Paul Walker, 40. The good looking white guy from the Fast and Furious movies. Quintessentially Californian. That's all I knew about him. Frankly, I don't think I saw any of the films. Maybe some bits of no.1 and no.4? Never really appealed to me. After news of his death broke, I found out he had a teenage daughter. That was a wow moment. He died in a fast car, not so wow and a little insanely apt. Come on, everyone thought so. That's it.
Nelson Mandela, 95. If you're born in the late 1990s and wasn't African, perhaps news about this legend may have slipped you by. His struggle against apartheid stands alongside what Gandhi did for India and Martin Luther King did for civil rights in the US. He resisted. He stood firm and soaked up the years of anger his people felt and spat it back out at the white South African government and their segregation policies. It seemed insane such a policy yet it stood for a long long time. Growing up I knew he was in prison. Robben Island. Prisoner 46664. There was news (in Singapore) almost every week coming out of Soweto. Beatings and shootings. It was bad, horrific even. I remember images of necklacing (burning someone trapped in a petrol soaked tyre). It stunned me how people so angry could do that to someone else. What was this apartheid? Why did it make people do horrible things? Mandela was set free in 1990 and went on to become South Africa's president in 1994. He retired later. I somehow felt he wasn't ready for a long political life. He just wanted to help people. He said some pretty interesting things though:
- "No one is born hating another person because of the color of your skin, or his background, or his religion … if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love."
- "I do not deny, however, that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the Whites."
- "Having resentment against someone is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy."
- "We know too well our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
Thank you for your sacrifices and letting us believe in something better.
Yeoh Quanhui, 30 something. Quanhui was a girl I met in NTU. She joined my hostel I can't remember when, 1998 maybe. She was a junior and she definitely too part in the orientation camp. She was in my hall threatre group Hexis when we did the pirate musical. I remember her bubbly nature, always cheerful and smiling, a positive disposition. We were acquaintances rather than friends and it was mostly a hi and bye relationship. I bet she made some good friends in uni, given her amiable self and good nature. Earlier this week, I got a Facebook message that we passed away. Cancer. It is news like this that gets your heart and mind in a weird tizzy. Someone you know and met has died. It is not something one can dismiss or compartmentalise so easily. It also quickly grounds you to the reality of existence. It is beautiful but fragile. It is cliche to say every moment should be lived to the fullest. Isn't that the truth though? How lucky are you to be living and breathing? Maybe we would not know because we cannot know the opposite.
Quanhui's Facebook page says she married. I am happy that she knew a strong enough love to commit to someone. I am sad that her family has to endure her demise, especially for someone young and effervescent. I hope she was the same till her departure.
I am glad that our paths crossed. May we celebrate her life and spirit.
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