Threez Frame

Reawakening

2009-09-08T09:46:00.000+08:00

Recently I have been thinking again, pondering about the first cause Women Make A Difference fought: child abuse and child sex trafficking, and along with it the trafficking of women into sexual slavery.

This morning I read this story

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=540138

A UK detective who spent his life cracking down on pedophiles became one himself. Weirdly, I do not judge him. Even though I think he should receive due punishment according to the law, the way the men he had caught before have been punished.

When a crusader goes into this world to fight such evils, there are forces coming against him or her in seen and unseen ways. One cannot undermine the lure of falling into the very act one is fighting against - being exposed to the perceived "allure" of sex with a very young girl on a constant basis. In the same way narcotics officers sometimes succumb to drugs - "What is it I am fighting against, exactly?" being the fatal question - sex trafficking fighters are not immune.

So how does one insulate against such temptation? Staying fully accountable is key - always have someone to report back to about all your activities. Have your vision and mission written down and placed in a prominent place - it will remind you why you are in this job. Recognise when one is feeling temptation - and flee, as the Good Book says. It takes discipline, but it will serve the cause one has been fighting for all along. It is a personal battle that one has to win in order to continue one's life work.

So I have been thinking, musing, pondering. 1. What can WMD do? 2. Who needs help that we can help quickly?
3. What is our goal and our map to getting there?

Serendipitously I have read about Karen Tse this week (www.ibj.org) and today a friend sent me this report about little girls 7, 8 years old forced to be brides to 20something men in Hamas (http://thelastcrusade.org/2009/08/07/hamas-plays-host-to-pedophilia/), which made my heart bleed, but did not shock me - it is not dissimilar from the child brides in India.

Suffer the little children. We have much work to do.

My Blog Hymen Grew Back

2006-08-05T20:20:00.000+08:00

Hmm, and I thought, since I had not posted for nearly a year, that this blog might actually have disappeared.

Pleasantly surprised.

If you're wondering why I suddenly so "eng" to blog, it's because my poor sweet baboo has the worst lung infection ever, caught from our adorable and very infectious five year old. Symptoms include 40 degree fever, spiking every 4 hours, body chills, vomiting and severe body aches. Duration: 7 days.

So I am home although I had originally intended to attend the Festival of Praise at the Indoor Stadium because one of my favourite heroes is speaking: Dr Ed Silvoso, author of the book Women: God's Secret Weapon, utterly brilliant and anointed man.

So I'll just have to get the CD.

I really should be starting on Christmas play because I will have two women (one also pregnant) after me in a matter of days for the first draft. It will be great - if only I could get it to write itself or Bill Gates could come up with something like a mind translator where I just need to put on a pair of headphones and think all the brilliant scripts in my brain and the manuscript is done in an hour, voila!

But first, a shower. It's promising to rain - but there are still obscene wet patches from under my pregnant boobies and I'm not even breastfeeding yet...

YOU MUST SIGN THIS!

2005-09-28T23:01:00.000+08:00

the bright future of Indonesia, originally uploaded by thebigdurian.

Children are such beautiful creatures of God. Anyone who has a son or daughter will tell you that their laughter rings in the corners of your heart even days after you've heard it.

That anyone would take one of these bright, innocent children and sell them into a brothel, and that a Singaporean man would come in, pay money, take off his pants and enter this little child, tearing her tender flesh, if that doesn't make you feel like throwing up, I don't know what will.

WE CANNOT STAND HERE AND PRETEND IT IS NOT HAPPENING. WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING BECAUSE THIS NEEDS TO STOP.

I urge you to sign this very important petition to urge our moral and good government to live up to its reputation and pass the law that will prosecute the beasts that commit such an act against humanity.

Then get 500 of your friends to do it!

We want to hit thousands of signatures -- we know our country is filled with people who want to make a difference and who want to do right.

Our deadline is 12 Oct to hit 5000 signatures.

Help us make it happen.

POSTSCRIPT: An excellent argument for/against/for/against legislation can be found here

shorebreak

2005-09-20T15:43:00.000+08:00

shorebreak, originally uploaded by astrocruzan.

wowwwwww ... this is the kind of break I like to take.

These Women (and men) Made A Real Difference!

2005-09-13T08:13:00.000+08:00

It's taken me a coupla days to recover from Women Expo (last Thurs through Sun) -- mainly because I had ignored so many things last week while at the Expo that they all avalanched on me these 3 days!

The Expo was great! Even though we did not hit our target of 250 t-shirts sold we did nearly half that and it was good! 120 T-shirts sold in 4 days was pretty darn good work, but the real satisfaction came from meeting and working with the passionate volunteers (who were multiple-time customers too! They were calling friends to take orders, it was just great!) and meeting and talking to women who heard about the cause and were so moved they gave donations (all of which will go direct to UNIFEM). This auntie with her daughter said, "I don't have much money, but I want to give." Her $10 was the biggest gift of the day -- I was moved to near tears.

Similarly with two young women who were helping out at a spa booth, who were so shocked by what they read and heard about child sex tourism, that they scrimped and pinched and gave up lunch money to buy the Kids' T-shirt (because it was cheaper than the grownup t's and these ladies were so small they fit into them!) I took a picture of their sacrificial giving:

Our celebrity friends helped a lot! Karen moved many. Eunice was inundated with women and children wanting to take pictures with MP but it was good because she engaged them in a conversation about the cause.

Nanz Chong, my sweet dear friend, did a spot-on job, picking on the audience as she spoke (particularly 2 men hanging at the back in shorts looking like they were waiting for us to screen photos of little children being abused -- SICKOS). Nanz sold quite a number of T-shirts indeed, and many women came looking for her to find out what she had been up to.

On Sunday afternoon WMD had a lovely surprise:

GLENDA CHONG

came to help! She wasn't there as officially "newscaster" or the station would not be happy, but she was a WMD volunteer. What an amazing show of personal conviction to the cause!!! I was very touched. Glenda and my buddy Judith stood at the front of the hall giving out flyers -- many people came to the booth, and one said "Hey, was that Glenda Chong who just gave me a flyer?!!!!"

Yes, now buy a T-shirt!

Glenda sold to one great guy, whom we call Mr Anonymous, who bought a T-shirt but didn't want to leave his name. He pledged he would never ever indulge in sex with underaged girls in any country. Now, to get another 2 million pledges...

To my volunteers -- what amazing girls -- thank you for your hard work and most of all your heart. Every bit counts. We WILL make a difference because we choose to.

And for Tomorrow.Sg and all who read this post and supported us -- thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Next up for WMD: a live discussion of the horrors of child sex tourism, 22 September, NEWSRADIO 938, 10am.

Star-Studded Sexpose!

2005-09-09T22:18:00.000+08:00

Today was a HIT! Praise Omnipresence!!!

The pure presence of celebrity was the draw to our humble booth, manned by my mannequin without panties. (Come back here tomorrow for a photo). It is wearing our pink T-shirt and my sweater to keep it from being too distracting. (By the way it's a grown mannequin)

When actress Karen Tan (my oldest bestest friend through 4 kids between us ...) showed up, there weren't many people in the audience. But as she spoke, more ladies (and some men) came to hang around and watch and listen. The Expo turned off the sound so all anyone could hear was the clanging bell of "DON'T HAVE SEX WITH YOUNG GIRLS!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO THEM, YOU SICK PERVERT?!"

