Skip to main content

Graffiti = vandalism?

Some days there are no letters and some days there are no letters worth reading but today, there were two letters in TODAY that 'support' the so-called 'vandalism' of post boxes.

Excerpts (nowadays you have to log in to read TODAY online, so, no link):
Letter 1
1. '... what bothers me is not the issue of "vandalism" or the police's involvement (as it is clearly a miscommunication), but rather Singapore's lack of tolerance for anything radical.'
2. 'And now SingPost has had to apologise for a creative, "out-of-the-box" stunt that, frankly, did no harm.'

Letter 2
1. 'I would like to give SingPost some credit for thinking differently.'
2. 'It is too extreme to think that it may inspire others to vandalism...'
3. 'However, SingPost, on its part, failed in carrying out the campaign properly.'

I have to say that I did not follow the news reports much but did people actually say that graffiti on the postboxes would lead to us becoming vandals??


How were the police involved / not involved? I agree that vandalism needs to be reported but this enthusiasm for calling the police for all sorts of things must be quite annoying to the police force. Imagine nobly signing up to be a part of the Home Team and having to deal with complaints about elephants cut-outs, spray-painted post boxes and such. I guess people think our police officers are very 'free' in this low-crime country. Or maybe there just isn't anyone else to call for these things, which is probably why people are also calling the police to catch, not robbers, but pythons, monkeys (the newspaper photo of a police officer trying to offer a monkey a pack of peanuts at Holland Village is deeply etched in my mind) and I don't know what other animals.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A lesson in love

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. -Mother Teresa Most of the time my eyes just glaze over when I see article upon article of football news. One caught my glazing eye over the weekend, though - 'De la Cruz - Mother Theresa in boots' , because of the familiar name. Mother Teresa, that is. It was the first time I’d ever heard of this de la Cruz guy, an EPL player who hails from Ecuador (GNI per capita US$2,630; as a comparison, Singapore’s is US$27, 490 – source: BBC country profiles ). His is a great story to illustrate that famous Chinese saying about not forgetting your roots. According to the article, ‘Each month a proportion of that salary (about S$150,000) Reading pay him - be it 10 per cent in January or 20 per cent in February - goes direct to the village’ (where he grew up). (Picture and profile from here ) Here's what he has been credited for: 1. 'The 2002 World Cup,' de la Cruz reflects, 'finan...

True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the ...

When the best man doesn't win

Speaking of 'sway' spurned lovers, the latest one I've come across is in Love Revolution ( only 12 episodes!), a J show I recently watched. Heroine of the story is pretty, 30-ish Smart Doctor, who is dying to fall in love and get married. She meets Aspiring Actor and Broadcast Journalist (right). She falls for Broadcast Journalist like a ton of bricks. It's obvious from the start (to the audience but not to her) that Aspiring Actor is nuts about her. But... she has fallen for Broadcast Journalist like a ton of bricks already. No doubt, Smart Doctor and Broadcast Journalist must be given credit for their love that stands the tests of time, separation and misunderstanding, but the one who loves most in the show is undoubtedly Mr Aspiring Actor. What he does/does not do because of his undying love for Smart Doctor: Y does not pursue her at first because he is still struggling to survive in this small-time drama group and he knows he doesn't have much to offer Y resp...