A father Bully.

“Just because you are bigger in size, you can bully others. Since you can bully my son, I can bully you.”

That’s a 43-year-old, adjunct teacher, telling a 10-year-old classmate of his son off. Here is the backdrop as reported. 

“After lessons ended on July 7, 2017, the boy was walking towards a gate at his school in the northern part of Singapore when Tan (the boy’s father) confronted him.”

“He grabbed the boy’s bag handle, causing him to move backward, and push him to a nearby rubbish shed. The victim was pushed onto a wall while the accused scolded the victim.” 

That’s where he talked about bigger size and issue a bully’s threat on the school bully. 

“The victim sought medical treatment around 9:30 pm that day and was discharged about two hours later.”

Tan “pleaded guilty to an assault charge yesterday and was sentenced to seven weeks’ jail.” Maybe two bullies does not a right make?

In mitigation, Tan’s lawyer said that his son was bullied by the young bully every day since early 2017. The boy would push Tan’s son and abuse him with vulgarities. 

His lawyer Cory Wong said: “Mr Tan had previously gone to the relevant school teacher to report the bullying but, alas, nothing concrete had materialised from his reports.”

“Tan was instead told that the victim had anger management issues, and felt that his concerns were being brushed aside. True enough, the school remained ineffective in doing anything to stop the bullying.”

So, from Tan’s account, he said that near the school gate, he “tried to verbally engage with the victim, but the victim had very cockily ignored him.”

“In the heat of the moment, and being a loving father who would staunchly protect his son’s interests, the above drove Mr Tan to act out of character.”

For all that, Tan was convicted and sentenced to 7 weeks’ jail. His lawyers had asked for a fine. 

Lesson? Well, the lesson here is about thinking and/or acting “out of character”. 

Trust me, when pushed to a corner, when the torment becomes unbearable, we all break. 

Some break and end up with self-destructive results. Some handle it with an emergency level of self-restraint, thereby confining the damage within limited impact. 

Either way, you can be sure that acting with reason is always the first to be let go when we break. 

In any event, I trust Tan as a loving father and an adjunct teacher at that time has learned his lesson.

Although he said it was not premeditated (as he had gone to school to pick up his son that day), I felt that it was nevertheless preventable. And it is more so in this particular situation since Tan was an educator in his own rights and he ought to have been exposed to similar situations. I even figure that he might have handled such situation before with other unruly kids. 

But I guess when it comes to your own son, things can turn out to be less idealistic and arm-length to more visceral and blood boil. That accounts for him acting out of character. 

Here, I recall a time when our son came to us and told us that he had been bullied by a bigger boy in his primary school. My wife then went over to the school and reported the bully. The school told us they will monitor the situation. We told our son about it and we left it as it is. 

As our son did not feedback to us after that, we thought all was well with him. However, in our weekly sharing as a family (many years later), we talked about it, and he shared that the bully still carried on his demeaning ways for some time after we reported him to the school. 

We asked him why he didn’t tell us, he replied that he did not see a point. The school could not do anything about it. We can’t be there for him all the time. He said he might as well adapt and avoid the bully until he finds another target. They often do after some time when the fun and novelty dry up.

That led me to reflect about the raw reality of being bullied. My daughters experienced it. I experienced it. Even when we become adults, working in the office, we may at times become target of bullies. 

No doubt we have to stand up to them. Report them, draw the line, challenge them, and let them know we are not afraid of them. But at times, things are more complicated than that. Not all bullies get the just desserts they deserve. 

At times, things do not change and we have to change. We have to adapt and keep a distance. We have to walk away and leave it behind us. We have to find our own resolution and go forward with our own life.

I believe it is an impractical and imprudent advice to tell our children that they must always expect the world to bend to their expectation or their sense of justice. 

Sometimes, it is about retreating to confront another day. Sometimes it is about accepting that it is not your fight. And sometimes it is about going all the way. 

