One of the recent scandals making waves is Malaysia – and has been – is the story of the enticement of Daphne Iking. While it didn’t involved Daphne directly, the lawsuit between her ex-husband and former lover has gotten her hip-deep involved as well. It doesn’t help that the details are juicy to boot.

A woman sleeping with three men at the same time, married one of them and continued sleeping with another who is also married. The one she married found out, sue the beejeezuz out of the lover and then lo and behold, both discovered that the woman had another lover who is probably the father of the baby she had!

Along the way, many people have thrown verbal stones at Daphne, more than Ryan or Darren and some step forward to become champions in the name of feminism. The way I look at it, this case has nothing to do with feminism. I do agree that the enticement law under the Penal Code is archaic and sexist but that still doesn’t negate the fact that she broke a contract. Yes, a marriage is a contract of monogamy between two people – just because you don’t believe in it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. When I married Nil, I made a vow to be faithful and so did he, so I don’t know how people came to the conclusion that this vow of monogamy linked to a marriage (and may I add, a relationship) is a delusion. Unless Daphne and her ex-husband had agreed to an open marriage, which everyone knows, is not the case, then marriage is an agreement where both parties are to remain faithful and monogamous.

Now the trouble arises when people go against the contract and hide the truth from each other.

One commentary mentioned something along the lines of how Daphne has been making mistakes. This reminded me of Samantha’s remark regarding bad sex, “F*** me badly once, shame on you, f*** me badly twice, shame on me”. While it’s not the same thing, it does highlight one thing – When does a mistake stop becoming a genuine mistake and end up more as a habit or just a convenient excuse? If one cheats in an exam the first time, fine, people are forgiving – harsh but they’ll still be rather forgiving and excuse it to things like immaturity, lack of reflection and youth. But the second and third time? Can those excuses still be valid?

Yes, what these men and this woman do in private may be none of my business but it makes for a good lesson in sociology plus a chance to reflect on our own values and principles. I will be honest – I am not tolerant of a cheater (man or woman). This is coloured from observation, family history and just upbringing. I have seen what third parties and affairs have done to people and children; and I don’t understand the rationale behind the whole “it’s their own business” or the “I’m living for the day”. Affairs affect not just the people directly involved but family members, especially children. It can affect friends as well. The whole living for the day just points to a lack of concern for oneself.

Having said that, I don’t understand the concept of cheating.If you must sleep around, why be in a monogamous relationship? Also, it is, sad to see, that only the woman is being judged by many people based on the colourful bits of her sex life. No one is certainly labelling Ryan or Darren as cheaters and male versions of the “slut” – now, why isn’t there an English equivalent to that word? I guess this is what happens when we live in a patriachal society. The thing is that in a quest to champion the woman, some have failed to understand that those of us who are intolerant of this case are so because of one thing – cheating and lying, irrespective of who did it to who. If this was a man and the lovers and ex-es in question were women, I’d throw the same freaking fuss as well – remember Tiger Woods, anyone?

Personally, it isn’t the sex life that bothered me. It is the fact that she didn’t see that she was wrong or that she had a role to play in this fiasco. It is the fact that due to her and her bed partner’s actions, everyone else related to them have to be the victims – the baby she had, loved ones like Darren’s wife and family, so forth.

Thanks to Amy Chua and her book plus subsequent coverage by WSJ, we now have a new parenting label – the Tiger Mum. When the article on her book first came out, it drew a lot of backlash from readers – I’d say that majority of them are based in the US (as are many WSJ readers) – and prompted a healthy albeit heated discussion on parenting.

Here is an excerpt from the full article:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it’s math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can’t. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me “garbage” in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn’t damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn’t actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her “beautiful and incredibly competent.” She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)

To be fair to Chua, the article took only the extreme bits of the book and failed to highlight the fact that she was talking about her own experiences and journey in discovering that the Asian parenting style which she felt were foolproof and better were not the case. While the book is a memoir and is personal, the article depict it as a manual and worse, one of those books that play on race.

I shared this on a Malaysian forum, and participated in a few discussions going on in a couple of forms – an international knitting forum that had a subforum for Asian knitters (or people who were interested in Asian culture) and a Singapore parenting forum. The responses I received were mixed – some felt that she was wrong to say that Chinese or Asian mothers were like her; others felt that a balance was important but had stereotypical views of either society and some accepted that she made valid points but didn’t necessarily agree with her methods or the spin on the story.

When I discussed this with Nil, the first thing he mentioned was the constant comparisons between both cultures as if to hint that somehow people have some inferiority complex that they couldn’t or wouldn’t address openly. Afterwhich, he was quick to ask if we are talking about Europeans as well as Americans when we refer to the word “Western”. The article and subsequent discussions brought up memories of my own childhood and my parents’ parenting skills as well as allowed me to further look and analyse at the kind of parents Nil grew up with. The result of such rumination (definitely not under the influence grape flavored ecigs) is still somewhat puzzling as I seek to find some form of acceptance and direction to take.

Perhaps I should throw out my thoughts here and see where they take me.

More to come then.

I hate Mondays, especially after long weekends breaks that involve me recovering from the flu or when I have a packed weekend which includes housechores, shop stuff and commissioned knitting. Yes, the hat is coming along just nicely and I’m almost done with it – in fact, I’m starting on the crown bit (decreases). To make my knitting speedier, I have resorted to knitting in public, that is, knitting during my morning and even commute. It can be a bit challenging due to the crazy crowds but I can always find a spot somewhere – in a way, the fact that most commuters love to stand near the exit has become a boon for me! Normally, I’d find them annoying but today, you could say that I wasn’t even aware of their existence.

