"Taleban's latest weapon, Child Suicide Bombers"

This article is taken from the Straits Times.

Basically, the article is about the Taliban now turning to using women and young children, especially young children, to become suicide bombers and carry out their dirty deeds for them. For example, some members of the Taliban in Afghanistan, two days ago, approached a seven year old girl and asked her to carry a package to the nearby police contingent for them. Then, as the child approached the vehicle, the men detonated the bomb in the bag she was carrying from a safe distance using a remote control device. Amazingly, all the policemen survived, but the child was literally blown apart. In another case, a boy believed to be between 10 to 12 years of age managed to slip past 6 security cordons and detonate the bomb on his vest, killing 30 recruits who were training there.

I am just so disgusted with the Taleban for committing such acts. How could they resort to using children and women to carry out their suicide bombings? They exploit the innocence of children and mental weaknesses of women, the supposedly weaker type of people, to carry out their evil deeds because they themselves just do not have the guts to carry it out themselves. They are the ones who are unhappy with others, for some reason or another, but to the point that they have the desire to kill those who do not practice what they do. However, when they do not dare to kill, they get others weaker then them, thorough brute force or lying, to do it for them. I think that this is the behaviour of cowards. If they do not dare to do it, then why do it at all, let alone get others to do it for them through underhand means?

Also, the children and women who do their dirty deeds for them are innocent. They do not have grudges against anyone. They just want to live their lives peacefully. They are living in a country which is poor, hence they do not even have big plans for themselves. However, even that cannot be granted to them!! It is so ironic that the members of the Taleban satisfy their thirst for blood and get what they want by denying others what they want to have, for example denying the women and children suicide bombers the merry, peaceful life they yearn to live. Essentially, what the Taleban is doing now is dragging others into their grudges and their fights. Take the pitiful girl for example. She thought that she was being kind by helping the men take the bag to the police contingent and hence she was probably feeling all good and melty inside. However, her reward was to have a short life ended so abruptly and probably with great agony. How is this being fair to her? I do not think that any of the Taleban actually have families and kids. If they do, they are just inhumane. This is because if they have their own children, then they will probably know what love is, how precious their children are to them. And yet, they can snuff out the lives of other children without blinking an eye.

In short, the Taleban are made up of savage, unfeeling men who should not even be called humans. They can watch a life being snuffed out and yet be indifferent about it. The acts they engage in are horrifying and cruel. They should be destroyed as quickly as possible. Ironically, I believe that most people would rejoice over their deaths just as they rejoiced sadistically over the deaths of the innocent, as the earth would then be rid of much evil.

"The Wonder of Not Knowing"

This article is taken from an edition of the Straits Times, but it is actually from the New York Times. It is basically about the essence of not knowing and its many benefits.

If you really think about it, like how this writer obviously has, there are a lot of advantages of disadvantages of not knowing things.

I agree that life must have been much more exciting in the past. This is because people, especially children, asked a lot of question about a large variety of things. Therefore, because of the lack of technology, they had to find out the things themselves. Life would have been more exciting because of the thrill of looking for the answers by oneself, and the satisfaction and pride that one had found out something and widened his pool of knowledge using his own means. Nowadays, although it is certainly much easier to find out things which we want to know, for the information is just one mouse click away, it takes away all the excitement which existed in the so-called "good old days". The curiosity only lasts a while because it can only last for the time which we take to boot up the old laptop.

I personally like to read about the unexplainable, or related topics, like mystery stories. This is because knowing that no one can find out the answer makes the whole issue extremely mysterious and exciting. Knowing that there is actually an answer, as the writer says, takes away the mysteriousness of the whole issue and leaves me quite disappointed. I can truly testify to this, and so can anyone else. This can be accomplished simply by picking up a mystery book. While still thick in the plot, one feels excited and curious about why this and that happened, and how it is going to solved. However, when one reaches the end of the book, where the mystery is solved, one feels a twinge of disappointment because alas, there is an explanation for all the things which happened in the crime, in the mystery. The next time one reads the book, all that excitement is gone, because one already knows what happens. The suspense no longer exists. This may also be the reason why people like to watch horror flicks. Because there is suspense. There is the crawling on one's skin and the cold clammy hand over one's heart. That is exciting.