Most times, it is a judgment call, and I am glad my son dealt with his situation in the best way he knew how then. It may not be ideal to some. But he is nevertheless able to move on with it and I believe pick his own fight when the time for him is ripe.

Monica NUS expose.

Nicholas Lim, by now that name should be familiar to many, said this in an exclusive interview with Joyce Lim: -

"I want to say that I have been and still am truly sorry for what I have done. Nobody should ever be put through the kind of trauma that I caused Monica. People have condemned me and my actions - I deserve it. I condemn myself. I seek everyone's forgiveness.”

Nicholas added: “And I resolve to work on becoming a better person; to be someone that my parents will not ever be ashamed of in the future."

Now, the question is, is he for real? Is Nicholas going to learn his lesson? Can forgiveness be extended to him for the trauma he has caused to Monica? 

Surely, what he has done is rightly and swiftly condemned. Yet, how about the person? Should he too be condemned? 

That really depends on who you are asking? 

After the infamous incident in November last year, Nicholas confessed to his parents and he said: “My dad is a taxi driver and he works very hard. I can tell he is worried sick," 

"There were definitely moments where I felt I could no longer hold it together, but I was lucky to have the support and encouragement of my family, friends and even strangers who have kept me going.

”They were angry at what I did. They were also willing to let me redeem myself - had the faith and belief in the person that I am, to be able to learn from my mistake and become a better person."

But, in another exclusive interview with Monica by Jolene Ang, she said that after the incident, she was “left feeling violated, disgusted, betrayed and above all confused as to whether she should make a police report.”

Her struggles with NUS and the police only made it worse. Their cavalier and dismissive attitude at the start only aggravated the pain and anguish for her. 

Monica said: “The weeks that followed the incident was hellish for her. "I didn't want to shower at night. I didn't feel safe. I didn't even know if he was still around.””

"I saw him on my Instagram - he was walking around like a free man, and the thought of seeing him on campus next semester, the thought that there might be a chance that he could re-offend, and that victim might be me again, crippled me.”

She added: "It's not just about the severity of the punishment. I didn't feel like NUS had meted out the right punishment to keep me and the rest of the student body safe."

But on that, NUS has come out to apologise publicly. The renown institution has done the right thing and said that they have failed Monica. That should not be all, and that was not all. 

NUS has also confirmed that they will be reviewing the “two-strikes-and-you-are-out” policy, and among other measures, will set up a victim support unit and boost campus security. 

As for the police and AGC, they have exercised their prosecutorial discretion on rehabilitative grounds when they gave Nicholas a conditional warning, and I don’t think they are going to budge on that.

It is their judgment call and that is enshrined in the constitution. It will surely not please everybody but it is something those who agree and disagree will have to deal with.

But whatever the agreement or disagreement, the online vitriol will have to cease for the sake of balance, sanity and recovery. 

Lesson? One.

This traumatic incident I feel has come to the close of one chapter and the opening of another. 

The next chapter is about following up in the tertiary institutions islandwide, that is, increasing awareness and security in campus, setting up support groups, taking a tougher stand against such actions, and reviewing archaic policies that lean towards manifestly lenient measures against perpetrators. 

Like Monica said, “I see a chance to get some real change and to make a difference, and I have to take it.”

And she has indeed made a difference, that is, a strong message like a resilient ripple has been sent out throughout society, and it has shaken and exposed the foundational presumptions of our nation concerning how the institutional leaders view such deviant acts and the weak measures against it. 

She also said: “The funny thing about sexual assault is that you feel ashamed about it, even though you've done nothing wrong. But now I feel freed of that burden. I'm not ashamed any more."

As for Nicholas, he said: “And I resolve to work on becoming a better person; to be someone that my parents will not ever be ashamed of in the future.”

As a flawed human being myself, who is also guilty of mischief in my younger days, my hope is that Nicholas will learn his lesson and change for the better. 

All my writings have always been about moving forward with remorse and personal transformation, and Nicholas in the days ahead will have a lot to do to make amends. Only time will tell whether his words are true to form and substance. 

