[Life in Singapore...]
There are three things I want to cover in this entry.
First: Yusry's latest entry is about a post he saw on Sammyboy. I don't visit Sammyboy, so I was seeing the post for the first time. I'm going to reproduce it below, because it sums up how I feel about NS, and sometimes life in Singapore in general. I changed the interesting parts to bold.
If I have a son in Sinkeepoor he will have to serve NS. Why must I be so cruel to force an innocent man to go through such a mind-numbing, self-deprecating, emotionally unfulfilling and socially stagnating experience? In NS the poor young chap will learn nothing at all. He will only learn to tolerate rude and brash superiors, endure the meaningless drills and tekan sessions, and forced to do all kinds of stupid, senseless things just to make his officers look good.
Worse of all when he ORD, he finds himself discriminated against by callous traitors who would rather hire a foreigner because an FT has no reservist liability. Then he finds that putting his own life and limb to defend his own nation is not something he can be proud of, but is something that is a liability to his own livelihood. He is being treated as a second class citizen in his own country that he was forced to swear to lay down his life for in times of war. He is putting his own head on the chopping board so that foreigners can enjoy the fruits and spoils of his (almost) free labour without compensating him anything in return.
He sacrificed 2-2.5 years (edit: it's just 2 years now) of his precious youth, then followed by a 13-year (edit: it's 10 years now) reservist cycle, and in return his girlfriend is molested by Bangala workers during New Year celebrations, he finds that his job is taken by FTs who don't have to do NS or put their lives on the line in times of national emergency, and he is seen by the PAP as just a digit, a statistic that can be milked for what it's worth and then expended and thrown away when useless.
Why should I bring a child into the world to suffer this fate. If I ever have kids I will migrate first. The pink IC is not different from the seal scorched onto the heel of cows and cattle to mark them.
The post is worded kinda strong, and I don't agree with all of it, but I feel some of it is quite true. Remove all the politically-correct filters instilled in your heads by...You know who....And think about it. Is it wrong? Or is it just...True?
There was a thread on HWZ's EDMW about the article published in the papers about the Finnish guy who came here to escape from the high taxes in his country (conveniently published as GST was increased to 7%), someone in the thread suggested making all the "foreign talent" perform NS. Then we'll see how many of them would still come to Singapore. A letter in today's Forum drew an apt comparison: Singaporeans who emigrate are called "quitters". Foreigners would were not good enough to represent their own countries at the sport of their choosing migrate here to represent Singapore instead, and we call them "foreign talent".
This issue is not going to go away anytime soon. Recently there has been a lot of grumblings in the Forum section of the local papers about it, from bursaries and scholarships to sporting achievements to NS liabilities. The powers that be need to wake up and smell the dissent. They can spin it however they want, but sooner or later, it's going to blow up in their faces.
Second: I've been moody of late. I realise that my mood usually changes before I realise the reason for it. I need to take a step back, think about it before I know what's really bothering me. I haven't done that for a while, and the vile feelings inside of me has been accumulating. Coupled with some very bad/disturbing dreams for the past 2 days, things came to a boiling point last night.
I lost it. I absolutely lost it.
The last time this happened was when I was in Army and was under tremendous stress. But at that time, I just shouted bloody murder and that was it. Last night, it was blind rage. Now I finally know what blind rage is. It's when you loose all control, and just needed to erupt. I knew I was losing it as I was losing it. Isn't that funny? It was a good thing the person I was angry at did not really retaliate. If he did, I'd probably have gone over and be physically violent with him. I know I kid about this a lot, but I really think I would have gone over and come to blows with him, especially since he did challenge me to.
I'm not sorry for my actions. It felt great. I'm not completely over my rage yet. As I type this, I can feel it coming back. I guess there's only so much you can take. I've been taking it for almost 25 years. Couple that with how lousy I felt recently, something had to give.
It did give me some satisfaction to find out that the incident that sparked off the whole episode was not my fault at all. He jumped to the wrong conclusion. But I realised that wasn't what I was really angry at, hence the anger still burns....
But I finally found out what's been bothering me. It's ironic...I realised what it was when I read something on another blog. What I read...Was something I already knew. It's something that's pretty much beyond my control. No, not the whole NS-reservist thing. I'm pissed about that, but not that pissed. My whole life, I've always wanted to be in control. Whenever I'm not, I get edgy. I try to regain control. This time round, I can't. Guess I just gotta deal with it. One day at a time.
Third: Keith caught me on MSN as I was composing this entry. He passed along a link of an incident on a bus.
The story went like this: The Indian guy did not have enough money for his fare. The bus driver said something racist. The rest of which, you saw in the video. The video didn't show the bus driver saying anything racist, and didn't clue us in as to whether the Indian guy had money for his fare or not. All we know was that the bus driver asked the Indian guy to "scan his card", and he got mad. What the video did show, was criminal intimidation on the part of the Indian guy.
from the looks of it, it seems the indian guy didnt want to tap his ezlink card... thats why u keep hearing, 'scan card' he was saying something like he has money in his pocket.. whtever.
^^^ posted by Anonymous @ Thu Nov 23, 01:39:00 PM.
Hmmm, that's life. Life is never fair, there are a lot of things which we can't control. We can try to change some parts of it to make ourselves feel better but yet there are a lot which we can't.
Don't be too hard on yourself dude. Keep your cool and "zhuan nian" and you'll feel better... Or mayb you can talk with ur sis too. :)
^^^ posted by Anonymous @ Sat Nov 25, 11:28:00 AM.
Broken for now. :( If anyone knows of a good way to display tweets without using Twitter's awful looking widgets, please let me know. Preferably something that allows me to retrieve my tweets in plain-text format.
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30 year old male. Always with too many ideas in his head and too little time. For my 15 minutes of fame, I want to be a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman.
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