A Political Weekend

This past few days have been pretty interesting.

First, some interesting quotes I came across:

"I see dumb people..." (think Sixth Sense)

"Life is sexually transmitted"

What else happened?

It all started with this poor soul... Nguyen Tuong Van. I admit that it was his young age, the hairstyle, middle class, educated, the fact the he could have been you or me that made me think really hard about the case. I was somehow coerced into an emotional relationship with this person. By a strange culmination of many factors, I felt so strongly that this act was WRONG, morally wrong, hatefully wrong.

Notice that past tense.

One of the things that made me calm down was reading that he was being very calm about his impending death, and that he was prepared for it.

The reason I felt so strongly about the whole thing is because for the first time I couldn't justify the outcome. Singaporeans were baying the stupidest justifications with complete disregard for the value of a life. The local media was absolutely silent. It was strange finding out that Singapore really is a country that disregards, or at least carefully controls, political expression and opposing opinion. It's really interesting to find out for example that ex-intelligence officers are hired as chief editors of the straits times.

But like I said, I've calmed down significantly and can finally work out a sense of justifiability for the coming hanging (after working through tons of silly arguments). Does not change the fact that many Singaporeans are quite sad actually. Really hope that they can learn to think more wholesomely. Maybe I should take that up as my motivation for teaching in the future.

Moving on, I passed my IPPT!!!!

Was all prepared to go for RT, but met Toh during a nice BBQ dinner in my backyard with all my army mates to celebrate my bday. Told me what a waste of time RT was. Made me do a major double-take about going for RT. But considering that i WANTED TO DIE after I tried to run 2.4km around my estate, I thought like I was done for.

Still, I booked an IPPT session at SAFRA Toa Payoh on Tuesday since I'm trying to make Tuesday my excercise day anyway and Loretta was not in town. The stations were a breeze. I never had any problems with them. It's always the final 2.4km run that always got me. I concentrated on the people that passed, and told myself, Just run and treat it as excercise. Maybe it was divine help but just before I ran, the guy before who had passed commented: "just watch TV and run. After each commercial break, you'll realise that 3-4 mins have passed already". So I just ran and ran. And ran and ran. Ignore everything. Oh shit the pain. It's so long more. Ok, watch TV.. keep going! Argh, can't take it anymore.! If the instructor didn't come over and encourage me I think I might have failed on the last lap.. haha. really sorry to write all this, but I'm really glad I passed! Phew! Maybe even need to thank God... :)

If you believe in God, please pray for Nguyen.
If you believe in Singapore, please pray for its people.