On our part, we ought to take the wait-and-see approach, and not the see-and-whack reproach. 

And, in the meantime, we as a society have to move forward in positive and transformative strides, and every step thus far seems to be in that direction of healing, restoration and reconciliation.

Sri Lankan suicide bombing - is religion the culprit?

This captured my heart. 

“The little room, like much of Sri Lanka, could hold no more grief. All day on Monday, through the steamy heat, mourners quietly stepped inside and paused in front of a sealed coffin containing what was left of Sneha Savindi Fernando.”

“Sneha was 11 years old and standing in line for communion at Easter Mass on Sunday when she was blown apart.”

“Why did you leave me? her grandmother cried, sitting in front of the coffin and rubbing its sides, with anguish in her eyes. “There are so many bad people in the world, Why kill the innocents?””

It is said that the smallest coffins are the heaviest. And the weight is made more unbearable when the passing is caused by senseless violence triggered by grown men on the pettiest of emotions. 

Appparently, revenge was the motive. 

Sri Lanka’s State Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene “told Parliament yesterday that initial investigations had revealed that Sunday’s explosions were executed by local extremist group National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTI) in retaliation for the Christchurch attacks in New Zealand last month.”

It truly boggles the mind and heart as to how the two events are even related. One was committed by a self-declared ultranationalistic, white supremacist who had no religious affiliation or profession, and very much a loner. 

However, the Sri Lankan’s multiple bombings on Easter Sunday was a mindless violence perpetrated by fighters believed to be affiliated to ISIS. 

If you think that religion was the common link, I beg to defer. It is easy to scapegoat religion as the culprit that fueled the carnage and fury. And we have a long history of how the name of religion was used for all kinds of self-driven, self-enriching acts of brutality and inhumanity. 

It has to be said that such violence can only be carried out by men who are blind to the scream and cries of their victims. 

The death of innocent girls and boys does not even move them in the slightest. They go by a self-proselytising rage that is sightless. It is a heart so conditioned by an altered ego beyond common reason that unmitigated rage takes over the other human senses in their body. 

Their eyes see only hatred. They smell only revenge. Their mouth is a bugle call for ruthless vindication. And they hear only what they want to hear; neither reason nor pleas of the innocent, but an all-consuming lust for power, control and self-preservation. 

But, by saying all that, I am surely not stripping these people of the humanity that is common to us all. Their acts are without doubt inhumane, but if they think that what they have done is in any way special and unique (or god forbid, enlightened) as if it was a divine mandate from some otherworldly sources, they cannot be anymore wrong or misguided. 

It is therefore not religion that undergirds their depravity, but an extreme self-delusion that plunges them far below the standards of humanity (but not out of its scope or imagination as history has witnessed equally depraved acts, if not worse). 

In fact, to settle at such dark depth of humanity only shows that they have effectively surrendered to the worst version of themselves. Their warped egos would tell them otherwise, but such vain persuasion only worsen their delusion further with little or no hope for personal redemption. 

Alas, I can only go back to the coffin of little Sneha, who became one of the innocent victims of this pervasively dark humanity. I can only look to the restoration of Sri Lanka after this carnage. 

And as with the mindless violence that has left a nation and the world speechless, I can only pray that the aftermath of resilience, hope and unity of hearts will bring about a force of humanity so infectious, encouraging and empowering that it will far exceed (even overwhelm) the one that has threatened to destroy us all.

Adultery - Andy and Jacqueline - Part II

Can we understand marriage by understanding adultery? For you can’t have adultery without marriage. And where there is marriage, adultery is often just a wink away.

And I know it is an affront to good sense to ask, what can we learn about marriage from adultery? It’s like asking, how can we learn to be good by asking a bad person about it? 

Yet, I recall what Confucius once said: “If you see a worthy man, endeavour to emulate him. When you see an unworthy person, then endeavour to examine your inner self.”

