Category: Rants

Commentary – No To Rape Petition

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WARNING: Opinions expressed in this post WILL BE offensive to some.

A friend showed me a petition on “No To Rape” addressed to our Prime Mini$ter.

The intention behind this is certainly noble, and indeed I am against men with a high sex drive treating their wives like an object to vent their lust. However, in view of the protection granted to women under the Woman’s Charter, the repeal of Section 375(4) in particular would put all married men in Singapore at a complete disadvantage. It’s repeal would be the equivalent of the complete capitulation of men in Singapore to women. It will leave all married men in Singapore completely vulnerable.

First of all, consider the possibility of a wife, after having sex with her husband, then turns around and accuses him of rape. Next, consider the scenario of a man who is denied sex by his wife for long periods. What avenue does a man have to satisfy his desires? Go to a prostitute? Keep a mistress? Or have a tryst with some other female companion? The main problem is, if he is caught by his wife, she can then file for divorce under the grounds of adultery. And guess what is going to happen to the poor man under the Woman’s Charter? In the worse case scenario, he could easily lose half his wealth.

So what can a man really do when the wife denies him sex? He can’t get it outside so he’s left with doing it himself. But another friend told me that a woman can actually accuse her husband for ’emotional torture’ if she catches him watching pornography and masturbating. The best part is that this can also be grounds for divorce!

While it is true that a husband can also file for divorce on the grounds that his wife refuses to consummate the marriage, the wife’s lawyer will then portray him as a inconsiderate sex crazed demon, since the wife has to work and have other ‘wifey duties’ to perform too. It doesn’t matter whether the man may have just asked for it once a week, month, quarter or year at all. After all, there is nothing to justify how much sex is excessive!

In fact, someone (I believe it was a particular Dana Lam) who said this ‘rape is the violent cover up for men’s inadequacies’. A logical question to that remark would be how much sex and what manner of sex would then be considered adequate just so men will not to resort to rape to cover it up? Perhaps Dana and women like her should agree on that and have the specifics stick into some law themselves and have the men abide by it. Indeed, the women, and not the men should be doing that, because a blog post on “No To Rape” lambasted President Kazai of Afghanistan for ‘entitling men to sexual access to their wives bodies every four days’ as legalising legal rape.

So consider this, there is now no legal grounds left for the man to actually obtain sex from his wife! Meantime, the dire consequences as a result of the Woman’s Charter, places the ‘alternatives’ of obtaining sex elsewhere undesirable. Even jerking off in your own study room to a porn movie or in the toilet can be grounds for divorce. What’s there left for married men in Singapore except the misery of a ‘sexual desert’?

I am NOT for marital rape nor am I trying to protect those who commits marital rape. To be frank, I am single so this probably doesn’t affect me now, even though it might possibly affect me later should I choose to get married. In fact, had there not been laws that already created a prior imbalance (as a result of the Woman’s Charter) I would be all for the petition. A pastor once said to us wife beaters are demon possessed – a husband gotta be beating his wife before he rapes her – and I am all for punishing them.

However, with the Woman’s Charter in place, any man who is invited to sign this petition should hold their horses. A man should take some time to consider the prevailing conditions, really understand what he is signing up for, and think really hard how that is going to impact him later.

Remember, these days it is not always the husband that is abusive and unless a more comprehensive, gender-neutral laws against marital violence is written, the repeal will place every married man in Singapore (not just Singaporeans) at a disadvantage. Signing this petition under the prevailing conditions is almost akin to an unconditional surrender. Should you sign it, your only alternative maybe to leave Singapore forever, just so you don’t end up on the business end of such laws.

Gadget Review:
Nicole – Review: Samsung Jet

Funny Picture of the Day:

Commentary – SMRT To Reinforce No Drinking / Eating On Trains

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Some friends were discussing on Twitter the recent decision by SMRT to reinforce no drinking / eating regulation on their trains. I believe this is enforced not just on the trains, but also the station platforms, and all of the ‘restricted area’ – i.e. the area leading to the platform after you tap your card.

What is interesting, is that some commuters readily embrace this, and go so far to even suggest that people sucking on a sweet (or lozenges) or drinking plain water should be punished as well.