Well, not so dramatic but from the ashen faces of not a few men we knew the point hit home. A few came to sign up as volunteers after that, which was very touching. Many said they were moved by what she said -- moved enough, I hope to do something about it and not just say "So poor thing hor?". That's Karen's "WOW this is a bigger audience than some of the performances I've done!" face. How can you not love a face like that?!

Eunice Olsen, formerly Miss Singapore and also the Vanna White of Singapore, now powderful Nominated Member of Parliament (she is SUCH a cool girl) walked into the hall and suddenly I feel as royalty has entered the room and I am the official cupbearer. She's saying hi and waving to everyone because they are just GAWKING. Helps that she is awesomely beautiful and very funny. I'm going to write her a part in my next play. That's fat old me sitting next to Girl Wonder.

Anyway there were many hiccups because I am a technosaur and donno how to expand the video screen! But Eunice did a great job and was inundated with people who wanted to take pictures with her and women who said "HOW CAN I VOLUNTEER?" Which was music to my ears.

Tomorrow Nanz Chong will speak. She is going to be great -- I cannot wait! She's fun and loud and she is going to be selling T-shirts!

But the REAL stars of the day were all the people who put their names down to volunteer, everyone who bought a T-shirt, and MOST OF ALL MY FANTASTIC VOLUNTEERS!!! Janice, Pam, Cherlynn, Rain, Vera, Melissa, Pei San, Meixuan, Sook Wei, Chantal — you guys are the real deal.

COME SUPPORT WMD AT WOMEN EXPO!!

2005-09-09T14:03:00.002+08:00

Finally WMD's getting some action going and I wish I had 5 clones of myself so I could have done some publicity before today!

WMD is at Women Expo today through Sunday (9-11 Sept) at Singapore Expo Hall 5B! We are selling our pink T-shirts (first 10 customers gets a free Shape water bottle) for $38 (women's and men's) and $25 (kids).

But the REAL attraction (apart from our beautiful booth display which I spent all afternoon yesterday putting together and which was inspired by Pam Ho, writer and cheerleader extraordinaire) is our CELEBRITY GUESTS!!

Yes, come and meet live the following lovely ladies:

• KAREN TAN, stage actress and Theatre Awards Winner last year for Best Actress in Iron. She's also my best friend! She will be educating the public on the horrors of child sex tourism and trafficking, and also sharing her views as a mother and media personality. KAREN SPEAKS AT 4.15PM TODAY (FRIDAY)

• EUNICE OLSEN, NMP and pianist extraordinaire! She will speak on the need for law to be passed to prosecute Singaporean men who go to Batam and other places (VIetnam, Cambodia, south Thailand) for sex with underaged girls (and boys). EUNICE SPEAKS AT 7.15PM TONIGHT (FRIDAY)

• NANZ CHONG, entrepreneur, trainer and former founder of ONE.99shop, will talk about what businesses can do to help women and children in poverty. Nanz is a superbly dynamic and really funny speaker who can get a crowd going! NANZ SPEAKS AT 12.30PM TOMORROW (SATURDAY)

And we have a "SECRET" celebrity news anchor coming to sell T-shirts on Sunday afternoon. She is VERY BEAUTIFUL, VERY TALENTED, and VERY BRAINY, and is currently on the cover of a respected women's magazine, and is recognised through Asia.

All these women will be happy to talk to the public about the cause and also autograph any T-shirts bought.

PLEASE PASS ON THIS MESSAGE AND COME SUPPORT US! (And there are lots of other great deals, free facials and many laughs in the Expo hall, so bring lots of friends)

WMD AT WOMEN EXPO
SINGAPORE EXPO HALL 5B
BOOTH D58
11AM TO 9PM DAILY, FRIDAY 9 SEPT THROUGH SUNDAY 11 SEPT

The Day My iPod Died

2005-09-06T19:41:00.000+08:00

It has been one of those days.

1.15PM: ELDERLY MAN REFUSES MY SEAT
I got on the train at Tanah Merah and sat down. Usually I do this so that by the time we get to Bedok or Eunos there is usually one old person or one mother with kids to give up the seat to. One of these days I will mount a campaign to photograph people who do not give up the seats with the sign "PLEASE GIVE UP THIS SEAT FOR SOMEONE WHO NEEDS IT MORE" — pretending to sleep doesn't cut it. I have woken up many many many people before.

Anyway, today, there were a bunch of people who got on at Bedok and stood in front of me. Then on climbed this dude who must be like, 80, more wrinkles than a bulldog. But I should have suspected he is in denial because his hair was coloured CARROT.

Anyway, I was sitting 4 seats away from the door, and Mr Carrot came in and hung round the door. There were 2 slouchers standing in front of me and the minute I took my bag one of them actually positioned his bum in front of me so that as I pulled away he can reverse into the parking lot. Incredible.

So I half-hung my bag on the seat, got up, climbed over the extended legs of this teen girl next to me and reached the object of my kindness.

Who looked at me and shook his head like "What? Do I look like I'm pregnant?"

"不要“　he said.

I looked at him incredulously and nearly said something that hasn't exited my lips since 2003.

I wish he got on at BUGIS, one stop before I had to get off so at least my humiliation would be only one stop long. An old angmo saw all that transpired and snickered at me. And Mr Parking Ass got the seat.

4.00PM: WMD T-SHIRTS INFESTED WITH TERMITES
UNIFEM calls up and says that some of our fundraiser T-shirts were in boxes and that the boxes, together with a lot of other boxes, were infested with termites.

So many thoughts flashed through my mind I thought I might explode.

Anyway, I went to check out the damage and they had rescued two boxes (thank God). But there was one remaining box that was beset with the nasty buggers. As my able helper commented, "I thought termites had gone out with the '50s."

There was police tape around the area that had been visited by the pestbuster company, and I was not allowed to touch the boxes for fear that the termites might still be alive and would spread.

All this just before Women Expo which opens on Thursday — we were hoping to sell all the extra T-s there. Now there are no M's and L's to be sold.

Very very bad mood. Former cusswords appear in the window of my mind, but I resisted uttering them.

9.00PM: MY IPOD CALLS IT A DAY
Just when I thought I would just come home from a terrible day, drink some diet root beer and watch CSI, I take out my iPod to charge and notice that it had gone deathly still. "Just needs to be charged," I told myself. But it had passed away, quietly as this horrible day drew to a close.

I just realised it's been 3 years to this day that I first bought it: 6 Sept 2002.

Farewell my sweet friend, you who have been with me on countless flights, through the streets of Chicago and Salt Lake City, you who have accompanied me on countless days when I rode the train to see my mom in hospital and in the hospice ...

I'm going to sleep, and when I wake up, I pray it will be a termite-less day, and I might find the funds to get a new iPod somehow ... (yeah I know the grave ain't even cold yet, but I can't live without my white knight).

PERVERTS WATCH OUT!

2005-09-02T10:19:00.000+08:00

This morning on Tomorrow.Sg there was a link to this GREAT site run by a vigilante after my own heart.

She entraps married men on IRC who try to pick her up, and sometimes she poses as very young girls.

The danger our daughters face on the Internet is a very real one. How many cases have there been of girls 13, 14 years old who have gone to meet these men and been raped? And the ones we read about in the papers are only the ones that have been reported. It's very likely two or three or four times that have NOT reported heinous crimes inflicted upon them.