That saying may be what is necessary to correct the affront to good sense about asking the question: “what can we learn about marriage from adultery?” 

There are always two ways to look at such things. And I take my cue from the scandal that has rocked the media and entertainment world. By now, we should be familiar with the media leak of Andy Hui and Jacqueline Wong. 

I guess the best advice for now comes from Kenneth Ma, Jacqueline’s boyfriend, possibly ex-boyfriend, when he said: “I feel that in this world, apart from Hui’s wife, actually no one has the right to say anything.”

That said and noted, I return to the two ways to look at the situation.

First, we can do what the Pharisees did when they caught the woman in the act of adultery. They all wanted to stone her. They made the private affair into a public affair. Incidentally, the mystery man had apparently escaped from the pharisacial dragnet. 

Or second, we follow Confucius’ advice and examine our own heart, which is what Jesus meant when he said: "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

The point here is not about not judging when the time calls for it. It is however about taking some occasions as opportunity to turn the mirror on ourselves. The truth is, we ourselves have to be careful because we can never be too careful when it comes to the secret affairs of the heart. 

As Blaise Pascal puts it, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.“ And I take that to mean in this specific context that not everything we do is supported by a balance and consideration of its costs and consequences. 

We should therefore never give ourselves too much credit, lest we puff the fluff and forget that we are only human struggling with our only-human desires. 

The reality is, some things happen even to the best of us, and even happy marriages fall prey to an unguarded momentary temptation that seems like the stupidest thing to do upon sombre reflection the morning after. 

Mind you, it may be a featherweight of a temptation which confronts us, but at times, it may very well meet up with a featherweight of our resistant will before we foolishly succumb to it, and regret big time later. 

By then, the damage is done, the trust is broken and the marriage is endangered. 

And Andy’s admission that he is lost, his heart and soul are broken, and he is undeserving of forgiveness is just the silent pull back of the waters on the beach before the emotional tsunamis hits real hard. 

Alas, when it hits, the mess it leaves behind takes years to rebuild. And the foundation broken may risk never to be able to be restored.

So my takeaway is to rest the stone beside the mirror before me - to see my own reflection and that of the stone’s. More importantly, to examine the stone and see whether it has my name on it. Most times, it is inscribed in it. 

And I am again reminded of Jesus’ words, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." 

Most times, it is not the sin that disqualifies me for we have all fallen. But it is how I too may fall prey to it that ought to restrain me, and keep me humbly and constantly examining my own heart.

Sammi, Andy and one named Jacqueline.

Forbidden fruit is always sweeter? But sobriety can turn that bite into a nightmare.

For Andy Hui, the aftertaste left him in tatters, broken to be exact. 

His dalliance with actress and former Miss Hong Kong Jacqueline Wong in a taxi ride and beyond was captured on camera. That 16 mins video will sadly mar his marriage to Sammi Cheng, 46, for a long time to come.

The leak showed Andy, Jacqueline and another man sharing a cab. When the man alighted, Andy assured the man that he and Jacqueline will go home separately. 

“After the man leaves, however, (Andy) and (Jacqueline) provide only one location to the driver and begin holding hands. At one point, (Jacqueline) leans over to kiss (Andy) as his hand rests on her thigh.”

They then left the cab together - End of leaked video. 

A little background here. Andy and Sammi’s love affair and marriage (no kids yet) is touted by Comedian Dato Wong as “Hong Kong’s Last fairy tale.”

It was a 30-year fairy tale. They met and dated as far back as 1991, after they recorded the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart.” 

They broke up in 2004 and after seven years apart, they got back together in 2011. They then married in 2014. 

As for Jacqueline, she has been openly dating another TVB actor Kenneth Ma. 

After the leak yesterday afternoon, Andy was emotionally devastated. He must have felt exposed. Hours later, he showed up in a tear-ful seven-minute appearance. 

Andy’s head was bowed and he said: “Sorry, Sammi.”

“I want to apologise to my family. Sammi’s family, friends and people who love me. Because I did what I cannot make up for, something that will not be forgotten.”

