemn the country into anarchy and chaos because of the demise of one man, especially if you’re not doing anything to help avert the impending end of Singapore as we know it, a ringside commentator pulling one awful joke after another. This Gopalan prophet of the coming apocalypse may have no love lost for LKY, but where’s the faith in the the rest of us? If the old man is as formidably crafty as he’s reputed to be, he would have set a series of events in motion as part of an elaborate grand scheme of command and control, to ensure that Singapore runs like clockwork centuries after his death, like how we splice a dead Nat King Cole with his daughter Natalie in an ‘Unforgettable’ duet and still make it number one on the charts.

Still, nothing bugs a nation like an dead or dying dictator/autocrat. Fidel Castro was reportedly dead (false) earlier this year, the dates of rumour-mongering occurring near two special dates for the Cuban leader, similar to how sparks flew near our very own 9th of August. Barely taking over the reins from his late father, Kim Jong Un was ‘assassinated’ by gunmen in what would have been the month of his dad’s 70th birthday. Equally ‘killed by Internet’ were Hosni Murbarak, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Suharto. This bespeaks a frivolous trend of ‘Dead Evil Leader pranking’, which plays psychological parlour tricks on our basic emotions. Rumour feeds the need to be heard, the sudden loss of a figure of stifling authority feeds our need to be free, while the stock market blips attest to our fear. What we need the most now, though, is the belief that we can carry on. With or without LKY.

And we can only hope that when the time comes, it doesn’t end up like this.

We are all doomed

Filed under: 2010, 2012, Bloggers, Festivals, Funerals/Death, Politicians, Public holidays | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Killer Ferraris on congested roads

Posted on May 15, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Gerard Ee rejects call for curbs on fast cars’, 15 May 2012, article by Ethan Lou, My Paper

MR GERARD Ee, chairman of the Public Transport Council, has rejected calls for tougher restrictions on high-performance sports cars following the fatal three-vehicle collision in Bugis involving a Ferrari.

Instead, he blamed reckless drivers and not fast cars. “Low-performance cars can also be going at 100kmh and beat the red light,” Mr Ee told my paper last night. In a post on citizen-journalism website Stomp yesterday, a netizen known as “Ban it” proposed that high-performance sports cars be banned on congested Singapore roads.

The netizen wrote: “As a small country, should we accommodate such high-performance cars on our increasingly packed roads?”

While most Singaporeans are reeling from the shocking video, others are hurling abuse at the dead PRC speedster. The reactions from Twitter are flushed with unanimous anger towards the departed, with insults like ‘bastard’ ,’Ferrari fucker’ and terms like ‘murder’ being tossed around. A case of flogging a dead horse perhaps, but anyone who has seen how the maniac smashed into the taxi with the relentless ferocity no Michael-Bay special effects could possibly match, killing two innocent people, would be tempted to think the Ferrari driver was asking for it. It adds an ironic twist to how someone once suggested that there should be a death penalty for speeding. Taxis seem to bear the brunt of sports car collisions; In April 2011 and July 2008, taxis collided with a Lamborghini and Mitsubishi Evo 9 respectively, the latter fatal for the taxi-driver involved.

The media is still milking the tragedy dry with the expected ‘mystery nightclub hostess’ angle, hoping to reap some scandalous, poetic justice out of a terrible situation for all families involved. Taking these monsters off the road won’t help matters, and nobody who could afford to drive a Ferrari would waste it by sticking to the speed limit. Like guns Ferraris don’t kill people, drivers do. Except that while most of us yield pistols, those who could afford it go for machine guns and missile launchers. This guy was freaking Rambo, and he bit the bullet hard.

It’s easy to associate Ferrari drivers with a certain ‘fast and furious’, decadently lavish, Type A lifestyle, though some loutish towkays who pick fights with random youths may own one too. In some tragic cases, the allure of  the testosterone and adrenaline cocktail that comes with driving such cars prove too much for children of FATHERS who own them (Mazda MX-5) (Teens killed in horrific Sixth Ave  car crash, 5 June 2008, ST). Still, most owners should be familiar with the temperament of their beasts and pay extra caution on the roads BECAUSE they are Ferraris, and because they’re expensive. Ma Chi could have been an experienced racer with hardly any incident during his racing streaks, no thanks to the bewildering generosity and ‘support’ from a wife who allowed her husband to sneak out with his toy in the wee hours to break the law, oblivious to how dangerous his addiction to speed is. Even the professionals on the circuit crash and burn, and maybe this isn’t really about drunkedness, the distraction of an attractive hostess/mistress, or whether PRCs can drive, but simply horrible luck; You can totally trash a sports car but still end up unhurt, while your passenger gets killed all because of you.

