“I can’t tell you how to get to the Castle Yonder because I don’t know where it is. But if you ever come this way, look for me”.
— Maurice Sendak, Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life.
Tag - life
山木自寇也，
膏火自煎也。
桂可食，故伐之；
漆可用，故割之。
人皆知有用之用，
而莫知無用之用也。
Mountain trees self-destruct,
Lamp tallow self-immolates.
Cinnamon is edible, so it is cleaved;
Varnish is useful, so it is cut.
All men know the advantage of being useful,
but none know the advantage of being useless.
— 莊子 [Zhuang Zi], Zhuang Zi, “Transactions in the World of Men” (“人間世”).
My first column in Esquire Singapore!
Confronting Non-Confrontation in Singapore
Singaporeans bitch too much. Or so the saying I’m loosely paraphrasing goes.
Case in point: how often do you see updates like this from your Singaporean friends on your social media networks?
“Get your daughter’s head out of my vagina, bitch.”
(Context: It was a crowded bus; the mother was seated and holding her baby girl in her arms. Unbeknownst to the mother, her baby’s head was pressing against someone else’s crotch.)
“Just boarded an empty train when a lady pushed me from behind and let out a loud ‘TSK’. So impatient for what? Bitch, right!”
Indeed. And that’s one of the reasons why I term such posts “bitch-rants”.
But before the feminists get on my case, let me further clarify that:
- The epithet “bitch” is usually – but not always – bandied about in a bitch-rant, because the rants are about bitchy people, regardless of gender; and
- The people ranting do so in order to bitch i.e. to get something off their chests.
Bitch-rants are so common nowadays that when I wake up and I don’t see any bitch-rants in my social networks, I actually start worrying and searching for one…
I can’t post the full text because of copyright reasons so please get a copy of the February issue of Esquire Singapore from newsstands today!