Trouble started once I was at work. Someone at the office decided to use the phone for whatever reason – that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she was blabbering on the phone on the top of her voice. And she didn’t just do it once. I believe she made at least three separate phone calls throughout the day and at each time, she was speaking as if either party (or both) was deaf!!! My office environment does well when people are somewhat silent. We need the quiet atmosphere and for a good reason. With her constant blabbering, almost everyone on my team got quite ruffled. I had visions of Saw 1 to 7 running through my mind. When my colleague asked her to politely lower her volume (I could swear that she was mentally stabbing the woman), that someone continued on her merry way in the same loud manner!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. It’s like getting an annoying neighbour who drums his fingers on the exam table nonstop.

Honestly, if you must talk on the phone, please be aware of your volume. I swear that the same thing happens in MRTs, elevators, buses and so forth. The whole wide world doesn’t need to hear about your latest escape at the shopping mall, or how you want to screw someone over just because your house pipe leaks, or about how some woman is cheating on her partner who is cheating with her cousin on some Korean-TVB-Jap drama. Singapore is already a very noisy country; sometimes it’s nice to have some silence…if people still know what that is or entails.

On Friday, a good friend buzzed me over MSN to ask if I had heard of the latest happening on Facebook. Apparently, a young man and brother of a mutual friend, Alvis Kong, committed suicide after posting his intentions on his Facebook profile. As I read the comments and write-ups discussing this man’s death and pre-death actions (I actually stopped working on my receipt printer ideas and went around googling for more info on the incident), I was drawn to one awful conclusion – many Malaysians don’t really understand what suicide is all about.

Many of those who commented laughed his pain and depression off, citing things like how silly he was to have killed himself over a break-up (he was in a four month old relationship prior to the break-up). Others who saw his last Facebook status made jokes about it and sad to say, even his sister was at first sceptical. You can view screenshots of his profile here and if you’re hardworking enough, Google will give you a good enough write-ups on the matter.

People fail to understand that picking oneself up is easier said than done. For many of us who have the mental and emotional maturity to do this, suicide is far from our minds. But for others, it is the best solution they have. Picture this – you are an intense and passionate person who has just been dealt a severe blow in life. When you try to share your pain with your friends, they laugh at you and tell you to “get over it”. When you try to talk to family about it, they think that it’s not a big deal and just “a passing phase”. You just want someone to listen to you – these people won’t even do it so how can they understand what you’re doing through? You’re alone. The pain is unbearable and it just builds. At the end of it all, you just want to let go and be free of everything. Death, you tell yourself, is better than living. And for you, it is true.

It is a myth and so very wrong to assume that someone is looking for stardom or glamour and that they are just “sad” when they talk about killing themselves, when they start to talk about dividing their possessions or say things like “take care of Mum and Dad for me, I love you” without any cause. In many cases of suicide, the first signs are often those things itself, which is why counsellors specializing in suicide cases will tell you to NEVER EVER ignore such talk. It doesn’t hurt to take it seriously because at the end of the day, we are talking about possibly saving another person’s life.

People think that the act and the reason for suicide is often silly and trivial but they fail to understand that that reason is very important in that person’s current stage in life. I have read of cases where students kill themselves for not achieving the results they want, where women hang themselves because they cannot face the reality of a cheating spouse, when men kill themselves after the slaughter of their families or loved ones, and so forth. There is no such thing as the right or wrong reason for suicide. There are some who even go on to judge and say that suicide is for the weak. I won’t even bother to refute this remark because it is reeks of manure.

What angered me more than anything else was the reaction to his death. Many people called him silly, ignorant and stupid. One even mentioned that he was a shame to his family for killing himself, calling him a coward, selfish and even concluding that someone like him doesn’t deserve to be loved. But what about people who saw the message and laughed it off or did nothing about it? Why should a dead person be shamed for not having the strength to go on with life while the others who laugh and let him carry his burden alone walk away “clean”?

We all pander the phrase “suicide is not an option” but how many of us actually bother to take the time to get the message across in actions rather than words? In the 45 minutes between the post Alvis made on Facebook and his death, how many of his friends bothered to drive over to his place and spend the night with him? A phone call is good enough, some people may say, but if you were in pain over a break-up, would you want to talk about it over a phone or would you prefer to talk with someone face to face? In our misconception and ignorance about such things, we not only assisted in the death of a young man but in the continued ignorance of suicide in general.

…

I remember talking to a friend a long time ago about her suicidal intentions. She had just lost her mother to cancer and wasn’t all that close to her dad. He was distant and trying his best to cope with his own grief. She felt lonely. A lot of us told her that she’d be alright and that she’ll pick up the pieces. That made her felt all the more alone. No one knew that deep down inside, she was suffering in silence – she missed her parents, came home every day after school to an empty home that bore all the memories of someone who is no longer with her. To her, death felt comforting. I spent hours talking to her and I’m glad I did so.

This is why today, whenever I see any talk of “death being the best way out”, I take those words seriously. People have asked me why I bothered when I don’t know these people and that this could very well be a joke. I always ask them back…

What if it isn’t?