No Sex Please...On SIA's A380

After reading this article, I can't help musing about all the possibilities and questions SIA may need to fend off...

"Eh! Why I cannot have sex har? Double bed there and privacy maintained right?"

"Erm, sorry sir, Singapore is still a conservative society that values the conventional family unit AND place for sex. Sex at 30000 feet above the air is 'unconservative'. SIA, being Singapore's national air carrier would like to followsuit. Thus, I regret to inform you that the rules are still no sex in the A380"

"But we're doing it in private, right? Not that we'll keep banging against the door or what!?! So why ban it? You won't really know if we're doing it in the first place!"

"What you REALLY do in private, we don't really want to know. Our aircrew will not intrude into your privacy."

"So is it can or cannot? Your rules say cannot and then you don't really want to enforce?"

"It is better to accept the untidiness and ambiguity. We shall see how this matter evolve eventually."

"Ok lar...anything you say lar. Anyway, I'm booking a ticket for myself and my partner. You have my details here in my passport. My partner's name is John Smith..."

"... ... ... ..."

(All names and conversational exchanges are purely fictional)

Personal Ethics On Blogging

Something happened recently that force me to reflect on some ethical issues about this blog.

My Sec 1 niece, B, managed to hunt me down and found my blog. It is natural that it will only be matter of time when all the other nieces and nephews and even my own children will come to read my blog... provided this blog did not bore her to death first. In other words, what is written here is no longer the views and opinions of a stranger but that of someone she knows.

Of course mature adults who read my blog can differentiate between "sensibilities" and "silly nonsense"... although there might be some adults who still can't do it. Of course, there are children who can't form the distinction but at least they can still go to their mommies and daddies to ask... and I hope they do - "Pa! There's this orang utan who can blog and say something I don't quite understand, please explain!"

"Oh...this fella is full of nonsense! My child, don't believe a single word he says!"

It is a different matter when my niece,who knows me in person (or at least the kind of person I project to her) reads my blog. What if all along she look towards me as that serious-no-nonsense-unable-too-lie role model (I doubt she regards me as such but just what if) She may regard everything I say here as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! And this will worry me a lot! I would imagine she mimic some of the expletives I use here, got a scolding from her mommy and with tears rolling down her cheeks, she defended "But Uncle Ape says that also what! To the whole world!" Gosh! Am I in serious trouble! Before I go any further, let me address some family issues...

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To my niece, B (and niece R, nephew D, D, J... the whole lot of you!) whatever impression I cast on you in person, know that it will depend a lot on your age. There are things about me that I will never show you or talk to you... at least not while you're still young. However, do note that what I write in this blog goes out to all sorts of people. My assumptions are that most of these readers are adults and know when I'm joking, making sense, silly, sprouting nonsense etc and children who reads my blog are under parental guidance. So, if you do come across something that I write here, things where Ah Ma or Po Po will say "Aiyoh! This is so evil!", please don't be confused as to who is right or wrong... just ask me in person. I will most likely tell you Ah Ma or Po Po is correct.

Know this also, whatever impression you may have about me, know that whatever I say here CAN be wrong, silly or full of nonsense.
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Back to everyone...hmmm... I forgot what I want to say :p Or ya, about blogging. There are many things I would normally not say directly to any person in particular but in blogging, where the audience covers a lot more people, there is a slight different in that issues are no longer "personal" but more open.

For example, we take the case of a certain school teacher who announces his sexuality in his blog. Would he have said the exact same things in class to his male students? I doubt so. His "walking out of the closet" was addressed to people in general and the message I receive was "Do not hide your full potential just because you are not entirely normal".

Or taking an example from my own experience, there are certain friends who might feel very strongly about his religion. I may have my own believes and reservations about his religion but knowing how he would react, I will never discuss my views on his religion with him. However, that doesn't mean that I will not talk about his religion with anyone else.

... ... ...

I lost myself again... what was I trying to say? (another sign of old age?)... ya, ok. My point is, when you read a blog, please don't take it too personally... unless of course the blogger names you, shames you and made you look silly in front of the whole world.