In 2010, Regan Lee lost control of a Mazda MX-5 during a test drive, and the car ‘flew over the road divider, smashed head-on into a black BMW, flipped over it and crashed down into a van in the other lane’ – an orgy of wanton destruction. You would have thought the guy would have been pulverised to bits, but he emerged unscathed. His female passenger, on the hand, was killed and all he got was a driving suspension. Maybe these guys were playing Stare and Drive,  like what the folks from Fast and Furious do to impress girls.

Filed under: 2012, Foreign workers, Fun and games, Funerals/Death, Motorists, PRCs, Taxi drivers, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

‘Caring Teacher’ award winner abandoning dying wife

Posted on May 12, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Baffled by award for teacher who went on trip while wife was dying’, 12 May 2012, ST Forum

(Mark Gregory Rozells): WEDNESDAY’S report (‘Caring teachers win awards’) about a teacher who received the Caring Teacher Award because he accompanied students to a competition abroad, even as his wife was dying of cancer, has left me baffled.

First, no school trip is planned and executed by one teacher alone. There is always a team of teachers for safety and contingency reasons. So how indispensable was that teacher to the trip?

Second, knowing his circumstances, shouldn’t the school’s principal have deployed another teacher to replace him?

Third, wasn’t the safety of the students on the trip a concern when the teacher rushed back to Singapore to see his wife before she died?

Lastly, what signal is the Ministry of Education sending to teachers and the public with this award? Abandon your families for your students?

The ‘caring teacher’ in question is Northland Secondary School’s Allan Yeong, whose wife insisted that he accompany the Boys Brigade Pipe Band because ‘he couldn’t let the children down’ (Caring teachers win awards, 9 May 2012). Whatever decision this teacher has made, he has lived with it for the last 5 years since her death. Without any knowledge of Mr Yeong’s personal affairs nor the exact circumstances leading to him leaving his dying wife, it probably isn’t fair to judge his actions based on what most of us would do, namely forget the pipe band and stay with the wife. The intention of the award is to recognise selfless passion, which Yeong has chosen to pursue in spite of what his wife’s family and friends may think of this untimely decision.

According to the nomination criteria for the ‘Caring teacher’ award,

A caring teacher is someone grounded in values; who cares, shares and shows concern for the academic, moral, social, emotional and mental welfare of his/her students

It doesn’t say anything about ‘sacrifice’, be it working overtime or forsaking your family to be a band chaperone. It also means you can be a total bastard and wife beater at home, but that doesn’t exclude you from becoming a ‘caring’ teacher. Or a cheat. In 2010, an ex ‘Caring teacher’ winner was sentenced to two weeks’ jail for tampering with his fuel gauge at Woodlands Checkpoint. In March this year, another award winner pleaded guilty to penetrating and molesting schoolboys, proof that being the perfect teacher doesn’t necessarily make one more humane than the rest of us. Of course, you can make a mockery of any award after winning one, but all the more scrutiny for a profession so extolled as exemplary citizens and role models as our teachers.

Going the ‘extra mile’ always comes at a cost, and it’s unfortunate that unlike past winners, the media has chosen to dig up the unsettling details of what Yeong’s ‘cost’ entails. God knows how many people have been neglected because their teacher mothers/fathers/sons/daughters have put their careers first. If we were to hear of a teacher working her butt off to the point of forgetting to feed her baby for just one night, we’d probably feel the same outrage. If every professional award were judged based on whether one’s moral conduct  at work applies to personal life, there would be no winners and there would be no point in dishing such things out at all.