Many of us girls have grown up with at least one horrible sexual abuse experience and by this I mean from the VERY terok one (like incest or child rape) to being molested or flashed. We grow up scarred in many ways — some decide it's better to be with other girls, others fly off the handle and sleep with every man who can stand up, and others just stay away from all physical relationships altogether. For me it was only when I discovered the Truth that it set me free, and I don't want to see this harm come upon young girls today.

The girl who runs this site is doing what the press really should be doing. At WMD we also would love to start a Shame and Name Campaign against the men who go to Batam and Hat Yai to have sex with little kids.

To those men who solicit sex from underaged girls — whether on the Internet or in Batam:

IT'S SICK.
YOU ARE A PERVERT.
LITTLE KIDS ARE NOT FOR HAVING SEX WITH.
YOU ARE A RAPIST AND MURDERER, BECAUSE YOU KILL THEIR LIVES.
YOU SHOULD GET CAUGHT AND PUNISHED.
AND YOU WILL.

Tomorrow.Sg: My Favourite Newspaper

2005-08-28T10:52:00.000+08:00

The Spikey Fruits, originally uploaded by my form of procrastination.

It's Sunday and finally I have some breathing time to catch up on reading. I know I said that I started buying the Straits Times again to look for things to comment about (also to keep track of what progress we're making in the child sex tourism fight -- which ain't much ... more on that later).

BUT I find despite the wide array of dailies before me, I still find the freshest, most honest reporting in Tomorrow.Sg (true or not, must ownself investigate — see, interactive news!) and also it has the biggest section of Laughs.

My favourite stories browsed today:

Inexplicably illegal storage of durians by unauthorised consumer in white fridge
My fridge also looking mighty empty ... feel like some durians ...

Filmmaker made to surrender film made about Chee Soon Juan
This kind of CBL thing the police can get involved in. Catching men who rape children in Batam, they can't be bothered. Can we have some justice here please?

Taking driving lessons and how to choose a private instructor
Close to my heart because I have given in to the "system" and registered with Comfort Driving Centre (yes yes, the shame is out: I cannot drive — yet!). Last lesson I only drove up the kerb TWO TIMES. I can fly!.

Clever commentary on the blatantly distrustable nature of corporate blogs
"Hi, I'm the boss of IPOS and I'm really a very nice guy. Just to show you how nice I am, I am providing a download of Madonna's latest single 'I Ate My Horse' at a low low price of US$109.99. Remember, putting songs from your CD into your iPod is ILLEGAL. Love, from your friendly IPOS friend, XYZ"

Looking for travel writers who surf and dive!

2005-08-27T11:24:00.000+08:00

surf, originally uploaded by nirav1.

I'm working on a new magazine yet to be revealed -- and I am looking for good writers who are seasoned travellers, don't mind travelling and who can surf, dive and take photos.

Email me if you are interested, and if you have a blog or website with your writing and pictures that would be ideal.

Oh, and you'll get paid too!

Pass this message on, okay?

Excuse, Ricky Martin fights my cause hor!

2005-08-26T22:56:00.000+08:00

You know ah, a long time ago I think I really had my nose stuck in my Prada bag.

Life was a long series of:
"Who am I lunching with today, Dior or Chanel?"
"Isn't it time for my friend to be back in Singapore from Milan with my Sergio Rossi snakeskin shoes that are illegal here because it's made from a nearly-extinct species of snake from the jungles of Brazil?"
"Ack -- don't show me another SKII ad!"
"Hmm, I think my middle is too thick. Time to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee."

Life beyond my material goods, bubble of fashion friends and skinniness was inconceivable.

Now that I am a convert to activism, some people make it like I really downgraded. "You're an activist now?" Like, please don't bring your smelly cause anywhere near my Gucci slippers.

I think in fact I have definitely upgraded. My attitude is up, my life is up, my joy is up, the number of people I make a difference to is up ... definitely more ups than I used to have. In fact, it took a new lipstick or a $1200 new bag to give me an up last time.

I sold much of my material possessions on eBay (and made money to live off for quite a while, actually — in fact eBay sales gave me my iPod. I sold a Gucci dress that made me look like a hairy lollipop to a girl in the UK, and bought meself a $680 iPod way back in 2002 — yes you may grovel at my shrine of divine coolness. Denise Keller bowed to me because mine's a G1 and hers is a G2.)

Anyway, back to activism. To be honest God changed my heart. He made me hurt for kids that have been abused, so badly abused they are sold by their own parents to be beaten up, starved and made to give their little bodies up for sex to feed their pimps. I think back at my extravagance before and it really kills me to think that if I had not spent all that money on clothes, shoes and countless issues of Vogue, I would already have been able to open and sustain a shelter in Batam for a year!!

Is it so unglamorous to be an activist? I'm not anti-fur, and that's the last glam campaign I've really seen the fashion people handle. After which all of them wore fur (Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda E ...) Breast cancer sort of is quite glamour, being the Estee Lauder choice of social cause, but you don't get the REALLY A-list people supporting it — though Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren etc have given their design talents to the cause.

A good friend of mine who is a show producer pointed out to me last week that RICKY "Shake Your Bon Bon" MARTIN fights exactly the same cause as WMD! He has a Ricky Martin Foundation and he has been travelling the world for years to speak out against child sex tourism and trafficking! Isn't that just very cool?!

Suddenly, I feel quite glam today. I also decide I will buy every Ricky Martin CD there is (since RIAS is being so strict about music sharing, which is plain silly). Oh and yes I promise not to upload to my (nearly empty) iPod. Right.

So here I am wearing my Dior T-shirt (4 years old) and my Export Shop cargos ($20), not worried anymore that the people formerly known as my friends think of me as a downgraded social cause fighter. I can now say I am Ricky Martin's comrade, and that's more than anyone I used to know can say.

Kids Tug The Darndest Strings

2005-08-24T21:33:00.000+08:00

Two Saturdays ago I had the privilege of checking out Mr Miyagi's gymnastics for disabled children, for a story I was writing for the papers.

I didn't quite know what to expect, and honestly thought it might be a little more than stressful to observe autistic children freaking out with freedom ("fun" for them, stress for the teachers and parents).

What I saw instead were 7 brilliantly happy kids and 7 parents who were having (suspiciously MORE) fun than their kids I think!

I've been writing a column on disabled children for a while now, and it's just opened up an amazing world for me. It is so humbling to meet parents who have more courage than I could ever summon, and so joyful to meet special needs children who are thriving on the love of their mothers (mostly mothers, apart from Papa Extraordinaire Mr Brown ).

To get a high five from a little girl whose hands are webbed due to Apert Syndrome, to get a cookie from an autistic boy ... these moments make my heart soar with joy and my eyes fill with tears. I've been writing a long time, but this is the best job I've ever had the honour to do.

KISS KISS!

2005-08-18T10:30:00.000+08:00

This is for the sweet people who emailed me to volunteer with WMD after reading this post!

You guys are amazing. Let's have fun doing this!

Darn Moody! WMD NEEDS HELP!

2005-08-11T10:41:00.000+08:00

I'm really bummed out.

After one month of sales at 77th Street we only moved 71 T-shirts (no fault of 77th Street's). Over at Skin I think we moved about 20 in 2 weeks with no promotion.

Like this how to save the children? The shelter can't even afford to keep its doors open at the rate we're going!!

