I have been reading up on the news lately, with regards to the hanging of this guy called Nguyen from Melbourne, more out of curiousity than anything else that might derived from the news report.

people who would have been following my blog faithfully (yer i knoew i haven’t been blogging much) would have noticed a post back here which talked about this case. the only reason how i noticed this story though, was really because my classmate in my english class picked up on it.

i rarely read the news nowadays, as they do get depressing. occassionally i actually read my time subscription, which again held some depressing news, albeit not as bad as a daily version churn out by newspapers.

at any rate, my classmate picked up on the case as he has been very interested about singapore’s strict laws ever since he talked to me.

most of us know, the lesser “crimes” are often ignored, or not noticed, or easily gotten off with, or else the singapore treasury would be overwhelmingly rich now from the immense amount of fines they drain from old people who spits, who pees in the lifts, staircases and so on.

however, due to misinformation, and perhaps a little pressure set by the government themselves, most foreigners take it that any rules that singapore set out, must be abide by. which on several levels is a good thing.

Let me just reiterate my stance, i am NOT FOR mandatory death sentence, or death sentence as a whole. i believe strongly that a person should die as and when he is supposed to die - aka natural death. our lives was given to us by God, by our parents, and it shouldn’t be up to us or anyone else on earth to determine when and where we should die, for whatever reason there maybe.

However, laws such as death sentence have been there since time beyond recognition. some states have gone and move on towards a life sentence, which in their opinions is a much more humane sentence than sentencing someone to death for major crimes, e.g murder.

considering the treatments and state of some prisons though, i am not sure if life is better than death, and which is more humane.

nevertheless, as i was saying, some crimes were made with certain intentions, and are liable to happen again if a person is NOT put away. in the coldest sense of the word, they might also be a hindrance to both the state and an endangerment to the society if they are left alive, thus the reason why some countries stuck by the death sentence laws.

now, if one looks at the crime caused by Nguyen, and his intentions and reasons behind it, we can see that he DID have a choice. especially with the recent news reports all over about him now. he has many friends, he converted to christianity and has a strong belief in God (more on that later, although they might sound sarcastic to people….) and he had a job.

he had many choices on how to solve his problems. if the debts were illegal… seek help from police? that’s often the first line of help. then one can go about trying to borrow money from friends and pay them back slowly… (as my friend once said: they are there to help). or work something out with the debt collectors/ creditors.

i am sure people can find more options into repaying debt that does not go into illegal activities.

however, when one chooses to perform a crime, with every intention to resolve the problem as soon as possible, in all laziness or other intention, and knowingly does it… what happens then?

i am not trying to be sarcastic towards any country in particular, or to put them down, however, singapore’s tight laws provided for the security and low crime rate that it now has. Compare that with the rest of the world, that’s how it keeps itself successful, by not bowing down to anyone or anything (re: Micheal Fay’s caning issue), it deters crime both locally based or internationally based.

Yes, we have submissive citizens, we are somewhat repressed in voicing our opinions. However, we don’t have extremely huge issues of crimes that range from drug trafficking, to murder, to kidnapping and so on. and that’s what counts.

when one walks into a country, one at least have the basic idea of what the laws and consequences are. and when one intentionally breaks it KNOWINGLY, then i would say that person already is semi prepared for the consequences.

and so should the rest of the world.

just because you are a foreigner, a neighbour, an aid provider, does not give you any special priviledges over anyone else in the world, especially over the locals.

and when you are the one who chose this path, it does not make you a victim or a tragic case. OR make it such a huge injustice in making you do the time that suits your crime, which in this case would be a death sentence.

imagine if Nguyen had successfully carried in the drugs and people bought it:

people might have died from overdose.

people would be totally drugged over it causing social problems at a smaller scale as compared to larger countries, but still social problems enough.

people who knew about his drug trafficking might think singapore is an easy target, and slowly but surely, singapore would be a “drug city”…

i can go on, i am sure more people can think of more things that might happen.

there might be other ways to solve the problems, and there might have been another way to punish him such as extradite him to Australia and let him serve out a life sentence here. However, singapore laws are singapore laws, if laws can be broken so easily because someone is “SPECIAL” in their country’s eyes, then what are laws?

just a facade?