Perhaps the writer has a point; that by rushing home to bid his wife farewell, the ‘welfare of his students’ was temporarily compromised. But then again, without knowing if Yeong did in fact take measures to ensure that the students were looked after in his absence, it’s rather premature to question on a technicality if he deserves this award or not, and argue based on the premise that a husband SHOULD look after his cancer-stricken wife instead of other people’s children. Maybe things just aren’t as straightforward as we think, it could have been a very painful but necessary decision for all we know. Furthermore, winners are chosen on the basis of nomination from members of the public including parents, maybe even from the parents of Yeong’s charges who voted out of gratitude/sympathy. So even if the guy lied and didn’t give two hoots about his wife, there’s nothing preventing him from winning Caring teacher of the year anyway, especially if even a sodomising pedophile can do it.

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Funerals/Death, Kids, Teachers | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

SAF regular found hanged from a rope

Posted on May 6, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Soldier found hanging from rope at Changi Airbase’, 5 May 2012, article in asiaone.com

An off-duty Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) regular serviceman was found hanging from a rope in Changi Airbase on May 5, 2012. 2nd Sergeant (2SG) Suresh S/O Seluras, 24, was a military policeman from the 608th Squadron.

An SAF ambulance with a medic went on site immediately at 9.35 am. The medic found the serviceman stiff, unconscious and without pulse and tried resuscitating him.

The death of a soldier always strikes a nervous chord with anyone with loved ones serving the army. The job of defending the nation is itself hazardous by nature, and with the risks of collapsing from 2.4 km runs or training exercises imminent, you would expect the SAF to minimise further unnecessary losses from what appears  in this instance to be an act of suicide. Headlining could be improved though; ‘Found hanging from a rope’ if read out of context could mean the poor guy was stranded on an obstacle course. If the avoidance of any speculation of suicide were intended, Today’s ‘Found dead at Changi airbase‘ would have been more precise.

Psychological trauma would be the first thing that comes to our minds, and during my own stint in NS, camp suicide was a hot topic off the rumour mill. Even if the army isn’t responsible for your troubles, the job itself is conducive for any kind of self-injury, with our boys (and some girls) having access to bullets, bayonets and barb wire. The army is also notorious for creating an endemic fear of punishment even for the most trivial offences (e.g confinements on weekends, detention), which may lead some to perceive killing themselves as an easier way out.

1971: In what appears to be the first reported army suicide, a private drank anti-rust solution because he didn’t get his promotion to lance corporal.

1979: 20 year old Cpl Tan Cheong Eyong leapt to his death over an illness diagnosed as ‘obsessive compulsive neurosis and reactive depression’. A 27 year old Provost investigator handcuffed himself before drowning off the Esplanade over girlfriend issues. AN 18 year old SAF employee training to be a CLERK plunged to her death after failing military examinations.

1980:  A female trainee leapt to her death after having to endure BMT, even complaining previously that she couldn’t bring herself to bathe in front of other female cadets. She had also signed up to be a clerk.

1981: A top SAF scholar was found hanged from a water pipe in the bathroom of Temple Hill barracks, reasons cited as ‘depression over work and personal life’. He was just 24 years old.

1990: An NS man hanged himself after causing $2000 worth of damages to a military vehicle (NS man hanged himself, 12 July 1990, ST) Anyone who has ever experienced writing statements of lost or damaged property would tell you they would rather be captured and tortured by the enemy than risk losing even the muzzle of their rifle.

1992: A 20 year old former special constable shot himself in the toilet of the central police divisional headquarters after being suspected of theft (Suicide verdict on NS man, 3 March 1992, ST). An incident that suspiciously resembles the notorious Gomer Pyle suicide scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

2009: Capt (Dr) Allan Ooi was found dead under a bridge in Melbourne, presumably unhappy over his job as a SAF doctor and having to serve a 12 year bond after landing an SAF scholarship.

Suicides aside, a mentally disturbed soldier may be a fatal hazard to others as well, with reported cases of officers gunned down by boys who simply couldn’t cope. Some form of ill treatment and discipline is always necessary in any form of regimentation, and arguments about ruggedness and mocking our fighting force as a ‘strawberry generation’ will get you nowhere, sometimes even in a heap of trouble. We’ve seen images of young men crying shamelessly on TV, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of emotional manipulation and threats that are dispensed by men in uniform and the power of authority. Don’t talk about turning ‘boys into men’ anymore, SAF. Giving our boys iPads won’t distract them from suicidal thoughts either. Just have our unwilling sons get out of it in one piece, and hopefully, with their minds intact as well.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2012, Army, Funerals/Death, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Children getting maimed by escalators

Posted on March 31, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ’4-year-old’s hand torn after being pushed down MRT escalator’, 31 March 2012, article in asiaone.com

A four-year-old boy was pushed down the escalator at Ang Mo Kio MRT station, causing his left hand to get caught in the escalator and badly injuring it. The news first broke when Ms Visa Lee, who put up a Facebook post showing a photograph of the boy’s hand torn and bloody, called for help sharing the picture to locate witnesses for the accident.

