Ever peered into the mind of an elite?RJC student Wee Shu Min has the "perfect" pedigree: student from the Gifted Education Program program, topped O-levels in Singapore in 2004, PM's Book Prize winner, her dad is an "elected" Member of Parliament (Ang Mo Kio GRC's Wee Siew Kim).... the list goes on. Yes, she could be someone who is expected to join the top echelons of the civil service and possibly get co-opted into politics to run the country some day. And this is what she wrote in her blog (http://www.suchvividnothing.blogspot.com/) before it was hastily taken down:
Thursday, October 19, 2006
mom's friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called derek wee (WHY do all the idiots have my surname why?!) whining about how singapore is such an insecure place, how old ppl (ie, 40 and above) fear for their jobs, how the pool of foreign "talent" (dismissively chucked between inverted commas) is really a tsunami that will consume us all (no actually he didn't say that, he probably said Fouren Talern Bery Bad.), how the reason why no one wants kids is that they're a liability in this world of fragile ricebowls, how the government really needs to save us from inevitable doom but they aren't because they are stick-shoved-up-ass elites who have no idea how the world works, yadayadayadayada.
i am inclined - too much, perhaps - to dismiss such people as crackpots. stupid crackpots. the sadder class. too often singaporeans - both the neighborhood poor and the red-taloned socialites - kid themselves into believing that our society, like most others, is compartmentalized by breeding. ridiculous. we are a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement.
sad derek attracted more than 50 comments praising him for his poignant views, joining him in a chorus of complaints that climax at the accusation of lack of press freedom because his all-too-true views had been rejected by the straits times forum. while i tend to gripe about how we only have one functioning newspaper too, i think the main reason for its lack of publication was that his incensed diatribe was written in pathetic little scraps that passed off as sentences, with poor spelling and no grammar.
derek, derek, derek darling, how can you expect to have an iron ricebowl or a solid future if you cannot spell?
if you're not good enough, life will kick you in the balls. that's just how things go. there's no point in lambasting the government for making our society one that is, i quote, "far too survival of fittest". it's the same everywhere. yes discrimination exists, and it is sad, but most of the time if people would prefer hiring other people over you, it's because they're better. it's so sad when people like old derek lament the kind of world that singapore will be if we make it so uncertain. go be friggin communist, if uncertainty of success offends you so much - you will certainly be poor and miserable. unless you are an arm-twisting commie bully, which, given your whiny middle-class undereducated penchant, i doubt.
then again, it's easy for me to say. my future isn't certain but i guess right now it's a lot brighter than most people's. derek will read this and brand me as an 18-year old elite, one of the sinners who will inherit the country and run his stock to the gutter. go ahead. the world is about winners and losers. it's only sad when people who could be winners are marginalised and oppressed. is dear derek starving? has dear derek been denied an education? has dear derek been forced into child prostitution? has dear derek had his clan massacred by the government?
i should think not. dear derek is one of many wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country, and in this world. one of those who would prefer to be unemployed and wax lyrical about how his myriad talents are being abandoned for the foreigner's, instead of earning a decent, stable living as a sales assistant. it's not even about being a road sweeper. these shitbags don't want anything without "manager" and a name card.
please, get out of my elite uncaring face.
In the inevitable tsunami of backlash from furious interneters, her father MP Wee did no better than her precious elitist daughter by declaring that:"What she said did come across as insensitive. The language was stronger than what most people could take.
But she wrote in a private blog and I feel that her privacy has been violated. After all, they were the rantings of an 18-year-old among friends.
I think if you cut through the insensitivity of the language, her baic point is reasonable, that is, that a well-educated university graduate who works for a multinational company should not be bemoaning about the Government and get on with the challenges in life.
Nonetheless, I have counselled her to learn from it. Some people cannot take the brutal truth and that sort of language, so she ought to learn from it.
I will not gag her, since she's 18 and should be able to stand by what she says.
The new media of the internet is such that if you don't like what she has said, you have the right of rebuttal.
Hopefully, after the discussion, everyone will be the richer for it. As a parent I may not have inculcated the appropriate level of sensitivity, but she has learnt a lesson, and it's good that she has learnt it at such an early stage in life."
RJC principal Winston Hodge put out a more palatable statement:
"We are disppointed with Wee Shu Min's comments on Mr Derek Wee's posting on the Web.
We have counselled Shu Min and have converyed to her the importance of sensitivity and empathy, qualities that she should have exercised in her response to Mr Wee.
We are confident that she has learnt from this experience and will the wiser for it."
