3 Lives Departed In A Forthnight - Paul Walker, Nelson Mandela and Yeoh Quanhui

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. 

After The Riot We Must Reflect On Our Clueless Selves

I was watching TV, We Bought A Zoo just ended and I was channel surfing before thinking about going to bed. A Whatsapp message came in "Riot in Little India". My reaction was whattt?! I flipped channels to Channel News Asia, perhaps the only other time I tuned to CNA after the local elections reports that I had done so. Lo and behold, pictures of Indian men whacking a bus, vehicles on fire, people running helter skelter. This can't be right, this is Singapore. But there it was, bedlam in the middle of town. 

I never really used the term "Little India" except to refer to the train station there. It's always been Tekka. I never saw the words "Little India" used so often before last Sunday night. 

Twitter and Facebook bore the brunt of the corresponding Internet frenzy and videos were simultaneously going up on YouTube as we gawked dismayed at the barebone news trickling from the TV. In fact, CNA was used the social media reports for their coverage because it hard to get someone close to the ground. 

The videos were frightening by Singapore standards. Come on, these things are enjoyed on the big screen, not in real life, for us sheltered folks. A mob flipped a police car over. An ambulance sped of. Then a fire engine sped off. The same mob tried to flip another police car. Another car or bus was on fire. An ambulance was set ablaze. Projectiles were being thrown. It was hard to fathom this reality. Video

At about half past midnight I decided to turn in. I hoped no one died. There were unconfirmed news that policemen were seriously hurt. 

Details were clearer the next day. A foreign worker was run over by a bus and his friends turned fiends and wrecked the place. People were likely drunk. It seemed that the police weren't that prepared because it took them a while to quell the violence. 

What was more interesting was the online reaction. There were comments of shock, some of hope, others praising the police and civil defence workers, and some just racist with lots of finger pointing. Then there was reaction to the xenophobia, condemning the shallow and narrow minded points of view. With some expressions of disappointment and outrage. 

It all goes to show some Singaporeans don't quite get the reality of our situation. We need these foreign workers. That's bluntly it. How else are the nice buildings we live and work in going to get built? How else are they going to get cleaned? Singaporeans eagerly shun these low-pay high-risk poor-image jobs. These guys work 12 hour days to make sure Singapore runs like clockwork. There isn't any cause to malign them collectively. The riot was one incident fuelled by rage and alcohol. That's about it. These foreign workers don't deserve a blanket expression of disgust. There are always some black sheep. Every society has them. I bet that the drunk teens on Read Bridge at Clarke Quay could in no time ignite ferocious violence given suitable circumstances.

Another problem some Singaporeans have to defining racism. Some people think that mentioning a race in a negative situation constitutes racist commentary. No it does not. “The Chinese man broke a window”. That isn’t racist right? “The fat Chinese man broke a Malay barber’s window” is also not racist. It is a statement of fact. The action of the Chinese man may have had racist connotations or he just got a really bad haircut but we have no way of knowing that from this statement. Now this is a racist statement - "The yellow pig threw a brick at the lazy brown monkey barber shop." That's is a contribution from a Malay friend. When a race is described in derogatory terms, that's racism. So people were mixing up messages they read. There were of course arseholes who were out to blame Indians and foreign workers for this incident. The Real Singaporean website even published an article which I brand as borderline Nazi. It was extremely offensive but not profane. It would have been easy to be swayed by the arguments there and anyone with some sense who decry it as rubbish and incendiary filth. 

The other elephant in the room is the great divide Singaporeans, especially the youth, have created between themselves and the foreign working class. We are superior because we employ them. We tell them what to do and they do what they are told. We do not mingle, we do not share. We are better than they are because we have money and iPhones and take taxis. Sigh. Our prosperity has made us selfish. Our pride has made us uncaring. Our narrow-mindedness has prevented us from seeing foreign workers as people. There's no need to repeat the reasons why they are here. There are many reasons to talk about how detached we have become from reality, head buried in our mobiles, Facebooking and Candy Crushing. 

If these overseas foreign workers were to disappear now, Singapore would grind to a halt, our rubbish will pile up, our half finished buildings would stay uncompleted, people would not be able to go to work because they'd have to look after their kids, more hospital patients would die because there half our nurses would be gone. We are so reliant on them yet so distant and apathetic. 

A little respect, that's what everyone deserves. 

Violence is inexcusable. And those who were arrested will bear the consequences. 

Our apathy and detachment isn't excusable. We need to embrace overseas foreign workers as part and parcel of our Singapore way of life. 

#littleindiariot

Fly Into Changi Terminal 1 Canteen

I firmly believe all tourists flying into Singapore should make the Changi Airport Terminal 1 staff canteen their first stop. Forget about rushing to the hotel and trying to figure what a talkative taxi uncle is trying to tell you about some same-sex sex district (Geylang). Go to the secret, well, a little hidden, lift at the right side of Terminal 1 near the skytrain platform and Bengawan Solo shop, hit the B2 button and you will have arrived. A clean, robotically laid out array of multi-coloured (but mostly beige) tables and chairs in a large quadrangle lined by efficiently run food stalls. This is Singapore in a nutshell. Food glorious food at reasonable prices. There's a Yong Tau Foo stall where one picks dainty morsels of nibbly things (mostly tofu based) to be warmed in soup or lathered in sauces. There's a Malay stall that sells mee siam, mee rebus, kueh-kueh and curry puffs. The sardine puffs are da bomb. (Whoops, not quite appropriate words for an airport related post.). I've tried the shrimp dumplings from the wantan noodle shop. Not too shabby. They need to go with sambal and pickled green chili. The soup they're in is perhaps embellished with MSG I suspect. There's of course the coffee stall where tourists must must must attempt to learn the difference between Kopi-o, Teh-si and other colloquialisms. (The first time is always the hardest.) Oh there's kaya butter toast too. And soft-boiled eggs. At the far end, there's a nasi padang stall with a perpetual queue. I didn't see any prata stall, perhaps the only glitch in the tale of superb delights alongside the world's busiest tarmac. It'd be miracle if a person spends more than $5-6 on a meal here. It's the most economical place to eat at the airport. Ok, cheap. Not the prettiest but this is the true Singapore food at its most convenient. There's a famous mee goreng at the Terminal 2 canteen but that's hard to get to through the carpark. We don't want tourists to get run over before they fill up on local fare. Yup, Changi Airport T1 canteen, so happening, so underappreciated. Someone tell Tripadvisor.