According to reports, Lucas Xie was with his brother and maid going down the escalator when he was shoved from behind. He lost his footing and landed on his left hand, which subsequently got caught when the steps of the escalator went beneath the floor, The Straits Times reported.

Escalators are public limb-guillotines, things we take so often on a regular basis that we forget what lethal slice-and-dice contraptions these can turn out to be, epitomised by one of the more gruesome deaths from the Final Destination series.

No Crocs were harmed in this movie

A series of toe mutilations occurred in 2006-2008, with people pointing fingers at rubber footwear instead of negligence on the part of the parent or playfulness/carelessness by the child. But feet trappings were already happening before Crocs became popular; In 1985, canvas shoes and shoelaces were gobbled up by escalators, almost dragging their wearers with them. Handrails, designed as a safety feature, have ironically claimed the hands of a few as well, with cleaners getting theirs stuck in the line of duty. Kids have gotten stranded while hanging on handrails on the outer side of up-escalators, or landed themselves in critical condition after monkeying around trying to climb over them. Even holding on to handrails too tightly may get you keeling over if they stop suddenly, as what happened to 4 elderly women in Punggol Plaza last year. Hands and feet aside, you could also get your HEAD stuck between escalator and wall if you’re leaning over the handrails staring at the basement below (Boy’s head stuck between escalator and wall, 19 Aug 1997, ST)

What about DEATH by escalator? In 1993, a housewife died after falling and hitting her head on an escalator in Jurong East MRT while attempting to retrieve something she dropped (MRT station death accident, 13 April 1993). A year later,  an 11 year old boy fell 3 storeys to his death off an escalator (Misadventure ruling on boy who fell off escalator, 17 Sept 1994, ST). Even if you paid extra caution to avoid those deadly gaps and teeth on escalators, there’s a chance you might perish in a freak fire still, as what happened to an escalator in Ang Mo Kio Hub in 2010. An overloaded escalator may also spell your demise, with commuters tumbling like dominoes during rush hour at Boon Lay MRT station. In 2003, 20 people were injured, including a pregnant lady, when the escalator at City Hall MRT suddenly REVERSED (Sprocket to blame, 29 May 2003, Today), an event captured in an unfortunate analogy used by then DPM Lee Hsien Loong to Pre-U students on the topic of education and career.

…We are no longer riding on an escalator, which you step onto by attaining a degree, and after that the only way is up..Once in a while the escalator stops suddenly and MOVES BACKWARDS (Pursue your passions, 4 June 2003, Today)

A similar incident happened at Bugis MRT one year later (Commuters tumble down escalator, 16 Nov 2004, ST). You could even get hurt on horizontal TRAVELLATORS; according to a Today contributor, a young boy was ‘knocked off his feet’ by rushing commuters at Dhoby Ghaut station in 2005.

If not maiming body parts or falling off them, you could also have your modesty outraged on an escalator, with dirty old men sneaking mobile phones on ‘record’ mode beneath women’s skirts. Of course, any pervert getting his kicks filming upskirts on something as dangerous as an escalator is asking for it if caught in the act by a furious victim more than willing to offer the hungry metallic beast an appendage to chomp on.

Filed under: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, 2012, Bloggers, Funerals/Death, Kids, MRT, Public works, Sex, Shopping malls | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Sumiko Tan thinks ageing sucks

Posted on February 19, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Old age is such a pain’, 19 Feb 2012, article by Sumiko Tan, Sunday Lifestyle

…Ageing sucks.

It’s not as if I were a young chick experiencing the amazing, eye-opening stages of ageing at the workshop. I’m already 48 and every year, every decade, has already brought a decline in bodily functions, not to mention physical appearance, and it’s only going to get worse.