Before I talk about these people, I would like to say the sudden decision to reinforce this regulation is the result of several conditions. First of all, SMRT has lowered fares recently and need to make up for their ‘income loss’. While they had attempted to adjust their usual ‘elastic schedule’ to try and squeeze more commuters (and thus, income) per train, this had led to an outcry from commuters. There is now a group called ‘I don’t like to squeeze on the MRT’ on Facebook.

Next, the inconsiderate commuters, such as the one who ate an apple in the station daily, and then leave the core on the platform benches, must have pissed off some SMRT staff to no end. On top of that, all the photos posted to STOMP now gave SMRT the perfect excuse / pretext for reinforcement. Of course, they need to pay also for all that advertisement with Phua Chu Kang tell people to give way to alighting passengers and to give up their seats to more needy passengers.

Thanks to these sheep, as my friend Ridzuan called them in a comment to my mei Nicole, there is now yet another thing to make our already hardly enjoyable MRT rides even worse. Though personally speaking, with the trains being so packed I would like to see how SMRT can get their staff to patrol the trains to enforce this regulation!

Anyway, Ridzuan is clearly too kind. I would have called them monkeys, because these Singaporeans reminded me of a ‘monkey experiment’ I read about a long time ago. It goes like this. Three monkeys were put in a cage, and a passage will lead to another section in which there is some food – peanuts or bananas. Whenever a monkey moves through the passage to grab the food on the other side, water will spray onto the section where the other two monkeys remained – to their immense annoyance. After awhile, the monkeys that were repeatedly sprayed, figured out that this has something to do with the other monkey’s actions. And they forcefully restrained the other monkey from doing so, at times even resorting to violence. These monkeys knew and understood why this law in place.

The scientists then removed a monkey and put in a new one, and now turned off the water spray. Without an prior experience of the situation, this new monkey quickly tried to cross the passage to grab the food, which the other two remaining monkeys promptly beat the new one up, even though no water now sprays on them. When all three monkeys stopped attempting to grab the food on the other end of the passage, yet another one of the old monkeys are removed, and again the situation repeated itself. Surprisingly, the monkey that hit the hardest is always the new joiner – which had exactly no clue why it was beaten. The experiment thus repeated itself until none of the monkeys has any idea why there’s this law in place. Now, anyone who tried to cross the passage to grab the food is simply beaten up promptly.

What is my point on talking about this experiment? The point is that there is something called the Spirit of the Law – where you understand why it is enforced, and the Word of the Law – where you understand what it says, but not necessarily the reason or the rational behind it. Neither do you give a damn why it is there and you probably enjoyed it when you see a person punished by it.

In my opinion, the spirit of the no-eating and drinking regulation was meant to keep the trains clean. SMRT will spend a lot to clean up the crumbs of food or stains from colored drinks, to prevent an infestation of ants and cockroaches. The idiots who are the usual whining STOMPERS probably have no clue about this, since I recall seeing some complaints about someone drinking a bottle of… plain water! These monkeys just whined about anyone eating or drinking on the trains – even when these people have not dirtied the trains. Granted, people will take it for granted if the regulation is not enforced, and we might soon find ourselves with a huge pest infestation on our trains, but my point is that some moderation is required when enforcing it – with the spirit of the law in mind. For example, people sucking on a lozenge because of a sore throat / cough, or a mother pacifying the baby with a bottle of milk is excusable.

Talking about wailing babies, my personal advice is that one should bring earplugs in the future, since you probably get more of them on the trains in the future, as a result of mothers not allowed to feed their babies on the trains / platform. Keep a look out for news of babies rushed to hospital because mothers tried to force them to drink more milk than necessary before they rushed onto the trains too.

By the way, since eating on trains is an offense and it deserved a fine, will there soon be an award the good Samaritan who gives up his seat for an old man or a pregnant lady, for example?

Funny Picture of the Day:

Anti-Social Media: tweet.sg

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This is NOT yet another post to bash tweet.sg for the recent decision the owner has made.

My mei nicole brought to my the attention this blog post on tweet.sg. For those who have no clue what tweet.sg is, it is a free service that allows Singapore Tweeters to update their Twitter page by sending an SMS to a local Singapore number.

I have not used tweet.sg before, though I have caught glimpses of it on wall updates on Facebook. For e.g.

From what I have gathered, it all began with some complaints about the (long?) lag time between the SMS-Twitter update. This then slowly degenerated into some sort of flame war between Jym Cheong, the person who built the system, and some users over tweet.sg’s Twitter.

