THE BLACK CABRIOLET

HOW private can privacy ever be? It’s about blogging and the fact is, we define the privacy but the truth is, there is no privacy. For instance, in our daily life, we keep secrets or anything too personal and as long as we don’t talk about it, it’s a secret forever. Now whencesoever, can our secrets be uncovered? Just imagine how Hitler’s biggest secrets, clandestine work of mass-destruction can be uncovered through un-destroyed missive and sketches. No secrets are ever secrets when it’s being told and that has made existence in another mind which explains why; “If I have to tell you, I gotta kill you.” Or any physical records in documents, etcetera. So, how secured can a blog and it’s contents ever be, away from the curious ones and menacing web creepy crawlies – search tools. Anybody will stumble into your blog and it takes less than a day for your contents to disseminate worldwide like furious spawn of a single virus. That multiplies very quickly until it hits your cyber-doorstep with flame mails or best of all, legal threats. How exciting!

RHYTHME and the verses. Listen to a man like a song, his impression by the chorus and more about him when you get to his full verses. More often, it’s utter disappointment. Let’s say, you walk pass a shop and you were so enchanted by this rhythme sounding like a chorus, hmm…it’s just exhilarating and you stopped, look around the shop and their merchandise but it’s that song you’re interested in. You want to get close to him and nevermind the details, find out who he is and the rest some other time. So, it’s a very nice song and you asked shop person, what song is that. Like we ask about his name.

INTERNET is like the deep blue, quiet ocean. To keep a quiet blog is like operating a submarine in the deep sea. But it seems, the ocean is getting a little busy these days since the upswing of personal publishing – blogging. The internet is behemoth of all electronic informations, easily accessible and no longer as urbane when it comes to privacy. But privacy to what some may think is a personal space online, and how personal can it ever be when search spiders are all crawling the worldwideweb – search engines. So the quiet sub that roams the silent depth is no longer safe when sonars (keywords) could capture it’s position and that’s not frightening enough, who are these sending off these signals? Another thing is danger from within, your own friends or online acquaintances. Through betrayal or just out of goodwill someone places you as a link to his/her blog or website, that’s where it attracts the curious, silent roamers to your blog. These are some of the factors I can think of, like a chink in the armour.

KIDS ask the dumbest questions and they do the silliest things that we’ll laugh it off. Kids are always curious and they’re monsters when it comes to mischieves but just that thing about kids that makes us think a little longer, is that we see ourselves again. And how we grow up to be troubled adults, worried individuals and to face so much tribulations in life. These are the adults of tomorrow, the bankers, the rich and famous, celebrities, scholars, business wonders, doctors or even the biggest crooks, smartest criminals when they are less fortunate. And most of these kids will be in the indispensable work force that contributes to all aspects of life.

CATASTROPHE of the 80s. Was flipping some documents, categorised under National Disaster, Hotel New World. I was young then (Secondary 2, I think), that’s 1986. When Cindy Lauper was HOT! Singapore in the 80s was a lot different, the sun in those days was a lot brighter if I put it figuratively. There were bad times too and “Hotel New World Disaster” was bad enough to smitten the hearts of citizens. Those were the times when, I saw helpless Singaporeans crying in the streets, soldiers removing the rubbles while police busily keeping order. That’s many days of arduous work round the clock. Those days, SCDF were in brown (damn ugly unlike today, so smart) uniform and short-handed and perhaps lacking experience in massive disaster. Due to that, foreign tunnelling experts involved in SMRT project back then, muck in to the rescue. Nearly, everybody were involved and Singaporeans of all races, young and old were there to help. What do I see? Great Singaporeans in those times!

RUMOURS and how do we deal with it when it spreads like virus, multipying each day from ears to ears and companies to companies. That damages your reputation. These are the mongrels that I shoot them, they howled in pain and limped their way back to their own hole and lick the wound. More will join and they’ll come and the more I shoot the worst I become. Accused of being one of the baddy in my industry. Rumours swirl, the distorted stories and wildly fabricated ones go around, you can smell it when you step into any big occasions. The faces tell about things they hear and it’s hard to pull that smile and approach almost nonchalant. These people, their mouths, you can’t stop them. There is nothing we can do about it or even avoid, prevent.