However, there is still a downside for not knowing, which is quite obvious. The reason is that one will not be able to enhance one's knowledge and know how the world works. Man has long looked for answers to how things work, and since different people have different ideas, Google appeared. This search engine provides comprehensive answers to almost any question one can think of, and not from only a few but instead a seemingly endless list of sources. This is so that people can search for answers as easy as 1,2,3 and satisfy their thirst for knowledge.

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"Ask and you will be rewarded"

This article is from an edition of mypaper. Basically, it is about the writer, despite being Asian and the Asian culture where people normally feels very inhibited from asking. However when she picked up courage, she met with unexpected results. Firstly, when she picked up courage to approach the counter to ask for a replacement of fries when they were not prepared well, the fries were replaced without question and thus the write was very much relieved. The second incident was at a shoe shop. The writer would get a discount if she was to buy two or more items, but as she only needed one pair of shoes, she decided to ask another shopper if they could combine their purchase. Fortunately the shopper agreed and hence she got to enjoy a better discount than she would have asked.

I think that this kind of behavior should be encouraged, especially among Asians. I do not know how this kind of thinking came about, but it seems 'integrated' in us Asians, including me. Sometimes when some one whom I have never met or just met a few times asks me if I would like to have some snacks, I accept because I feel uncomfortable about saying anything else. I strongly agree with the writer that 'if we ask questions, we would learn so much more than we would by keeping silent', even though 'Most of the time, we are afraid that we would be laughed at for asking a silly question'. Also, if we ask, there are only two ways to go from there: one is to be rejected, the other to be accepted. However if we do not ask at all, the answer will forever be 'No", rejection. We have to ask to clear our doubts. If we walk around all day will a head full of clouds, how are we supposed to get anything?

In my opinion, the prime reason why Asians are afraid of asking questions is because they are afraid of being embarrassed, or diu lian, in Mandarin. That is where the problem comes in. The solution, however, should be very simple. One just has to cope with rejections and embarrassment from time to time. These are parts and parcels of life, which one has to go through. It does not matter if one is embarrassed, because at least one's doubts about that certain problem are cleared. However, trying to get over embarrassment is a very big obstacle, which may explain why although the solution is so simple, so many have trouble getting to it.

"Marcus Chin ordered to pay wife $4k a month"

This article is basicially about how freelance radio and television personality Marcus Chin, 57, was ordered to pay his wife $4k a month. Initially, when he walked out on his wife, who is called Madam Yan, he promised to pay her $6000. However, when he took up with a 25 year old woman who has since borne him a daughter, he told Madam Yan that he could only afford to pay her $1500. The latter took the case to court and hence after a four0day maintenance hearing in the Family Court, he was ordered to pay his wife $4000 monthly and $7000 in costs. Marcus Chin's reasons for not being able to afford to pay Madam Yan the sufficient amounts of money were that his income had shrunk to $9000 a month 'as a result of the very public fallout from his affair with Ms Eileen Cheah, the mother of his daughter.' However, he failed to explain why his income was now less nor gave evidence of what it was before. However, I also fail to understand why $9000 is not a sufficient amount of money for a family of three to live on. Also, even after he gives the promised $6000 to his ex-wife, he still has sufficient amount of money as $3000 cannot be said to be very little and also, it is highly impossible that he has no savings of his own from the days when according to him, he had much more salary.

Marcus Chin also said that he stopped performing in getai during the Seventh Month from 2009, and that his earnings from such shows in that month accounted for half of his annual income. This excuse is just ridiculous. He stopped of his own accord, so who can he blame but himself? Therefore, this excuse is totally invalid.

Why are Singaporeans just like that, especially actors. First it was Jack Neo, and then now Marcus Chin. First of all, a wife is supposed to be one's partner for life. If one wants to marry a certain woman, one must be prepared to overcome all the obstacles in the course of the marriage and not just walk out on one's wife. Secondly, a promise is a promise. One must stick to one's promise no matter what and also be prepared to face the consequences if one breaks the promise he has made.