"Newcastle United and good defending are mentioned in the same breath as often as Keegan and tactical excellence..."

That quote drew a chuckle from me in a rather uneventful day at the office.

I came in this morning wanting to blog, strongly, about this article that I was directed to read. It was written by an Australian riling against the injustice that allows Singapore, via its investment arms, to take up significant shares in foreign banks, telecommunications, and other privatised government bodies. Indeed, he was outraged that a foreign power (not sure if that was a compliment) should have a larger stake in Australia's infrastructure than the Australian government itself.

While that sounded like a legitimate protest, the whole argument disintegrated with snide remarks that had nothing to do with the point being made. In fact, it sounded more like the author was just trying to invoke controversy with personal attacks. Bringing up the point that Singapore was not larger than Melbourne, a state capital? So geographical size should be a factor in investments? Singapore has no minimum wage. And he talks about minimum wage like it's some social panacea. Never mind that it is that minimum wage coupled with welfare payments that contributes to the increasing number of homeless people in that country.

Stepping aside, I can never forget imagery of a dirty and downtrodded old man waiting for a family to finish their meal at a foodcourt before jumping in and helping himself to the leftovers. Before fishing out a pack of Marlboros to enjoy a nice smoke afterwards. It's hard to have pity for people who chose to buy cigarettes over food, and we can only have the government to blame for spoiling its citizen in this manner.

Oh, and the author never fails to point out that Lee Kuan Yew is 83 this year, as if age is 100% correlated with a nimble mind. If anything, I know that eloquency is never 100% correlated with intelligence; I already have proof that it might even be negatively correlated.

And finally, the one which really gets to me just that bit more than anything else. In fact, if I ever feel really strongly about two social issues, one of them would be the death penalty. He spoke of that executed drug trafficker as if he was a saint to be spared. I am a huge proponent of the death penalty, and I really fail to see why people would be so opposed towards it. I can't empathize with them at all. Being one of the countries that are in close vicinity of the Golden Triangle, one of the ways to stop Singapore from being a drug hub would be to punish drug trafficking severely.

I guess they are just peeved that they have to find other ways to get their weed now. It must be a Western plot to try and open up channels so that they can get to their weed. What a despicable way to do it; by heaping blame on the death penalty. I'm sure if it was for murder the outcry would be far less vocal. "It's only weed, let him go so that he can give our children more weed."

Digressing a little bit, the other thing I dislike are animal activists. I'm fine with the consistent ones, but I find many are more hypocrites than anything. Some of them swear off meat entirely because of the cruelty it involves, but continue to sport leather goods as if no animal suffered for it. The more shallow ones constantly focus on how dogs are being eaten in China, as if dogs are too sacred to be eaten and cows are not.

Well, I'll end my opinion-charged entry here. There's nothing major going on nowadays, but as I put into motion certain plans hopefully something exciting will roll out. Till then, there's always Bangkok to look for! I'm so gonna massage my muscles away!