The skin dulls, the hair loses its shine, the metabolism slows, the heart becomes less efficient, the bones shrink, the muscles weaken, digestion slows, kidneys take a longer time to remove waste, bladder becomes loose, brain cells die, memory fades, retina thins, hearing goes, teeth rot, sex drive diminishes and, baby, it’s really the beginning of the end.

One can try to cling on to youth by exercising like crazy, eating healthily, breathing slowly, driving fast cars, chasing after young women, or men, wearing sexy clothes, designer shoes, whatever.

But there’s no escaping the clutches of time and sooner than you think, you find yourself with cataracts, blindly manoeuvring hospital corridors in a wheelchair, the bottoms of your trousers rolled.

Nobody looks forward to growing old, especially Sumiko Tan. The point of her piece, despite complaining about how much ‘it sucks’ having been through some ‘Age-Friendly Workshop’ where they simulate vision and hearing impairment in particpants,  is that getting old happens to everyone, and some understanding and patience is in order, no matter how unreasonable and cantankerous seniors can be. Fresh from being pummelled online for eating shark’s fin (Some consolation for Sumiko though, President Obama drew fire for WALKING into a restaurant because they had shark’s fin on the menu), this meditation on death and dying is less likely to receive verbal incontinence from her critics. But at 48, Sumiko continues to be morbidly obsessed with age, ageing and coming to terms with grim mortality, a recurrent theme that crops up throughout the history of her writings for ST.

Here’s a timeline of Sumiko’s thoughts and confessions on ageing, by Sumiko’s age:

2009 (45 years old): From ‘Charm of a Modern Dad’, on her then friend, now husband’s love of children.

…Do you not realise how old I am, I say. I’m past my biological baby-by date.

…Why would I want to sacrifice my time, freedom, money and beautifully laundered white bedsheets to have a child, and at my age too? I’d have to suffer him or her through years of diaper changes, school exams, holiday camps, pimple outbreaks, relationship woes and demands for bigger allowances. And to top it off, he’ll be riding out his rebellious teenage years when I’m hitting 60.

Sumiko circa 2009

Sumiko circa 2008

2007 (43 years old): From ‘The Secret to a Happy Old Age‘, in response to raised retirement age.

…Basically, I’m just afraid of old age. Maybe it’s because of the way Singapore society regards the old. There is concern for them, even pity, but when a person no longer contributes economically, his value in society dives. Unless you are (or were) an important or rich person, old people tend to get short shrift.

There’s also no running away from how age brings inexorable mental and physical decline. It’s enough to sometimes make me think that it’s better to live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

2005 (41 years old): From ‘Marry him, Fann’, in response to Fann Wong marrying in her mid-thirties

Women do have sell-by dates. Women are physically less attractive as they age. Women do want to appeal to men. And having a man in one’s life is better than none.

…My theory is that 35 is the make-or-break age of a woman in the marriage market. Miss it – either through lack of choice or because you are too busy or fussy to commit – and it will take extraordinary luck or hard work for you to claw back into the market and get hitched.

And there’s more stretching throughout her entire journalistic career, too many to summarise here. But looking at her article headings alone, which is already as awkward and uncomfortable as stumbling on someone’s secret diary, a younger Sumiko did seem rather insecure and needy about ageing even in her early thirties. Perhaps it’s not just the going downhill mentally and physically that she was worried about, but the loneliness, something she doesn’t need to be concerned about much now.

2005(41 years old): ‘Will you still need me when I’m 64?’, 3 July, ST

2001 (37 years old): ‘Will I run on empty when I grow old?’, 29 April, ST

1997(33 years old): ‘When death stares you in the eye’, 19 Oct, ST, ‘The older I get, the fewer friends I have’, 18 May

1996 (32 years old): ‘Sadly, having children is no safety net for old age‘, 9 June, ST

1992 (28 years old): ‘Old folks next door’, 4 Dec, ST

1989 (25 years old): ‘Beware the consequences of looking down on the old‘, 15 Jan, ST. Here, young Sumiko defends against ‘ageism’ and misconceptions of the elderly being useless to society. She would revisit this plight of the old every now and then for the next 23 years.

So here’s a fairly recent picture of Sumiko in a wedding gown, and I’ll leave it to viewers to judge for themselves if she’s past a ‘sell-by’, ‘baby-by’, whatever-by date you want to call it.  Personally I think she doesn’t look her age at all.  Maybe the collagen from all that shark’s fin soup has something to do with it.