Statement by Mr Koh, the High Commissioner here that i agree with - here

Aussies point of view

- Lawyers and such

- bbc’s news report on it with some strong aussie opinions

- another news report with some comments by the hangman (for some reason, he sounds cocky to me)

- the “tragic” case and thoughts that by providing info he might be spared from the gallows o.o

- an aussie forum showing some aussie point of views. not the best english perhaps, but somewhat understood by me

- talks of sanctions/boycott against singapore until singapore is pressurised against changing the death sentence law. on some news papers, there was more coverage about the boycott… this might give u a good idea about it anyways.

further on about the case, somehow chee soon juan’s comments have been drawn into the papers and also into some readers’ minds. no offense to anyone in particular, but chee has often stood out as a tool to me. i am not likely to take his wild accusations for real, until he does show huge evidences about them, e.g start an investigation or something.

the last few days have been quite a blur since jake’s arrival. we have been going out, checking out restaurants that i don’t and do know of.

friday was his birthday. originally, i planned for him to have it at hog’s breath. but prior to his arrival, it was also wade’s departure to yvette’s arms. which results in a comedy as we 3, linxy, wadey and me, went to a teppanyaki.

the night started off quietly, and perhaps too normally for me. we have teppanyaki back in singapore before, but none like those i have experienced here, at least not the teppanyaki i ever had in singapore. those i had, were in the thomson plaza food court, or the bishan junction 8 food court, which were, uhm, just like normal food court food except you get to see them cook it infront of you.

here, they entertain you.

or, they mess you up

wade, never quite know how to eat with chopsticks =/

thus

random eggs flew all over the place.

and random rice flew all over his crotch….

mmmm wadey, i didn’t know your crotch loves food :X

for jake and i, when we went over, we ordered a slightly different meal. this time, it was the cheaper one as jake wanted to try the sirloin steak. however, only the cheapest one had sirloin.

one thing i noticed about jake, is how small he eats in terms of portions. he can never finish a full aussie serving worth of food. we normally talk about how westerners eat huge portions… jake seems to defy that notion heavily.

hell, he even eats way less than i do.

also, he doesn’t quite like raw food or vegies, so i ate possibly half his teppanyaki worth of stuff that night (sushi… the salads… etc) whcih was kinda sad -.- but as long as he enjoys it.

of course, that nub simply had to forget his camera, despite him already regretting not taking out the camera for the last couple of days prior to that.

he had fun though and that was all that mattered.

the entire dinner was a little tame, perhaps because the chef seemed to be pissed with himself that he dropped his equipment twice while trying to make it all look cool. i found out later on though, that while he was one of the 2 head chefs, he’s not japanese (yes the one that served us when wade was there too). he’s a viet

we rented a movie that night and bought groceries for the first time it turns out too, that he can’t cook! well he knows how to cook instant noodles. so we decided that i would cook, and teach him at the same time whatever i do know. you know, he doesn’t know that scrambled eggs uses milk o.o

however, i am a klutz. and as klutz do, i embarassed myself infront of him again and again and again by doing stupid things.

while we were at woolies, we couldn’t find the sliced cheese that he needs. now, woolies people are dressed in black and white. black pants, white shirt. i saw these 2 guys in black pants white shirt and black and white name tags walking around and asked them, “excuse me, where are the sliced cheese?”

and by pure chance, i looked closer at the name tags, and realise it said “church of jesus christ of the later day saints”.

mormons.