Andy then cried and continued: “I drank a lot that night but I feel that being drunk is definitely not an excuse to do something so wrong, very bad, very disgusting and very unfamiliar. I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

Lesson? Actually, the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart?” is the question all wives occasionally asked of their husband. Indeed, the heart is a strange place for married men. 

While a woman’s desire is the desire of her man, the man’s desire is at most times just desires - period. That is why that last confession is quite familiar to us men, “I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

It is strange (and I would not say as Andy said, “very unfamiliar”) that the institution of marriage always has a dark and wet basement leading to a secret backdoor of extramarital indiscretions. 

Alas, it is hard to define cheating in a marriage, especially in a world of virtual experiences. When Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” was he cheating. 

Jimmy Carter once admitted in a Playboy magazine interview that by Jesus’ standard of lusting in the eye, even he has “cheated” in his marriage. 

Author Esther Perel wrote: “Is chatting cheating? What about sexting, watching porn, joining a fetish community, remaining secretly active on dating apps, paying for sex, lap dances, messages with happy endings, girl-on-girl hookups, staying in touch with one’s ex?”

One frequent visitor of strip club said, “I watch, I talk, I pay, but I don’t touch. Where’s the cheating?” 

And nowadays, with virtual platforms like Second Life, for example, where you can play out your alternate-fantasy of another life with another man in virtual worlds of your creation, is that cheating? 

One commentator called it “customized pornography.”

So, I return to the heart, the only organ in our body that bears the greatest responsibility (or culpability) for and of our conduct since we metaphorically blame it for all the extramarital indiscretions (and other immoral deviations) we commit, when its only role (and wholly vital one no doubt) is to be no more than a dumb pump, circulating and renewing blood in our body to keep us alive. 

When we fall, we don’t hear people accusing us of a bad or corrupt liver or deceitful kidney or an immoral spleen. It’s always the heart which gets all the bad press when the two organs truly responsible for our actions should have been the brain (impulsivity, emotionalism) and the only extendable and retractable organ in our body (and mind you, I am not talking about the tongue).

Let me end with Andy’s own heart-rending words: -“I have no soul. I am a broken man. I hope everyone can give me time to find myself.”

Well, I wish Andy well. I hope he can find himself, to find his soul again. 

As for their marriage, it is a personal and private affair, and it’s really none of anyone’s business. They must be given their own time to confront, confess and reconcile in whatever ways that the offender and the victim can live with. 

Like Andy said, he needs time to find himself and I am sure Sammi needs hers too, that is, to process the betrayal, a broken promise (that risks triggering the breaking of all other promises after that). 

My takeaway from this is that in the institution of marriage, you can’t bolt-shut all the doors and pull the blinds over the windows. 

A straying heart is not one who sees no evil, hears no evil or speaks no evil. That’s not possible, and it’s surely not a marital institution. It’s a mental and emotional asylum of two distrusting souls living together in a panopticon tower of high and insecure 24-hour mutual survelliance. 

Before long, it will suffocate love, eviscerate trust and eliminate all hope. 

A resilient marriage, even after a betrayal where one is genuinely remorseful and prepared to make amends, is an institution where the doors and windows are always clear and opened. 

At the center of this institution is trust, which may be vulnerable but it is not inconsolable or irreparable. At its boundary is hope, which may be lost at times, blurry even, but it is not lost forever if the couple are prepared to forgive, heal and move forward. 

And at its foundation is love. This love is not perfect, for we are human after all. But what makes this love exceptional, even in our failings, is its willingness to go beyond oneself to heal and bridge the gap. 

In the end, let’s not be too quick to be over-indignant about our own state of the heart after reading about Andy’s fall. 

We should always guard our heart because at times, it is not about how much we can boast to others about our invulnerability to fall like Andy did. 

But it is about what it takes for us to fall, and for some of us, if not most of us, it may just take far lesser than what we think is necessary to trip us over. Cheerz.