I sent press releases to ALL the major media.
- URBAN gave us a nice coloured listing -- thank you URBAN
- Her World gave us a little blurb with a picture of Denise Keller, Sun Ho and Eunice Olsen - thank you HER WORLD
- Style is coming up with an interview with Kit -- thank you Style.

Other than that we have pretty much been .... quiet.

Anyone with any ideas on how we can hit our target of 900 T-shirts? (Now 809 T-shirts to be exact)

I wish there were 100 women's groups or women CEOs with a heart to take 8 pieces each. It's not a lot, is it?

Each day I think about these kids that are thinking about running away from the brothel.
Each day I think about how the poor NGOs and shelter managers are struggling to cope with housing, feeding and counselling them.
Then I walk down Orchard Road and our kids are dressed in fine clothes, eating Haagen Daaz and going home in their Mommy's MPV ...

There MUST be a way to help. There's just gotta be ...

What's Worth Queuing For?

2005-08-08T21:10:00.000+08:00

Over the weekend I invited Mr, Mrs & Faith Brown to the Festival of Praise at the Indoor Stadium.

The queues started at 1pm on Saturday and Sunday. Many were turned away -- WE NEED A BIGGER STADIUM! Next year maybe they can play at National Stadium! The sound wouldn't be as good but they could make a lot more people happy.

Mr Brown blogged live from the Festival while we were bopping to Delirious - what a magnificent band!

I read some of the comments on that post and it actually surprised me that Christians weren't prepared to queue for the worship event of the year. I mean, people are willing to queue for mere autographs by a group named after a mountain (okay, one digit short of a mountain) -- K One, as posted on this hilarious Haro Singapore blog.

I'm always astonished at the kind of things that Singaporeans queue for: $20 iPods (definitely worth it) and $10 gift bag with every purchase of some women's magazine at those road shows (hurray, no longer part of my existence!). Of course there are those that queue for NDP tickets and then those that queue for their kids' primary one registration...

I think the longest I ever queued for anything was 3 hours at a Bruce Springsteen concert in Chicago. They let the first 50 into the pit. I think my hubby and I were #64. But still we were 10 metres from The Boss so it was still worth the 3 hour wait.

Queuing 6 hours to worship the Lord with 10,999 other on-fire Singaporeans is definitely more worthwhile than that. I think now that I'm a believer I wouldn't queue so long for Springsteen but I would if it meant I could be in the presence of the Lord for a few hours -- there's nothing quite like the spinetingling sensation of being in a room where there is an actual body of Christ with one voice. The weekend felt almost like what I imagined being in heaven would be like -- all day worship, all hearts focused on just one person: the Lord Jesus.

Amazing. Queue on!

Bloggers On The Isle of Wankin

2005-08-05T15:58:00.000+08:00

I don't know about you but I'm tired of all this Press Vs Bloggers rubbish that's filled both column inches as well as precious bandwidth.

The Press will always keep Bloggers at arm's length because they will always be a little scared of the unfamiliar.

The Bloggers will always hantam the Press because that's what intelligent people with opinions are wont to do.

And then there will always be a symbiotic relationship as both media get story ideas from each other. I find myself now buying the Straits Times every day to see what I can comment on! So they got a new customer (previously I only bothered to read what scraps were lying around at Coffee Bean/McDonald's/my husband's briefcase).

Okay, so topic over, let's talk about something else: Are Bloggers Winkers (I cannot say the word because it's against my religion but I didn't have a better word)

In my opinion all writers are Winkers. We like to show off and we like people to laugh at our jokes or cry at our turns of phrases. Come on, you know it's true. I admit, I love it when people read My Special Child (every alternate Wednesday in Mind Your Body) and feel like breaking open their piggy banks and giving all their money to the poor kid and mom.

Is being a Winker necessarily bad? I don't think so. We only call it Winking because we don't have a POSITIVE term for it. When someone is given a talent, the worst thing for that person to do is bury it. He will be frustrated and the world won't be benefit from it. Can you imagine if Oscar Wilde decided it was immodest to quip as incessantly as he did?

Neither can I. Who else could have said the immortal words: "Either this wallpaper goes or I do"?

So Bloggers should Wink away. So should journalists, if they're gifted (not all are, as not all Bloggers are). But everyone has a right to express themselves. If you don't like what you read, just don't go back to the page. It's not like it's being SMS'd to you every minute.

Okay so we're all good? Good.

Mail Order Brides: Human Trafficking

2005-08-02T23:57:00.000+08:00

There's a link on Tomorrow.sg about the questionable practice of Vietnamese mailorder brides. Is this a business of human trafficking, squeezing in via a loophole?

I'm sure there are genuine cases of men who fall in love with the person whose picture they picked out of a book. I'm sure in some cases language barriers are broken and these men actually treasure and look after their foreign wives.

But there will be cases where these women are brought in under the pretext of marriage, are rejected, and find themselves in a brothel because they have nowhere else to go as they are technically "overstayers" and can be arrested.

In the US there have been a number of documented cases of Filipino women who go to the US as mail order brides only to be hacked to pieces by the men that bought them.

This is part of the fight Women Make A Difference has taken on -- sex trafficking and tourism. Trafficking is when women and children are smuggled to affluent countries and traded like meat for usually sexual purposes. Tourism is when sickos come to their country to abuse the women and children. Either way it's WRONG and should be punishable.

Human life is so precious. Yes circumstances may be so bleak that prostitution might even appear to be a good option vs doing nothing and starving to death. But the price you pay is human dignity — once lost, it's lost for generations.

Depressing stuff to sleep on...

10 MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ME & SUMIKO TAN!

2005-08-02T13:24:00.000+08:00

A list for Cowboy Caleb to prove once and for all that I am NOT Ms Preparation H.

1. Sumiko Tan is single and hating it.
Theresa Tan is married and loving it. With children. One maid. And parents-in-law she loves.

2. Sumiko Tan helped to write Lee Kuan Yew: The Man And His Ideas.
Theresa Tan bought it. I think.

3. Sumiko Tan used to get on planes with former PM Goh Chok Tong to cover political stories, and was reportedly his absolute favouritest reporter.
Theresa Tan used to get on planes to interview Sting, stalk David Duchovny, chat with Gabriel Be-Still-My-Heart Byrne, and stare at Madonna five feet away from her.

4. Sumiko Tan has a niece.
Theresa Tan has two knees.

5. Sumiko Tan has hemorrhoids.
Theresa Tan has sympathy. For Sumiko Tan. Even after 2 kids I have never had hemorrhoids, praise the Lord.

6. Sumiko Tan is the product of a Japanese mother and a Chinese father.
Theresa Tan is the product of a Teochew mother and a Teochew father and a psycho grandmother who claims to be Peranakan.

7. Sumiko Tan has a column that talks about her.
Theresa Tan has a column that talks about disabled children.

8. Sumiko Tan is insomniac and tries to sleep by licking sleeping pills.
Theresa Tan can sleep through an earthquake, no pill licking required.

9. Sumiko Tan's dog died. It ended a chapter in her life.
Theresa Tan's mom died. It started a chapter in her life.

10. Sumiko Tan is hot.
Theresa Tan is mostly warm.

"Blogs Are Like, Hot And Funky!"

2005-08-01T15:18:00.000+08:00

I'm busting a gut reading Mr Miyagi's post on Sumiko Tan today!!!

