The Earth is this huge spherical blob of mass in an otherwise wide expanse of nothingness, but today, it felt considerably smaller, more accessible, more claustrophobic. Within the span of ten minutes, while I was out, I bumped into three different people, all of whom were at some point, and some still are, my commanders. It's funny how we don't talk to each other much in base, but when we're out, everything just spews out. It's as though everyone's trying to make up for that lost time, where everyone had to act within their capacity as commanders, as leaders, as men and as followers. Norman and Nian Phong were from base, whereas Leslie was on leave despite being an instructor back in Changi Naval Base. If it weren't for this accidental bump, I would never have known that Norman and Nian Phong would be starting school in January, one doing law, the other economics, whereas Leslie would be reading accountancy at NUS.
The reason we all managed to find each other in Kinokuniya was because Shawn and I were there hunting for books after our very wonderful and filling lunch buffet at Cafe Brio @ Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. The seafood buffet was glorious, filled with tiger prawns and clams and salmon fillet, and other mouth-watering dishes. The desert table was just stacked precariously with shot glasses of the most sweetest of deserts I felt as though I was Alice In Wonderland. Speaking of which, I found the English literary classic book illustrated by Yayoi Kusama I think I found the perfect gift for someone I know.
After parting ways with Norman and Nian Phong, because Leslie was with his other group of friends, Shawn and I made our way around and lo and behold, Typo was having a sale, and knowing me, anything eclectic and pretty catches my eye, and I made out of the store with buys that I reasoned would be used when I'm staying in hostel next year. Come to think of it, a lot of my buys have been boxed carefully with the idea that they would be used next year, for when I rejoin society again.
While walking around, Shawn enlightened me on the whole debacle that's happening right now, of which I have no idea that something like that could warrant such an intense reaction from the public. I mean, if half the wacky, obnoxious things I said were made known to the public, it'd probably end up with me at the stakes ala the Salem Witch Trials. Shawn and I parodied what the post could have been had it been directed to the different races and we channelled our inner-most Singaporean hillbillies and the results were so outrageously crazy, we threw caution to the wind. The things we said, it could only remain between the two of us.
But on a more serious note, and everyone seems to have an opinion about it, I honestly believe that the lady should not have been fired from her job. Everyone, at some point of time or another, must have said something insensitive but nothing to the point of it being labelled as a 'seditious' act. The lady was just dumb enough to have it posted on her Facbook account. As a society, we should be better than this, and we should be able to sieve out the fact that she was merely complaining about the noise, but had decided to include other reasons, which might I add, were not completely false. Goodness me, have we not seen the statistics of the divorce cases in Singapore?
This whole debacle serves only one purpose, and what it does is that it magnifies the Singapore society's gravitation towards a witch hunt. We love massacring one individual and time and time again it has happened; the most recent one being that girl who called NSFs weak. Personally, I feel we could all be better than this. We count ourselves as a forward society, but when the time calls for us to be one, we easily turn our backs and we return to the age old tradition of pointing the blame at someone else. We need to learn to differentiate between callous remarks and remarks that could really divide a society, and I feel that there are other things out there, more pertinent issues, that are so blatantly divisive, yet no one addresses them, simply because they are the ones rooted from the top-down. Everyone knows about them, yet no seems to question them. Instead, we go all out to bring down this one lady who made an insensitive, not completely untrue remark, about a specific group of people. What a society we live in!
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