TODAY: Foaming with fury

On January 4, 2006 · 9 Comments · In The Ingterneck

0401Voc020 MBlog­gers set up peti­tion call­ing for a ban on foam sprays

A GOOD year starts off with a long week­end, or as blog­ger Re-minisce (re-minisce.blogspot.com) puts it, a “wild and wan­ton new year loonnng weekend”.

The week­end of wild cel­e­bra­tions aside, this is a good time to read what oth­ers are resolv­ing to do this new year. Espe­cially if you can’t think of any res­o­lu­tions for yourself.

If you’d rather not read the same spiel about “being a bet­ter per­son” or “con­trol­ling my tem­per”, go to blog­ger Ngader’s Live­jour­nal site (www.livejournal.com/users/ngader/), where she’s writ­ten a post called 101 goals for 2006.

Read more at TODAY­on­line [txt][pdf]

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Some goals of hers sound sim­ple, such as No 82: “Try every sin­gle stall at the Maxwell Hawker Cen­tre”, while oth­ers sound com­pli­cated enough (to me at least) to drive you bonkers, such as No 61: “Build a stream­lined, all-weather, all-love wardrobe filled only with great ver­sa­tile pieces”.

A far cry from her 2005 res­o­lu­tions which were: “Take care of my eyes and take care of finan­cial health”.
There’s the rub: A blog is essen­tially a jour­nal and you can check back to last year’s res­o­lu­tion to see whether you met your goals or not. And as you’re shar­ing this infor­ma­tion, you might feel the pres­sure of your read­ers’ expec­ta­tions as well as your own.
Then again, bar­ing your soul may be your thing, like blog­ger Lit­tle­Miss­Drinkalot (littlemissdrinkalot.blogspot.com) who reflects on last year’s loves lost and says that she doesn’t “want to start the new year as a crazy psy­chotic bitch. Maybe he likes me, maybe he doesn’t. I’ll find out, eventually”.

But let’s get back to the wild cel­e­bra­tions of the past two long week­ends — and some con­tro­versy, too.

The one brew­ing right now among blog­gers who attended street par­ties over Christ­mas and New Year’s, is over the scourge of aerosol foam sprays allegedly used by some party-goers to dis­tract and immo­bilise (mostly female) rev­ellers in order to molest them.

Even the doyenne of Sin­ga­pore blogs, Xiaxue (xiaxue.blogspot.com) has weighed in on the mat­ter, being a “vic­tim” her­self of the New Year’s party perverts.

“Being blinded by foam, and then molested while you are strug­gling with the foam on your face — how’s that for a happy new year? What is chew­ing gum? Chew­ing gum is noth­ing com­pared the harm caused by these foam sprays,” she asserted.

An online peti­tion has even been set up (new.petitiononline.com/aerosol/petition.html) to col­lect endorse­ments call­ing for the ban of aerosol foam sprays at these par­ties. There are cur­rently over 1,500 sig­na­tures on the peti­tion addressed to “The Gov­ern­ment of Singapore”.

Prob­a­bly more con­tro­ver­sial is the fact that these blog­gers allege that most of the per­pe­tra­tors were “for­eign work­ers”, with blog­ger inex (www.livejournal.com/users/inex/) ask­ing for future street par­ties and events to be “a Singaporeans-only event. Only those with pink IC and their for­eign friends (a con­trolled num­ber of course) should be allowed to participate”.

Oh well. New Year, new con­tro­ver­sies — and all fod­der for bloggers.

Mr Miyagi aka Ben­jamin Lee has been enter­tain­ing read­ers at miyagi.sg for over a year, and has resolved to keep his res­o­lu­tions short.

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  • http://tofushop.blogspot.com arex

    i know peo­ple have been molested, and i know peo­ple who have been molested; some will jump at the chance to lay blame on the some­times innocu­ous for­eign worker, but an inci­dent i wit­nessed on the recent new year’s eve has prompted me to respond to this inter­est­ing arti­cle by miyagi-san.

    what i saw was the utterly juve­nile ways of two or three local boys. the small group of minors did a seem­ingly sim­ple thing, and prob­a­bly had no thought of what con­se­quences their actions could bring. they passed one migrant worker at the down­town hotel next to the Istana, screamed “ah neh” count­less times while jump-spraying almost his entire head and upper torso with foam like it was a first-person-shooter/fragger. Not being MYOPiC like us sin­ga­pore­ans, his eyes had not the pro­tec­tion of cor­rec­tive lenses.
    He walked on, and so did the boys, laugh­ing and mock­ing. i was enraged to have seen such unwar­ranted dis­crim­i­na­tion by young big­ots pos­si­bly in the mak­ing [not say­ing that i’m not racist at all, we all have prej­u­dices and are some­what col­or­blind, but any­ways]. sur­pris­ingly, no fight (or fight back) ensued, and i sorta admired the chap who kept on walk­ing, only seem­ing to show a bit of dis­ap­point­ment while he brushed off the foam.
    i thought, hope he does not venge­fully molest or kill any­one after that.

    my point is, actu­ally i have no point. just that this reminded me of the small, lit­tle acts of racism that per­me­ate most societies.

  • http://tofushop.blogspot.com arex

    i know peo­ple have been molested, and i know peo­ple who have been molested; some will jump at the chance to lay blame on the some­times innocu­ous for­eign worker, but an inci­dent i wit­nessed on the recent new year’s eve has prompted me to respond to this inter­est­ing arti­cle by miyagi-san.

    what i saw was the utterly juve­nile ways of two or three local boys. the small group of minors did a seem­ingly sim­ple thing, and prob­a­bly had no thought of what con­se­quences their actions could bring. they passed one migrant worker at the down­town hotel next to the Istana, screamed “ah neh” count­less times while jump-spraying almost his entire head and upper torso with foam like it was a first-person-shooter/fragger. Not being MYOPiC like us sin­ga­pore­ans, his eyes had not the pro­tec­tion of cor­rec­tive lenses.
    He walked on, and so did the boys, laugh­ing and mock­ing. i was enraged to have seen such unwar­ranted dis­crim­i­na­tion by young big­ots pos­si­bly in the mak­ing [not say­ing that i’m not racist at all, we all have prej­u­dices and are some­what col­or­blind, but any­ways]. sur­pris­ingly, no fight (or fight back) ensued, and i sorta admired the chap who kept on walk­ing, only seem­ing to show a bit of dis­ap­point­ment while he brushed off the foam.
    i thought, hope he does not venge­fully molest or kill any­one after that.

    my point is, actu­ally i have no point. just that this reminded me of the small, lit­tle acts of racism that per­me­ate most societies.

  • Tucker Chang

    Ban Foam­ing
    Not again. When­ever there is some­thing wrong with some­thing, there is a call to ban that some­thing!
    Sin­ga­pore­ans need to grow up. If the govt heed every peti­tion, soon, what’s left of the souls of Sin­ga­pore?
    Res­o­lu­tion for 2006 — Stop using the word BAN

  • http://akandatang Tucker Chang

    Ban Foam­ing
    Not again. When­ever there is some­thing wrong with some­thing, there is a call to ban that some­thing!
    Sin­ga­pore­ans need to grow up. If the govt heed every peti­tion, soon, what’s left of the souls of Sin­ga­pore?
    Res­o­lu­tion for 2006 — Stop using the word BAN

  • http://malrie.com malarie

    this page doesnt tell much about gum at all!!!!!!goodness yall

  • http://malrie.com malarie

    this page doesnt tell much about gum at all!!!!!!goodness yall

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