Memory Snapshots of Early Childhood

I better get started about my life story before Ras starts throwing Char Kway Teow or Chai Tau Kuay at me...whatever that means :p

Have you ever wondered how much do you remember about your early childhood? And how early or what is the first memory? At 4 years old? At 3 or 2 or even 1? I can only remember vividly of events in kindergarten 1, i.e. 5 years old onwards. I can also recall quite a number of events that happened when I was 4. Anything before that? I can only think of 3 "snapshots". I had no idea what they meant until my family and relatives filled me in when I'm older.

What are these 3 snapshots? The first is me looking over my shoulder at the corridor of my grandma's flat. My older brother was standing there, waving, pointing and shouting at me.

The second snapshot is one where I see the door of the private clinic below my grandma's flat opened and it seemed that someone was carrying me into the clinic.

The third is more like a 2 part short video clip. Part 1 - Grandma told me to stay and wait while she entered a bank. I turned around immediately to examine the fishes swimming in the water-landscape pond. Part 2 - I observed that the water line is right in front of me...and one of my slippers is floating right in front of me at eye level. A man was reaching out to grab my hand.

So what really happened? It's not difficult to guess the third scenario. Grandma and I went to the bank. Bank was crowded with a long queue (so are banks now) so I was told to wait outside. Right outside this bank was a small, simple, artificial landscape with a small little waterfall and a small little pond with small little fishes. And this small little ape was very excited about the small little fishes, inched out to took a closer look and fell into the pond :p

I remembered the bank was UOB because I visited that place many times after that as I grow older. And everytime I passed that place since that incident, I kept wondering why they have filled up the pond with cement? I missed those small little fishes.


What about the 2nd snapshot - clinic door? One of my uncles carried me into the clinic. Why? I fainted. Why? He caned me. Why? I wasn't paying attention when he was trying to coach me on some simple word recognition. I was to learn later that the doctor and my mum wanted to report him to the police but didn't do so eventually. FYI, that uncle of mine is not a child abuser. He was young then. I must have pissed him off terribly. I do not harbour any bad feelings about him, even after I came to be aware of what happened. I know he is truly sorry for what he did because all these years since then, I can sense that he is particularly nice to me amongst all his nieces and nephews. Maybe it was that particular incident that made me smarter (academically only) among my siblings and cousins :p

The first snapshot. Even without anyone telling me as I reflected on the first snapshot when I was older, I could tell that I was either in the carpark infront of my grandma's flat, at the bus stop or on the road. How old was I? What was I doing there? What was my brother shouting about?

Here's what my brother told me. He came out of my grandma's flat on the 3rd storey and stood at the corridor, looking across the road and into the school and the market opposite the flat. He saw a toddler, barely able to walk, making his way across the road! Hmmm...this child looks familiar, in fact, he looks like :O ?!?!?!?! So you know why he was shouting, pointing and waving. No one knew how I managed to sneak out of the house, walk down the stairs from the 3rd storey, past the coffeeshop directly below grandma's flat, cross the single lane carpark, crossed the bus stop (I must cross the bus stop because there was a drain between the carpark and the road and the bus stop was the only access to the road) and arrived in the middle of the road...undetected by anyone! Singaporeans really bochap?

Here goes the exciting part. At that moment, a public bus was coming my way (service 240 or 246?) The driver saw me, jammed on his brakes and brought the bus to a nasty stop. At about the same time, my brother managed to alert some of the adults (my uncles and grandma?) and they dashed towards the road only to find me...of course not dead la! Died how to write story here? They found me under the bus, safe and sound.

Many years after that, my father told me the road used to be served by Service 246. Because of that incident, SBS pantang (superstitious) and shifted 246 to run on another road. Service 240 replaced the route taken by 246. In anycase, if the uncle who drove that bus is reading this, please accept my sincere apologies...I was young and rash and have never intended to cause you any distress.

It's Better To Accept The Legal Untidiness And The Ambiguity

HELP! HELP! Can someone explain to me what is PM Lee trying to say? Can someone tell me that I have read wrongly or misunderstood his statement?

Our current Prime Minister, who's father has always maintained that the integrity of the Government and the Singapore Law must never be undermined, said that it is better to accept the legal untidiness and the ambiguity with regards to Section 377A! (see here, here, here and here). He further went on to say that since it (I suppose he meant S377A) works, don't disturb it.

WA LAU!