Sumiko is a right babe. Has been since I first saw her when I was interning at the Straits Times and she was cooing pet names into the phone, pet names that rewrote the dictionary on "shame". So I can imagine Mr Miyagi's disappointment at being unable to engage the luscious Sumiko (keep trying dude, and write nice things about her in your blog).

Sumiko's petrified of the Blogosphere because it represents chaos vs the orderly world of journalism, yet it has so many of the elements of journalism. Someone commented that perhaps traditional press is afraid blogs will take over -- well, I doubt it will happen soon, because Singaporeans still prefer news that they can touch and see. Still, blogs offer what the newspapers can't-- people's true feelings and opinions, without fear that they will be judged or worse, EDITED, or taken out of context.

Is it masturbation? Maybe.
Is it free speech? Mostly.
Is it a bunch of lies and vicious rumours? Only if we're having PMS. And if it's about Sumiko (hahaha -- KIDDING)

It's really funny how the parallel universes of the Blogosphere and Newspaper Journalism exist in a totally codependent relationship — they're totally into each other one day, and totally p*ssing on each other the next but they can't live without each other.

What really makes me laugh is Mr Miyagi's comment about the New Paper's feature on blogs: "I think because there wasn't enough soccer to cover, the nation's top tabloid decided, hey, you know what? I have a brilliant idea, let's talk about blogs! No one has done it before! Blogs are so, like, you know, new and hot and funky, like, new and hot and funky, like?"

(I laugh because that's EXACTLY what they think!!! We used to have like, a tank of "ideas" where we tossed story ideas for "later", and I guess TNP pulled out "Blogs" a year later than most ...)

URBAN, which I mostly like reading, does a silly chart every thursday where it's supposed to give the lowdown on what's in and what's out (such charts by the way, are waaaaaaay out).

Here's mine:

URBANE: Mr Miyagi
SUBURBANE: Ms Sumiko
URBANE: Blogging
SUBURBANE: Slogging
URBANE: Freedom Of Speeh
SUBURBANE: Fear Of Free Speech
URBANE: Real Men
SUBURBANE: Pretty Boys
URBANE: Cowboy Caleb's Almost Daily Audiorama
SUBURBANE: URBAN's Urban-Suburban Chart!

About Face: Mom's Story - Final Chapter

2005-07-31T23:14:00.000+08:00

Yesterday afternoon I interviewed a mom with a little girl who has Apert Syndrome: it's a genetic disorder in which the face appears to be sunken in the middle (so the forehead protrudes and looks too big). The little girl is bright, cheerful and so beautiful a person -- I can say she's much better behaved than a lot of normal kids I've met (including my own!).

Tonight as I researched further about Apert Syndrome I came across this beautiful blog by a girl Vicki who has Apert too, and here she shares a story her mother wrote about having her.

I'm in tears -- our God is a great God. Hard to fathom at times but He never makes a mistake. No one, no matter how disfigured to our fleshly eye, is a mistake.

About Face: Mom's Story - Final Chapter

我爱新加玻！

2005-07-27T09:39:00.000+08:00

My son's tuition teacher (GORGEOUS woman in her 40s, looks 22, has 3 kids including 2 teenagers) soundly chastised me for not speaking Mandarin to my children.

Gorgeous Tuition Teacher: “你应该跟他们讲！”
Me: "Huh?! Jialat! 我的华语每次讲错的。。。"
Georgeous Tuition Teacher: "You must try!"
Me: "They will fail!" (read: "I pay you for what?!")

End of conversation. I pay the Georgeous Tuition Teacher.

I would dearly love to speak Mandarin. I was a good student you know. I tried very hard you know. But in my household my parents spoke English (to us) and Teochew (to each other when they were complaining about us). We played Beatles and Abba in our cassette tape recorders, not Fei Yu Qing or what's that lewlian lewlian lewlian guy's name? Anyway, what I mean to say is that my bro and I did not have an ice-cube's chance in hell of learning Mandarin.

I only started having Chinese tuition when I was in primary 3. My tuition teacher was a Taiwanese lady, lovely, but the lessons were so booooorrrrrinnnnngggg ... I sat through every Wednesday and Friday just so I could go and play with her daughter after that.

My Chinese aural test marks from P1 to Sec4 was a fabulous row of F's, except for the D I got in Primary 5 that totally ruined the landscape.

(This is why my kids are having tuition at 6 and 4 years of age, so that they hopefully won't get a row of F but maybe B's or C's. I can live with that)

Anyway, my whole point really was that every time I speak Mandarin I feel like a Singaporean. Especially with the lehs and the lahs and the hors. I used to love travelling with my friend Grace, the 6" tall editor of Nuyou, who is effectively bilingual. We would speak Mandarin in the cabs and restaurants of Paris: ”臭男人！" (referring to the taxi driver who would take us up every rue and boulevard to get to one spot 50 yards away) “很难吃！”　(referring to the half-cooked lamb served at some chichi restaurant)

So thanks to Grace I practised my vocabulary of Mandarin complaints. I could open a complaints department.

So even today, when I do speak Mandarin to make people laugh, I am reminded of the fact that Singaporeans have a very crude patois of Mandarin that always spells home.

Ondine was just commenting yesterday about her friend's American fiance who loves our new National Day song. I have yet to meet a Singaporean who loves our new National Day song.

To be honest I have not heard it but the complaints range from "Wah lau who is that charbor on the MTV? Her face make me want to slap her." (from my bitchy gay friend who is on Atkins, which is turning up his Bitchery Level to 15 out of a possible 10), to Packrat's rant about the DANCE: "It's the dance that they created for it. Reminiscent of the great Singapore workout, it is officially called, and I kid you not, Dance No. 40 (which comes with it's own instructional video). So much mocking to do, so little time/bandwidth."

(I fear to say it but I'm gonna: my mother did the Great Singapore Workout in her bedroom for many many many many years. She was in great shape -- except she died of cancer 2 years ago. But she was beautiful to the last)

I feel proud when tourists come to Singapore and join in our parades! I love it when they stop me at the traffic lights and ask what must-see part of Singapore they must go to before they head back to the airport.

I love the way my to-be-sister-in-law, who is a strawberry blonde from Melbourne, looks in the turquoise kebaya I gave her before she and my bro returned to Melly.

I feel proud that we have Singaporeans in Hollywood (Nixon Fong who's in all those bank advertisements drawing animated geckos, who did the animated opening for the IOC recently). I feel proud when my friends abroad ask me for recipes for laksa, hokkien mee and chicken rice which they tried while they were here.

I think our government is for the most part, wise and kind. Just talking to my maid yesterday made me realise you may have a country with so many resources like the Philippines, but with poor and corrupt government you have nothing. Can you imagine if your husband was shot and killed on the street, and your village code of conduct is that the police close one eye if the murderer pays off the family of the murdered?

I believe God loves Singapore. We may be going through some growing pains (40 is always a tough one to face, haha) and we may make mistakes along the way, but we have been spared so many of the disasters of our neighbouring countries that it makes me wonder if it's all a coincidence or has Singapore been lifted up for such a time as this?

I believe this country is and will be more and more a shining beacon in Southeast Asia. We will have the will and the means to help those countries around us.

