Sunday, January 19, 2014

Here there everywhere

Thank goodness for Twitter - now  I can just shoot of my rants whenever they pop in my head. Unfortunately a 140 characters is usually not enough. Now I'd say thank goodness for blogs, so I can elaborate on my Twitter rants. Ah our lives today - 24 hrs connected. To what though, I often wonder. To whom are we connected? We spend so much time analyzing random strangers and know more about our social media pals than we do of our families. In fact we are so busy scrutinizing our frenemies' facebook photos and Whatsapping about a common nemesis' yet another barrage of selfies on Instagram we overlook looking into our selves, fixing what's wrong with us.

Anyway to get to the point, I recently ranted on Twitter about a few things that bugged me recently. And here I rant again. Because like I said, 140 characters just ain't enough.

I was walking from our apartment to my mom's place, and I saw this expatriate worker making his way slowly down the street on a bicycle laden on all sides with garbage bags. Out of nowhere zoomed two youngsters on a bike and one of them just stretched out his leg and kicked his wobbling bicycle. Just like that without a second thought about it. I was completely shocked. They didnt even look back. The expatriate worker almost fell, the bicycle stumbled but he managed to hold on to it. A couple of his bags fell and he picked them up. He was back on the bicycle and on his way by time I reached up to him. I could not fathom the carelessness with which this young person committed such a crude act. What was his beef with this poor worker? What made him just act out so cruelly towards another person, even if it is a person seen as a lesser being in our often hypocritical and racist society? Let's admit we are racists, before going any further. You wouldn't see any such act committed against a white person. In fact people fawn over Caucasians from cafes to shops to schools, anywhere. So I guess its not an outsider thing. We are just cruel to these workers. These workers who do the jobs that we deem to dirty or lowly for us. We'd rather sit on our bums and shamelessly be fed and clothed by our parents because we can't bring ourselves to earn a penny if we're not employed at a posh office where we can strut in shiny shoes and silk ties. So we'd treat the people who actually clean our houses and our streets, throw our garbage, build our homes, stock our shops, even babysit the kids and do our grocery shopping, like utter crap because we somehow feel we are 'above' them? Such foolishness disgusts me.

And then we make excuses for people who lack such common decency saying its because they lack education, that its because of their ignorance. No, humanity is not something you learn in school. You don't need education to be a decent person. Just like courtesy is also common sense. You don't need charm school to be able to hold open a door for someone, to make space for someone on the ferry, to give up your seat on the bus for an old lady, to say please and thank you... I can't accept it's a matter arising from ignorance. We just need to cultivate a bit more consideration towards the people around us, it's not rocket science.

We like talking about things like white supremacy. Well you know what, we Asians are bigger promoters of white supremacy than the white folk. We discriminate against the Bangladeshis, sometimes we are discriminated against by the Chinese, the Chinese by the Indians, the Indians by the Malays, the Malays by the Sri Lankans....what nonsense is this. We discriminate among ourselves so much, and we yet we all fawn over Caucasians. So it's us who put them on pedestals. No wonder South Asian women are obsessed with skin lightening creams, East Asian women are shelling out thousands for cosmetic surgeries to narrow their noses and widen their eyes and attain more european features, and so on. We constantly look down on ourselves and look down on our neighbors too.

Ok looks like I have veered off course as well. But thats what rambling is all about eh!

Nighty night,

Toodles




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