I took a look at the site, and while I do find a few ad units on it, the commercial benefits coming from them would be negligible, since most users will likely have visited the site at most a few times, to find out how to use the service, and probably never to return other than to check whether the service is down when their sms did not appear in Twitter. If there was any intention to take it commercial subsequently, I would have no confidence whatsoever with the business model. As such, I have to agree with Jym Cheong that there is little incentive to operate this system. In short, he has all the right in the universe to ban from his system anyone who is unhappy with the free service, and / or makes a direct personal attack on him.

It was a rather simple and straight forward matter with really nothing much to talk about. Yet, that was not to be. Apparently even the people who have stopped using his service, or has nothing to do with the quarrel at all now joined the fray – in the holy name of the ‘this is an example of what you shouldn’t do on social media’. *Yawn*

So I read on and from the chatter of some of the people I do follow on Twitter, it appears that an allegedly new face in the Public Relations (PR) industry has joined the fray in attacking Jym Cheong. This is in spite of the fact that her friend, who runs a well known blog aggregator in Singapore (and according to some sources, allegedly has full intentions of selling his site) has often handled the same way, people who directly criticise the blog aggregator itself, or disagrees with his unspecified users policies. (The only difference, as a friend pointed out, was that the blog aggregator’s admin would simply kick you out of his service unceremoniously and quietly.)

Again that was really nothing to complain about – his service, his rules – though some of us in our own follies did still complain and earned ourselves the eternal enmity of admin of the blog aggregator. And I certainly don’t recall the new face in the PR industry having an issue with that. I am puzzled by the blatant hypocrisy double standards applied to this matter. Again, I seem to recall that some the users banned in the blog aggregator were also criticising her as she was then holding some position there. It is then quite understandable why her position is now completely different regarding two similar matters. (By the way, it also reminded me that she is also quite dismissive of many things Singapore – like Singlish, our way of life, etc, which you can find glimpses of it on her blog. It surprises me that someone who held my nation with so much contempt did not already leave and yet shamelessly continue to enjoy the hospitality and employment opportunities my nation provides.)

Beyond her, some self styled social media ‘guru’ (who according to RSNA – aka RoadSide News Agency – is allegedly still jobless half a year after graduation, and had once boasted that graduates from his varsity makes the most money after graduation) has also jumped into the fray. What is most interesting, was that this same ‘guru’ who now bashes tweet.sg, has seemingly applauded the similar action taken at the blog aggregator last year too. He even gone so far to say that the departure of some users has actually ‘improved the standard’ of postings there.

But just like he has been wrong about his self importance, he has also been wrong on this account. Several months later he whined about how things has really gone south at the blog aggregator.

Subsequently, instead of helping to make things better, he beat a hasty retreat. Clearly, the so-called ‘guru’ has failed to see the fact that the so-called naysayers were actually the mainstay of a group who has been keeping the very posts that so disgust him in check.

Looking at just how wrong he has been in this past incident, and then how wrong he has been in jumping on the bandwagon to make a fuss out of tweet.sg’s predicament, I personally am not surprised that he has remained among the ranks of the unemployed for so long. Then again, perhaps all the current jobs available on the market are all ikan bilis (aka small salted fishes), and he is just waiting for the dream job befitting of his imagine stature and clout on the Internet.

Anyway, this incident once again reminded me that social media in Singapore is really a freak (怪胎). Where in overseas it is meant as a platform to benefit the general public, in Singapore it has evolved into nothing more than a private playground of cabals that would jump on anything to promote their own agenda, or to bring themselves into the limelight. It is an avenue for them to create some personal influence and good ideas are sometimes torn up by these people in the process, simply because when they aren’t ‘in’, then whoever who didn’t include them in these ideas are ‘out’ and ruthlessly destroyed.

And if you think you can try to be ‘in’, it’s not so easy either. Some of these individuals already think of themselves as ‘somebody’, and their guideline on how to treat people in real life is thus based on how much they value the imagined online clout of the person.

Indeed, to some of these individuals, bloggers or people who are considered to have nothing much to offer or to contribute to the personal agenda are ignored. These people may breathe and talk much about social media, but they never do the real thing.

If you want to know who these people are, keep your ears open. Sooner or later you will pick up complaints from certain bloggers such as: when you follow this person on Twitter, he / she don’t even get a follow back. Ask around and you might even hear bloggers complaining about not even getting so much of even a proper hi and greeting in a real life function from certain individuals! You can always keep an eye on who are excluded or ignored by certain social media personalities and check out their blogs and the conclusion why it is so, is really not hard to imagine.

That shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anybody. After all, once they have already written someone off in their minds, there isn’t really any necessity for them to spend more time on that individual. But don’t be too happy for those who are now still considered valuable. I shudder to think about their fate, once their usefulness in furthering the agenda of such individuals has… expired.

Well, I am a nobody in social media or blogosphere anyway, so take my complaints with a pinch of salt. After all, I am quite certain some people will be telling you: ‘This guy is just whining because he wants in and simply not getting it. Just look at his piece of shit blog.’

Right. As if I am hard up for any of these events at all!!

Funny Picture of the Day:

Assistance Request:

Commentary – Sharing an opinion on the Internet

16 comments

It was an innocuous question posted on Plurk by Vandalin:

You see a man and woman arguing on the street, and the guy starts grabbing the girl and shaking her around. Step in / don’t step in?

It was my basic assumption from the question that the two are in a relationship. As such, I had posted my reply that I will not step in. My participation in that plurk would have been just that much, until I decided I should explain my reasons for not stepping in (perhaps more than once) – People have to live with the consequences of their choices. The girl would have to live with the consequences of her choice of the guy. Since she has chosen this guy, this is part of the package. Among the responses to the Plurk, there was another person who also took a similar stand as mine (though without being as detailed in her response) and yet got no flak at all while two other people also mentioned they would not intervene, with one jokingly suggested that the couple may just be doing this deliberately for some reasons.

Why my rather thoughtless comment created a maelstrom which soon I get sucked for I really have no idea. I can’t help but feel I was picked on and singled out, after I was subsequently told by a friend that the entire group of them were already acquainted with one another from the already once notorious Cowboy Bar – which at some point in the past was an online wretched hive of scum and villainy. But if you asked how I felt about the entire event, it was like I had stepped on some dog poo and then the dog poo ensured I was engulfed in a foul stench for the entire duration it stuck to me.

However, I must admit I did not expect the comment not to sit well with some female plurkers. I should have expected it since my female friends would have expect me to offer help if they are in that situation. However, there is a distinct difference between friends and strangers. Either way, one particular female plurker who objected to my reasons simply said she had expected that I should help because I can, regardless of how silly or stupid it will make me look. I am expected to act right there and then because I won’t get a second chance – if something happens. She strongly objected to my stand that it was her own problem and no one should do anything based on the ‘conditions’ (or available information) stated in the original question. The other female Plurker thought it was appalling that there are still people who believed like I did. (When was the last time she got out to the real world?)

It was then alluded that I am the kind who felt that if a woman is violated, I would blame her for wearing a short skirt or exposing clothing. It was an amazing and insane extrapolation from a comment I had made, and yet they could not, and obviously has not, done the same for the situation described in the question. For e.g.

  •   – the girl might be a shop lifter, the shopkeeper caught up with her and so he turned her around and in his rage shakes her, demanding to know where she had hid the item; or

  •   – the guy could be a brother, the girl is on high on drugs. Desperate, the brother was turning her and shaking her to try and wake her up; or

  •   – the guy was begging the girl not to leave him after she made the decision to break up; or

  •   – the girl could be a prostitute who stole the money of her client while he was showering, and the guy is now confronting her after he caught up with her.

It also doesn’t matter that some women will not leave some scum even after repeatedly hurt. Granted we’ll never know what is going on unless we asked, but I was answering a question based on the known conditions. As far as I am concerned, if it happens in the public the girl will call for help if it is needed. When she hasn’t or wouldn’t call for help – even when I give the guy a stare for his obviously ungentlemanly actions – then it warranted no further action until some form of physical violence has occurred, for e.g. slapping, or the throwing of a punch. It was also an indication that she could handle it alone. On top of which if she doesn’t know how to shake the guy lose and seek help, then it was obvious to me that she didn’t need it. If there are other guys who believed it warranted action, that is fine by me, and everyone is free to choose whether to help or not.

The exchange with these two female plurkers isn’t bad at all, after all their objection was understandable. It was the comments of some of those who joined later, and start poking fire with nothing meaningful to contribute to the exchange other than to throw insults and comments meant to pick a fight that was the real nuisance.