That's how I feel about WMD's role in this — we Singaporean women have so much to be thankful for. We have a safe country, we have no lack of work, our children don't have to be sold off or sent to work in a factory or overseas in goodness-knows-what places. So just looking at our neighbours and the troubles they go through, we have the means to help them. We only need to activate the will.

So bring on the cheesy dance, the corny lyrics, the flypast (which I LURVE!), the fireworks, the procession, the mistake-making commentators!

我真的爱新加玻leh.

My first school presentation

2005-07-24T17:16:00.000+08:00

I've never actually spoken in front of students before.

Staff members yes. Public yes. But young minds that are in the process of being moulded, no.

When Siti from Unifem's Youth Wing called me early last week to "say a few words about gender stereotypes in the media" to a class of media students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, I thought why not? I like young people, but I've had some bad experiences mentoring a few who fell to the cliche that in order to look smart they gotta give the teacher lip.

Then again I was not the nurturing type till I turned 31 anyway.

A speaker from Unifem went up to the podium first to present a video (made in the hilarious late 80s, the days of Duran Duran and Miami Vice, so there were short skirts, high heel pumps and cheesy big hair all around), and then discuss why the Evil Mass Media are responsible for brainwashing people from a tender young age so that boys learn to beat up girls, and girls learn to take it.

While I can appreciate the angry sentiments (haha) behind it, I am not a feminist in any way, and do not agree that Man Bad, Woman Good. If not for Woman, Man would still be in the garden of Eden.

Anyway, that's a discussion for another post. My Unifem counterpart took to admonishing the noisy students and then to calling them out by name to answer questions. I don't think it went down well. Then again I've never been a teacher and I wouldn't be try to discipline a bunch of near-adults.

My section was representing the Evil Mass Media. As a former editor of 2 women's magazines, I took the liberty to reveal a bunch of insider secrets to these young people. I guess I thought entertainment might cut it -- these people had hauled ass to school on a SATURDAY and were being tested on the topic (or so I gathered), so the least I could do was provide a coupla laffs.

It went down well, particularly the beautiful pictures of Gisele Bundchen who is the only authentic supermodel of this modern time, who has had no plastic surgery and who eats burgers and not cigarettes and coffee for lunch.

I also revealed the wonders of Photoshop, which can shrink thighs, waistlines, cheeks, remove wrinkles, cellulite, underarm dingle-dangle and many other faults. Who needs Marie France when you've got Photoshop?

Women's magazines DO do some harm to the mindset of women. I was just watching an episode of Madeleine on the Disney channel about how her schoolmates wept at night because they did not own clothes that carried the designer label of Madame Cliche. Girls ARE at a young age encouraged to dress pretty (it's a privilege, really), and I am guilty as anyone of putting my babies in Dior, DKNY, Ralph Lauren and other designer labels (but not anymore, it's Bossini for the uns now!).

But above that, there is a value women ascribe to looks: sleek straight hair, flat stomachs and curvy hips, bigger boobs, whiter skin ... and it's actively encouraged by women's magazines.

Does it mean women shouldn't care about their looks? NO! What I mean to say is that women here need more of a unique style. I see very few women who instinctively know what to wear, who wear not what is trendy but actually start trends with what they wear. Their items aren't expensive, but it's the way they put it together.

It is a bit tiring to see, in a sea of people, long, gold-streaked locks, hipster jeans, jeweled thongs and an empire-cut top every 3 degrees you move your head.

But I digress: things ARE changing. Women ARE getting tired of traditional women's magazines. The spiralling circulation figures prove the market just ain't big enough for too many mags, and that women DO have half a brain in Singapore, and they DO look for things that feed the soul as much as the skin.

Oprah Winfrey's magazine O is the best-seller among women's mags in the US (and I read once, the world, but I need to verify that). Her magazine does not have a lot of skinny grumpy women with too much makeup on. Her magazine features her: a not-skinny, black woman on the cover. It is the antithesis of everything women have grown up expecting of women's magazines, but it is sincere, genuine and it touches a cord in women's hearts.

Locally DARE magazine (which I write for but this is not a plug, promise) set out to achieve that, to create a magazine for women with soul, and they've hit upon the highest natural subscription I've ever seen in my 16 years in magazine journalism in Singapore.

All this I shared in the lecture. Last night I bumped into one of the NAP students at church and she said I made her laugh.

That made my day (yesterday AND today). I look forward to the next opportunity I get to speak and hopefullly bust more myths.

NEIL GAIMAN LIBRARY FOR SALE!

2005-07-22T16:24:00.000+08:00

I know this has nothing to do with saving children from prostitution, but I need some help and I'm hoping all you kind people reading this will pass it on.

I am doing something I never thought I would: I am selling off my Neil Gaiman library.

I started reading The Sandman in 1988, when my cousin from San Francisco dragged me to the comic shops across all of Singapore looking for the first edition of #8, which is legendary of course because it's the first time Death appears.

Anyway, I am now a mother and a Christian and need to clear the house of any unsuitable material that my precocious 6-year-old Scrabble-mad son can get his sticky hands on. And The Sandman falls under that category next to the Poppy Z Brite, Anais Nin, Lolita and "gender study" material.

My collection is quite valuable lah, because they are all first editions (mostly hardcover trades, well kept, not read -- as comic collectors know, we buy the HC to keep and the trades to read) bought from the superior comic libraire Comics Mart at Serene Centre where I spent many of my formative years.

Here's the list (they are ALL Hardcover First Printings)
1. Sandman Preludes and Nocturnes
2. Sandman Dream Country
3. Sandman Season Of Mists
4. Sandman A Game Of You
5. Sandman Fables and Reflections
6. Sandman Doll's House
7. Sandman The Kindly Ones
8. Sandman World's End
9. Brief Lives
10 Endless Nights
11. Sandman The Wake
12. Sandman The Dream Hunters (Gaiman with Yoshitaka Amano, Jap legend illustrator) -- this one is a bit discolored on the cover due to humidity
13. Death The Time Of Your Life
14. Death High Cost Of Living (this one has humidity spots on the inside pages and a 2" tear on the back of the dust cover)
15. Sandman Book of Dreams (prose), Gaiman with Ed Cramer
16. Angels + Visitations (prose)
17. Sandman Companion by Hy Bender
18. Mr Punch, first print of 15,000 copies
19. The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish
20. Murder Mysteries, adapted from a Gaiman radio play, illustrated by P Craig Russell

The HC collection above cost me well over $1000. THEN.

I also have Signal to Noise, Black Orchid, single issues 1-8 and more, statues, T-shirts, a very very rare magazine that was produced (more like stencilled) by this crazy comic shop owner in San Francisco who owns the most amazing comicbook shop and who had an exclusive interview with Gaiman, Death tattoos etc etc.

Sigh the life of the DINK.

I hope someone who can appreciate the value of these first prints would take ALL of them off my hands. Price is negotiable — I know some of them are worth many many times what they first sold for.

Please pass the word along, and interested parties please email me at theresa@wmdfest.org. I will give a portion of sale amount to the shelter that WMD/UNIFEM is supporting.

Film on children of prostitutes in Calcutta

2005-07-19T23:08:00.000+08:00

Thanks to SGFILM on Tomorrow, I found this link to a Sundance award winner about Calcutta kids born into brothels by murraystreet.

Screening of this film Born Into Brothels are on Saturday 23rd and 30th July, 5 pm at Singapore History Museum. Tickets are available at $10 from The Substation Box Office (Mon-Fri 12-830pm).