Have you heard of this saying? "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!" I have been told countless times that such thinking is backward, old school of thought, reactive etc. I have been told countless times that we should actively seek areas for improvement, take some risks if necessary, don't sit and wait for the machine to fail before you act on it.

More About S377A and Gays

Sorry folks, I thought I want to stop ranting about this issue but the last parliament session made me want to cow peh some more. When I read the parliament speeches, it become obvious where the "poles" build their foundation.

Repeal 377A approaches it from "Clarity in Law Making".
Retain 377A approaches the topic from "Moral"

For sometime now, I have been looking at this issue on one side of the fence-the Repeal 377A side. I stand on the Repeal 377A side to listen to what BOTH sides have to say. The information I obtained from Repeal is loud and clear - Strength 5! The information I received from Retain 377A was like unreadable and noisy - Strength 1. There were too much clutter and interference for me to make out any sound reasonings.

So for the past few days, I move myself into the Retain 377A camp with the hope that the clutter and noise can be reduced so that I can obtained a less attenuated information from the Retain 377A camp.. True enough, I managed to filter out all the noise and found something intelligible there. Allow me to share my understanding here.

It is obvious to me that NMP Thio does not discriminate gays - she is merely objecting to the act of MSM (male to male sex). To put it simply in the way I understood (and I hope you understand too) is that it is fine if you acknowledge that you (male) are sexually attracted to another male. You can run around shouting "I am a gay! I am sexually attracted to another male!" and the police will not arrest you for that under S377A, although I think the police can arrest you for committing public nuisance under S268.

However, according to S377A, it is a crime if you (male) engage in sexual activity with another man. This means that gays are not criminals as long as they do not have sex with another male. To put it another way, a very direct and blunt way is this - if you (male) cannot have sex with a woman, don't have sex. :( Gays are not criminals as long as they remain celibate.

Still standing in the camp of Retain 377A, I turn my receiver back to the Repeal 377A side and I pick out this message "I do not choose to be a gay! I am like that! I was not influenced or made like that in any way!" I believe and acknowledge that these guys do not have a choice on their sexual preference. However I do believe that they have a choice on whether they want to have sex.

Another piece of intelligible information I obtained from NMP Thio is that S377A covers a heterosexual male experimenting with male sodomy. How I understood her reasoning is this. If a guy, a young teenage guy perhaps, probably still unsure about himself and his sexual preference, believe that the best way to proof his sexual preference it is to try it :O, probably S377A is the only defence he has before he says "Damn! Tak shiok and hurts like hell! I think I still prefer woman"

If I were to draw a two column table and place Retain 377A on one side and Repeal 377A on the other and list down the reasons for each column, "to deter males from experimenting with male sodomy" will be the only reason I can think of under Retain 377A.

So where do I stand now? Sidetrack abit first :P

Through my working life, I have been given opportunities to draft Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), Technical Orders or processes and procedures. To me, all such "guides" have to be clear, concise and easily understood. For every single statement, I always ask myself "can this be done?" and "does this serve any purpose?". When it comes to more serious "guides" such as Technical Orders, I take extra effort to eliminate ambiguities. Technical Orders are technical procedures that MUST be followed. Non-conformance to such orders would invite some form of reprisal. In other words, someone will get into trouble if he misunderstood what I wrote.

I look at the Penal Code and still feel that S377A has to be changed. It clearly include consensual sex between 2 male in private and yet gahmen says law enforcers will not bother them. Hello! People up there? If you want to keep it, do it and tell all gays to remain celibate. If you do not intend to arrest 2 males engaging in consensual sex in private, change the damn S377A such that a very specific case is excluded. Take a stand, a firm and clear stand because we are talking about the Penal Code. It is not just about making the Repeal 377A or Retain 377A camp happy, it is also about making the law enforcers happy, happy to know that exactly what has to and need not be enforced.

Please take sometime to read the parliament speeches by NCMP Sylvia Lim, NMP Siew Kum Hong, NMP Thio Li-Ann and MP Hri Kumar. I read their speeches from The Online Citizen but I'm sure you can find it elsewhere including Singapore Parliament Webiste.

For the sake of protecting the integrity of the Penal Code - Singapore's law, please amend S377A instead of simply retaining or repealing it.