What transpired in that plurk (and some other online arguments) reminded me once again that to local netizens just expressing their objection is not enough, they want to deny me my views completely. While doing so they also expect my complete submission no matter what my reasons and justifications to my views were. The more I say, the more they can expand on it to ‘justify and confirm’ the superiority of their stand, their self-righteousness and their pre-conceived low opinion of me simply because I do not share their views, and will not do what they think is the right thing to do. Perhaps it has got something to do with our education system

Such occurrences, makes me wonder at time whether it is worth it at all to share an opinion online since some people apparently allows no different opinion other than their own simply because they think your opinion is stupid or unacceptable. It doesn’t matter they weren’t the one who asked for opinions in the first place, and no one has even cared to object to them. It also suggests to me why online opinion can be so single-sided against our government gahmen while election results – even in Single Member Constituencies – turned out drastically different: pro-gahmen or even neutral opinions are simply shouted down and drowned out until those who shared them can’t be bothered anymore.

It was simply nothing more of an exercise of ‘conform or die’. For my entire life, I have never backed down from a**holes like these and I always choose to go down fighting even in spite of whatever names and labels they can conceive. The irony is that they wouldn’t even see themselves as some kind of cyberspace terrorists while they were enjoying their cyber-bullying. Of course, knowing that they could take things as far as they can without any real life repercussions, embolden some of these trolls to be as nasty as they could. Until the day their real life and identity gets splashed all over the Internet with their online action tied to it, will these online cowards finally know fear.

It once again reminds me why the gahmen has never held Internet opinion with in high regard. Our elected leaders may have been elitist, but rightfully so, after looking at the very childish behavior of some of the netizens, such as those I have encountered above.

A different reality

2 comments

I joined the workforce in January 1995, and it’s been almost 14 years since then, where I moved from the manufacturing sector into IT Support. I learn over the years, that some colleagues remained colleagues, some I choose to forget the moment either they or I leave the company, some are extremely good drinking and / or partying buddies yet terrible colleagues, and some become good friends where we share ideas and talk about almost everything under the sun. In my world, everybody is let all the way past my defenses until they have proven themselves to be scheming, self-centered or conniving little a**holes.

So it was not long ago, I had a discussion after work on the way to the Clarke Quay MRT station with one of my colleagues and a friend over the matter of two other colleagues who are at loggerheads with one another. He then told me that he wasn’t surprised that has happened since these two other colleagues stood at the opposite of the spectrum. One is friendly to almost everyone, while the other has on one occasion mentioned, “There are only colleagues, and friends.” Meaning, these two categories are mutually exclusive of one another.

It was sometime later when I did a recap on that conversation, when I suddenly remember not too long ago I had tried to add another colleague (not the same one who made that comment) to Facebook, and I received an interesting reply that goes like this:

Ey, sorry. Just have this weird policy of not adding current collegues to facebook. Nothing personal however. 🙂

And thus I am ‘inducted’ into the stark reality of some people’s worlds. A reality in which existing colleagues are never considered as friends, and colleagues and friends are mutually exclusive. A world in which they compartmentalise different sections of their lives and keep them from one another. While there is nothing wrong with such a view, it comes into conflict with mine. While I would not openly and actively object to people living by such principles – they are of course entitled to it – there is nothing to stop me from subjecting them to their ‘realities’ based on my definitions and understanding of it.

I may never know who else lived by these principles, but those who are known to live by them will now be subjected to my understanding of such a ‘reality’, where under my scope of work they are nothing more than a ‘client’ and nothing else.

A ‘client’ is less than even a colleague, since I defined colleagues as not a person working in the same company but only those in the same department. Since I am in IT Support, a ‘client’ would therefore refers to any user who calls us for support.

While their view may work to compartmentalise their lives and keeps them from getting hurt or backstabbed by other people, it also cuts the other way. After all, it is of no surprise why no one else would treat them better than a colleague (or in my case a ‘client’). They can blame no one but themselves for not making an effort for making it better.

I do not have to object to it, but only choose to subject them to the principles they swear by. Now, they can just die by it… quietly. Don’t complain if I treat them terribly along with the usual IT Morons I already despised.

Die, by the very sword you wield.

Recommended Reads:
ZDNet Blogs – Apple Faithful: Arrogance Is Not a Virtue, and Why I Will Never Buy a Mac
凉心栈: 为老人做得足够吗？

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