Many of these children are actually born into brothels. Their moms are teen prostitutes that get pregnant (because their clients often won't bother with condoms). Some of these teens make it to full term, and then quite often their babies are harvested to be prostitutes also — that's like breeding babies for food if you ask me.

Some of these child mothers do not make it. They die in mid-term pregnancy because their little bodies cannot biologically cope with carrying a baby to full term.

This film, however is not about child prostitutes but the children of prostitutes (thanks Davester).

I know I said that I won't say anymore about NKF but when I look at situations like these, I wish I could take some of the peanuts TT Durai had and use it to help children like these.

Thank you Digital Life

2005-07-19T09:44:00.000+08:00

DL6_19July2005, originally uploaded by gigi_lala.

WMD wishes to thank Melissa Lwee of Digital Life for being such a cool reporter.

MUAH!

What we learned from NKF

2005-07-17T00:00:00.000+08:00

What a week.

I know we have all had our two cents' worth to say about TT Durai, Mrs Goh Chok Tong and the mass change of staff at NKF.

Emotions still run high, but they will die down, hopefully, and when the dust settles, I hope NKF will rise up again strong and now even more dedicated to being a beacon of good and service to patients.

I had some serious lessons taught to me by this incident:

1. Pride really comes before a fall
The saying may be old, but it's no less true. TT Durai was a brilliant man who set up a world-class kidney dialysis service at affordable rates for those suffering this chronic illness. I've spoken to a number of people this week who were either involved before in NKF shows or have given large sums to NKF: they respect TT Durai, even now. They cannot discount the good he has done. However, one common observation is that he is an extremely proud man. It was probably his pride that led him to believe he was going to win a retraction from SPH. I am very sure his lawyers would have counselled him otherwise -- or should have at least. Pride killed his career.

I pray for all volunteer workers and NGOs that should we get success in our endeavours to help the needy, that we will not let Pride gain a foothold in our good work. Humility can't be overrated.

2. Don't mess with SPH.
Self-explanatory.

3. Watch what I say.
Mrs Goh Chok Tong's peanuts remark will remain in the annals of infamy, next to Imelda Marcos' 3000 pairs of shoes. Careless words can hurt a nation, as we can now see. Anything that can be quoted out of context, will. So I also pray for anyone in the public eye to have wisdom to measure their words before letting them out the door. Particularly me, famous for foot-in-mouth utterances.

4. Forgive.
Forgiveness is really hard. I cannot begin to imagine the hurt and disappointment felt by thousands of people who had little yet gave hard-earned money to NKF. It seems a mountainous task to ask them to forgive NKF but I'm going to do it anyway. The longer you hold on to the hurt, the longer you let it hurt you. The money is spent, the board and CEO have stepped down, LET'S MOVE ON. Let it go. For me, I have not personally given much to NKF (relative to what I used to earn, that is). I consider all that I sowed into NKF to be good seed, because I have seen patients helped by their dialysis centres.

Our pastor explained last night that for all the "evil" that has been unearthed this week, TT Durai did more than 2 decades of GREAT WORK. He asked us to put ourselves in Durai's shoes: how would you feel if you were him today? Lower than low. In fact, you know the tiny pebbles that fall through the cracks of the road? Lower than that. To have your whole life's work go up in flames because of a seemingly small thing, is a very painful experience we would not wish to experience ourselves. Public hantaming? Let's not do it because we wouldn't want people to do it to us.

So personally, as someone who knows Jesus, I have to do as He would do, which is to forgive, forget, move on, and pray for TT Durai. I pray for him a fresh start, precious lessons learned, and courage to continue on, and humility to grow a new attitude. Bible says, if you pray for your enemies you will heap burning coals upon their heads (not to kill them but to fire up a change in them, is how I read it).

Okay, so ... on to next week!

PINK T-SHIRT DAY AT SKIN!!!! PLEASE SUPPORT!!!

2005-07-15T13:38:00.000+08:00

Ho Yeow Sun, one of WMD's pink ladies, has very kindly declared today, Friday 15 July, PINK T-SHIRT DAY at her store Skin (02-332E Marina Square).

All her staff will be wearing pink T-shirts and encouraging shoppers to buy one to raise funds for our fight against child sex tourism and trafficking.

If you work in the area or are heading down to Carl Jr's or see show at GV i hope you will make a quick stop at SKIN and pick up a T-shirt. Tomorrow.Sg editors wandering in the vicinity are very welcome also to support!!!

SKIN exclusively stocks the MEN's t-shirt ($38) as well as the KID's t-shirt ($25), and of course the WOMEN's one ($38).

Sun sold one to Kym Ng on Wednesday when she and Fiona Xie were shooting at the store! *high five*

FLAMING! The NKF Responsibility Petition

2005-07-14T09:55:00.000+08:00

A friend just sent me the NKF Responsibility Petition and I clicked on just one of the petitions (there are like 200) and it's about 1000 people expressing their views (all right, scolding NKF, TT Durai and Mrs "Peanuts" Goh, and demanding the resignation of Durai and the board of directors.

Boy these people are furious!

I wonder if the government is going to step in at any point and stem this outrage. It is pretty bad. Mostly the outrage surrounds the issue of trust. It's true: once trust is broken it'll take twice the work to build it back.

ENEMIES NOT TO HAVE LESSON 1: The Straits Times

2005-07-14T00:33:00.000+08:00

Taking any newspaper to court in Singapore is usually an exercise in futility; the move of an addled brain, of one so drunk with conceit he cannot see past the apparent slight made by the accused reporter, to the giant momma of a maneating machine poised behind her, waiting to grind him to pieces with newsprint.

The pen/laptop is mightier than the sword.

Mr TT Durai, you picked the wrong fight, mate.

The battle isn't over yet. In fact it's just begun. The first cut has been made, now everyone's going to step back and watch the bleeding. Once you whack ST, that'll be the end of you. That's the fun part about having only one print news body. You cannot win, if you still want to live on our isle.

If you want to take them on you better make sure you are Mama Lemon Squeaky Clean, which unfortunately Mr Durai is not, if Page 3 of ST today is accurate.

Mr Brown makes a great point: what about the board of directors that let him spend thusly? Was he not accountable to them? Will they stand up for him? It remains to be seen...

I know from my experience in the corporate jungle it's most likely Mr Durai will be asked to step down or relocate to another country (by business class) to live this down. Anyone recall President Devan Nair, who reportedly pinched bottoms in mid air and chugged heady fluids?

Actually I don't care that
* NKF has reserves for decades (in fact that's good)
* there may only have been 2000 patients, not 3000 as claimed by NKF
* He had a private car maintained by NKF that his wife drove
* He held directorships not revealed to NKF
* the list goes on

The man's career is over. He has been Glenn Knighted. I hope he saved some of that $1.8m he earned in the last 3 years. It should last quite a while, seeing that whole families live on $1000 a month. He's a clever man, he will come up with another business.

But my real concern is how the beneficiaries of NKF are going to be affected. Already it says that each year it costs NKF $31.6 milllion to treat its dialysis patients, but the patients pay about 75% of the bill, leaving NKF only $7.2m to take care of.

So with $189m in reserves, that could last 26 and a quarter years.

(It's GREAT business. But bad PR.)

