Oriental

Sunday, October 10, 2010 ' 5:02 PM

Eulogy. This is a rather rare word but recently popularised and used a lot (whether it's excessive or accurate or not, that's another question) by the media with regards to, implied according again to the sole media company in singapore, the important wife of one the most important man (or why not, keep it to THE MOST without the "one of") in singapore recently passed away, though there might be contentious issues about the word "important" and its degree.

Ok back to the word Eulogy. It's a bit sad that i know this word from a long time ago from one of Ali Project's orgasmic songs "Chinkon Shou", meaning "Eulogy of the Repose of Souls", but now all of a sudden everybody knows it. Yeah everybody... unless one totally rejects the singapore media.

And yeah. This is the extent of my sadness. That's all.

Of course death itself is depressing. But i don't know her personally.

Any more forced depression from myself will make me condemn myself for being such a hypocrite.

It's not that i am being unfeeling and not respecting the dead though. After all, in one of the most important man in singapore's eulogy, he apparently did complained a bit about a dead person.

To quote, he said, “In my first election for Tanjong Pagar, our home in Oxley Road, became the HQ to assign cars provided by my supporters to ferry voters to the polling booth. She warned me that I could not trust my new found associates, the leftwing trade unionists led by Lim Chin Siong. She was furious that he never sent their high school student helpers to canvass for me in Tanjong Pagar, yet demanded the use of cars provided by my supporters to ferry my Tanjong Pagar voters.”

(Lim Chin Siong passed away in 1996 according to a source.)

So i guess just approaching a bit about the topic of the wife (with the eulogies being the subject itself though, take note) of the most important man in singapore is alright as well, which is quite CONTRARY to what netizens supportive of the ruling monopoly allege, that those, who complained and questioned about the extent of eulogies whether it accurately fitted the actual contributions she made, are simply not "respecting the dead" or understanding that "a loved one had just passed away won't you guys just stop bashing for a while" or " i lost all kinds of respect for you" kind of statements.

By the way, i hate attempts to make a personal attack such as " i lost all kinds of respect for you.", to vilify someone or to make oneself seem more justified in an argument with someone else.

Back to eulogy. Apparently WanBao dedicated 8 pages to the wife of the most important man in singapore.
(Ok i am sick of typing "most important man in singapore". I will shorten it to "MIMIS")

Wow. Yeah wow.

Still, just like the New Paper, WanBao is relatively similar to tabloids. So yeah.

But if possible in the future, i'd definitely want to have that colossal amount of attention or something else similar dedicated to my wife if she ever dies before i do. It'll be awesome.

Then, there's another issue of internet anonymity, the cliche argument that i or other "complainers on the web" are " cowards hiding behind the veil of the internet blah blah blah".

Seriously, i would laugh whenever i see this argument.

In singapore, no one is an anon.

(I feel like making "In Soviet Russia" jokes, but i figured no one here understands. Even i don't completely grasp its point of humour.)

They have all kinds of means to track you down in the internet. First is that 2 racist bloggers or that racist guy who posted some racist comment on some s.networking site that so many of us use it repeatedly as an illustration to justify things.
If we are really protected by any veil of anonymity, how did the police actually find out the actual identities of them and where they are, and arrest them?

Next there's also this infamous "burning" sensation not long ago regarding the arrest of a Facebook user's comment about "burning" a certain minister regarding a certain inaugural sports event for teenagers, that the police or whoever is it interpret it (very strangely and illogically) as "inciting violence".

So where exactly is this anonymity here?

And next, the issue of "character assassination" present in the english "intellectual, non-tabloid" broadsheet in singapore, Straits Times.

A source from the web (yeah only a single source, but you can Google, extensively, to simply tell me what is lacking instead of suing me for libel) says that Straits Times and the New Paper, (as taught in General Paper where the media, sole monopoly or not, as society's 4th Estate, plays an important and essential role as a mouthpiece of the government) sometimes deploy personal attacks, subtle or not, for portraying opposition in a bad light.

A.k.a., the flaw named "Ad Hominem fallacy". Wiki it.

It's basically an attack of the messenger rather than the message, to erroneously debase the message or argument so that in this particular case, the laymen reading it who don't usually deal with arguing on an intensive daily basis might not be able to see things objectively.

From that source again (ok i suck i suffer from the fallacy of referring to just one source. But it's quite credible, objective and well-known imho. And yeah you can attack this previous sentence in any way you want, i will listen) , that Facebook "burning" sensation event i referred to just now, the Straits Time, in an article talking about this event, apparently brought out that arrested guy's past criminal record, which isn't related to his argument, and also isn't a serious crime like rape, if i were to go along with the newspaper's flow of destroying that guy.

Suspiciously, it might be an attempt to make readers not side with this guy's "complains" about the ruling monopoly and its amount of transparency over the tripled amount of money spent on a certain inaugural sports event for teenagers, and its food poisoning issues, among many others.

To be fair, this guy's record in the past has nothing to do with the credibility of his arguments and point of view.

So much for the Yellow Ribbon project.

Ad hominem fallacy is something simple that i had learned some time ago during a series of simplistic but interesting arguments in my college's web portal over the value of being instructed to come to school an hour earlier on a day when the school curriculum starts an hour later than usual, if the students could not achieve satisfactory results in their examinations.

I said so much. But i admit i am powerless to do anything. I belong to the group of singaporeans who are rather afraid to oppose openly, as you can see from all my "might"s and "may"s and "possibly" or other related words that hints that what i just said can be false or true.

Who asks us to owe our lives to MIMIS and his son (maybe even family) to make singapore earn so much money and make singapore so safe that even a one-man demonstration/protest restricted to the speakers' corner have to go sign up with the police.

On a side note, my mum always tell me to always compare with the people better than myself instead of the ones not as good as what i'd done, especially in tests and examination results.

So i find it strange when my mum, or any other nice people, who also said that why should we complain and told me to look at how bad the situation is in North Korea or some other African countries or even Thailand given its recent political instability.

So why don't compare with the best countries instead?

But you know, i am sure we all have heard something about the govt wanting to pursue an "Asian democracy" and that the western values cannot be forced to fit into a nation of small and open economy with no natural resources except foreign talents and all the mantra.

Well, either way, it's good to leave it as it is, as selfishly, it makes it more easier to write all these things about singapore in General paper application questions and essays and for Economics as well, rather than spending extra time memorising since we have been told repeatedly many times about this already.

Sleep with the trauma that kept you sleepless