……

i am such a retard. i was very embarassed and apologised profusely. of course, as luck would have it, we kept meeting again and again, the nice mormon guy and us. he said it was ok, that he shopped there long enough to be a staff anyways, and that we just have some great luck with each other.

but with each meeting, i just feel like cringing into the deepest hole on earth =/

the next day, we had lunch at filthy gorgeous instead of hog’s breath as planned, since i would go back to work anyways, i didn’t felt like going to work twice in a day.

doesn’t that look awesome hey?

he finally remembered his camera, so you get to see it all from his point of view

however, the square block to the right of the pict? it was too rich. the thing on the left tasted too shit. so we only ate the meats :X

We went to dickson to return the movie we rented out as it was a one day rent only. it was a sad horror show, korean, with a slight twist at the end, but i will talk about it in a bit.

and god. it has been raining ever since he came. and then…

(remember, this is the beginning of summer)

hail storm.

just LOOK AT THAT LITTLE PELLETS OF ICE!!! WE COULD HAVE DIED!!! DAMN WEATHER!!!!

ah…

but it was good. we had lotsa laughs and lotsa fun. most of all… it was great being together coz we were so comfy with each other and teasing the rest of the world

except… we have a friend, his name in the game was called freja. he made the biggest joke for us

he got drunk yesterday and said a huge bunch of crap.

“i have 3 balls!!!”

“hi love! i love you! come sweden and marry me!!”

“i have bigger balls than your boyfriend..”

oh i could list more, but damn LOL… he made us laugh so much

<3

Well…

jake arrived yesterday morning, and i went up to sydney to pick him up and showed him around sydney, a place which i don’t even know… very well. i think of all of sydney, i actually truly know paddy’s market, and that’s about it.

so we basically wandered thru the airport (i found krispy kreme, but joy of joy, i forgot to buy some back -.-) and then around sydney as much as my half dead body would allow, since i didn’t sleep the night before as my work ended quite late.

it wasn’t a bad thing anyways. i brought him to see darling harbour, we had some coffee on one of those sidewalk cafes and just sat and talk for abit, walking as slow as i normally do, just chatting and so on. it was like a leisurely walk with the best friend possible… and my boyfriend

it was a little awkward for me at first, like i mentioned. of course, there was also the initial shyness and i wasn’t sure if whatever i talked would be interesting o.o of course, that doesn’t quite make sense when you think about it. we talked everyday for the past year or so on ventrilo, so why the fuck wouldn’t what i said be interesting to him or etc?

but i am dumb like that o.o

anyways…

we took the 5 hour version of the greyhound bus back to canberra, because the next one is at 6 pm, and i honestly couldn’t stay alive for another 3 more hours just so that i can sleep for 3 hours on the bus back to canberra. the 3 pm greyhounder though, runs through all the small suburbs surrounding sydney central, like uhm… paramatta (which is actually in sydney itself o.o) and some other smaller towns, even those near to canberra. which is why it took 5 hours.

i slept for the most part of it, waking to find a romantic comedy on the tv, some law divorce lawyers falling in love and things like that.

and i actually liked the movie o.o even though some of the jokes were pretty lame.

it was great talking to him, and he hit it off pretty well with linxy too, fanboy vs fanboy showdown. they talked about animes, games, computers and stuff i have never heard about. ah the fanboys in the house.

and the best part is, he actually like asian-asian food. not those weird aussie asian food that people make, just so that aussies can bear with the taste. jake eats them weird though. you know how we just interchange spoons with knife, or eat bacon with forks coz it’s polite?

he eats bacon with fingers… and asking him to exchange knife with spoons was like asking him to swallow the spoon anyways -.-;; he had to stop, change the fork with a spoon and then eat the rice seperately from the meat etc etc o.o

and he eats curry and rice seperately. i mean, omg, the curry sauce is the best part of the entire dish. THAT’S WHY WE MIX IT WITH THE RICE GODDAMMIT.

and he hates the sauce… and eats rice clean…. like on it’s own.

and he doesn’t get why we would mix it up O.o

and they don’t have damn zinger burger in the states -.- so he was fairly amused by it and we specially hit kfc so he could try zinger burger out…

lmao… this is fun