40-ish and 'sold'

Filed under: 1990s, 2000s, 2012, Funerals/Death | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Elder-care centres bring more deaths

Posted on February 4, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Woodlands residents worry elder-care centres in estate may mean more deaths’, 3 Feb 2012, article in asiaone.com

Residents of two Woodlands HDB blocks are worried that building an elder-care centre at their void decks may mean more deaths in the area.

Their concern comes on the heels of the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) plans to build an elder-care centre at the void decks of Blocks 860 and 861 at Woodlands Street 83.

…Upset residents from Blk 861 later sent a petition to Sembawang GRC Member of Parliament Ellen Lee voicing their opposition to the plans.

They gave eight reasons for opposing the plan, one of which was that there are not many elderly people living in the two blocks, as well as the reasons given above.

Foreseeing myself aging into a cranky old man who would rather play with jigsaw puzzles alone than burst into karaoke chorus with other old folk, I wouldn’t frequent a void deck elder-care centre myself when I qualify to use one. But to deny others of the opportunity to engage in stimulating social activities like group knitting  over ‘inauspiciousness’, when the same  people are likely to tolerate funerals in their void decks, is absurd. It’s ageism at work when the younger lot of a community do not treat our elders with the customary air of respect, but as a harbinger of death, viewing an elder-care corner not as a sanctuary from an otherwise boring and neglected existence, but a blotch on property value like a wasp’s nest in one’s basement. In fact, I’d be worried about deaths if there were no old people sitting around void decks, because otherwise they’d be at home  staring at walls, slowly emitting the smell of death and found only days after they have expired.

This obsession with all things cursed plagued Woodlands residents last year as well, with residents petitioning to replace a water tank in which a maid was murdered, in fear of consuming ‘blood water’.  Superstitions aside, it’s interesting how such facilities, which really serve as lounges for old people, have been euphemised since the idea was first conceived in the late seventies when void decks came into existence. In 1980, it was called a ‘community home for the AGED’, catering to the ‘destitute’ OLD FOLK with no one to care for them. Of course no one uses the word ‘aged’ anymore in the era of Botox and ‘active aging’, where our seniors are obliged to keep their minds active, continue to play a part in society and forget that they are all shrivelled up, wrinkly, wear dentures and incontinence pads, but can still boogie as well, if not better, than you. Today, people use ‘aged’ only on people who are a few days away from corpse status. The fact is using nice terms won’t make them look any less younger or die later, nor does it make ageing any more pleasurable or less inevitable.

Later in the eighties, ‘homes’ became ‘senior citizen clubs’, which means it’s not just a secure holding area for the elderly anymore, but a place with actual ‘activities’, of which you are a valued ‘member’ of the community. The first ‘day-care’ centre as we know it today was known as the ‘Henderson SOCIAL centre for Senior Citizens’, with its own mini-gym of sorts. In 2000, day-care centres adopted ‘resort styles’ with bingo and mahjong to entertain seniors. I wouldn’t be surprised if they serve up alcohol-free Mai Thais as a welcome drink. The authorities weren’t satisfied with these centres just being satellites of old folk’s homes or rehab centres anymore. With all the fancy naming and sprucing going on, these oldies better HAVE FUN and MAKE FRIENDS while at it. Perhaps that’s the whole point, with a name like ‘elder-care’ and ‘senior’s club’, most of us would ASSUME that our old folks are well taken care of and don’t need our pampering and attention anymore.

Not all’s gloom and doom for senior citizens’ corners these days, for society has imparted on the arthritic and grey-haired an aura of upbeat optimism, an unshakable determination to live their silver years to the fullest, and never has this manufactured, escapist denial of death and loneliness been more prevalent as it is  today. Which is fine by the way, and I may even embrace the illusion when my time comes, though no matter how much one transforms void decks into paradises on Earth as a psychic substitute for sedatives and real family, it wouldn’t soothe the pain of having to face inflated medical and hospitalisation bills, a misery which all the bingo, karaoke and rubber ball squeezing in the world can do nothing about.

Filed under: 1980s, 2012, Funerals/Death, HDB, Superstitions | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

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