But what about the patients? Without NKF, can they survive? Kidney failure is a lifelong problem. So say NKF has ZERO funds coming in after this. The $189m in reserves will be needed to help 2000 patients for the next 26 years (and I'm not counting inflation), and we can't count the new cases that are discovered every month.

Worst case scenario, NKF suffers a fatal blow, and patients have limited help. They seek other sources of dialysis, which may be more costly. Or they can't afford it, stop going, and die.

Best case scenario: NKF comes clean, changes CEO for an honest man/woman (how about a business-savvy doctor whose heart is with the patient?), and continues to champion aid for kidney patients. Of course, if fundraising continues on, it would also be good PR to up the current subsidy to 50% from a mere 25%.

Oh the thorny road of the social enterprise, the for-profit Do-Gooder. Makes my knees shake to ponder WMD's future. Only by God's wisdom can this job be done effectively and free from corruption. It's a tough road to take.

Don't leave long copy near a Subeditor

2005-07-13T08:18:00.000+08:00

Sighhhhhhhh.

This is the last time I'm going to do an interesting interview (Straits Times Mind Your Body, Faith Hope and Mr Brown) When I have too much to write, I write too much and leave too much in the hands of the sub.

Who doesn't have time for the Internet.

Who writes that Mr Brown's blog is at mr.brown.com. (when my original text was http://mrbrown.com)

I paiseh man, that's my name up there you know.

But it's my fault, all my fault. I should deliver clean, to-the-word-count copy. EARLY. So I'm sorry.

Anyway there IS one glaring mistake that I made because I didn't call to check:

AWWA Special School is now at 9 Lorong Napiri.

not Kwong Ave anymore.

But I do like that photo. Faith is a cutie, and she is blessed with one pair of happening parents. God is good.

Shopping with Eunice Olsen at Sun Ho's new shop

2005-07-13T00:31:00.000+08:00

I don't want to lose any credibility but I just need to have one bimbo moment and say that I really had fun today!

I've been not shopping for so long that I think my shopping hymen grew back. The last 10 items I bought were groceries from Cold Storage (including 5 packets of Holly Farm almond jelly that does not gel -- PLEASE DON'T BUY) and a Chinese zi dian for my son.

Today, because Sun has been such an awesome supporter of WMD, I brought Eunice Olsen and my buddy J to go and do some damage at her new store, SKIN (#02-332E, Marine Square, near the Suntec entrance where Metro used to be).

I'm not a streetwear chick, not say I dowan but my body is just made for the boring stuff (MaxMara, DKNY -- the most exciting thing I have in my wardrobe is my collection of Blumarine fur-trim cardigans).

But the store makes you want to shop, and I mean it, coming from someone who used to do all her shopping in NYC, Paris and Milan. It's really well laid-out, the changing rooms are mighty funky, and the labels are hip LA brands that you see in InStyle. Sun also has the exclusive distributorship to VON DUTCH (the REAL Von Dutch), as well as Ed Hardy, the original VD designer.

Being 8kg heavier than I should, I of course looked like Mrs Hippo next to Eunice Olsen, who is the Supermodel Who Was Too Smart To Become One. The woman is a pole with boobs and luscious hips. Can't stand it! This is the sort of situation where you must be smart enough NOT TO TRY THE SAME OUTFIT if you do not want to bolt for the nearest Marie France (which is just 5 minutes dash away, in case).

Eunice tried on a grey tank with lace and beads. Awesome, it's a winner. I wish whoever stole my camera phone didn't.
Then she tried on white jeans with pink trimming from True Religion. WHITE JEANS! Who can wear white jeans beside Paris Hilton and she looks like a staff member of Tarts R Us. Eunice looks awesome.
There was virtually NOTHING she tried on that didn't look great.
I felt physically nauseous!!

It got so bad that Eunice, Sun and my bud J said to me, "IF WE HEAR THE F-A-T WORD COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH ONE MORE TIME IT'S $15! THAT'S $5 FOR EACH OF US!"

I'd gladly pay if each $15 got rid of one kg!!!

Anyway, I stealthily tried on like, TWENTY pieces, each one more bak chang than the last. The only piece that made me look vaguely hip and comfortable was this beautiful shirt from Raw 7, which also appeared on the cover of ELLE US in Feb this year.

I don't look anything like Uma either but at least I don't look like a nonya chang hanging from a red raffia string, waiting for someone to pull it and put me out of my misery.

It was really really fun... After my next 2 paychecks from my slim stream of writing income, I'll hazard another visit ... or else I'll just bring Eunice again and shop vicariously.

PS I also met Mr Brown accidentally today and accidentally bought him cake and then discovered it was his birthday!

NKF BUST: DOING GOOD FOR MONEY?

2005-07-12T09:54:00.000+08:00

Today's front page of the Straits Times carries the "dirt" on the NKF-SPH fight.

NKF's CEO TT Durai flies first class (upgrading his business class tickets) and has gold-plated fittings in his private bathroom in the NKF office.

SPH's lawyer Davinder Singh is one kind of Tekan King. He asks TT Durai if $990 for a tap is expensive. TT Durai says depends on the place. Singh asks For the man who earns $1000 who give $50 to NKF, is it expensive?

One kind of happening tekan. Sure win all the debate championships type.

But the true question in this whole "lawsuit turned inquest" is: do organisations that set out to do good, as NKF doubtlessly had many years ago, have any right to run themselves like a business entity/corporation?

One of my buddies worked for Mr Durai for 3 years. She had nothing but good things to say about him as a visionary and a boss. The idea of running a body that solicits public funds to help the less fortunate, but running it to make profits, sounds good to a businessperson, and lowest-of-the-low to the rest of mankind.

She said it was tough to get into his vision, because it went against what she grew up believing, that if you do good, there should be nothing in it for you. But to understudy his thinking, to create money as a business, she learned a lot.

It must be said that NKF doesn't get all its money from the $1000-earner in the street. Other business deals, investments etc, I'm sure that would make the bulk of their earnings, hence the reserve. (So, you and I ask, why beg for money from those who have little? And why do an NKF Charity show?)

However, I wonder if it would not be ideal if do-gooders were able to make a decent (okay, not $25,000 + 12 months bonus) income from running a tight ship that got things done. Looking at NKF, for all the $189 million they have in reserves, have they done a lot for those suffering from kidney failure? I think they did a more than decent job with all the dialysis centres they set up, awareness campaigns that they run.

(I do not agree with them encroaching on the cancer turf, though.)

My belief is that fundraising must go hand in hand with business smarts, in any NGO. While WMD is very young and the money we want to give away is completely from the public, the startup was self-funded. It's not an ideal situation — if as the founders we had proper funding we could do a lot more. If we could provide a service or a product for other businesses to take up, it would help to fund our good works.

But I also believe in staying transparent and accountable, so once the T-shirt drive is over our supporters will be able to see how much we collected, how much we spent on what, and how much reached the shelters.

I don't think NKF set out to be a villain. I still believe that they have done a lot for the less fortunate. I hope that this Slap on the Wrist will help them to get back on track. Restitution must be made after this to assuage public outrage. But I hope the fallout's not so great that we destroy what is otherwise a great model for charities to follow.

PS While we were trying to get stars to endorse our pink WMD T-shirt, I tried to get Fann Wong (whom I like very much and think is a great flagbearer for our country). Her management said they would give me a discounted rate of

$7000

for her to appear in our T-shirt in a poster that would only go out online and in the shops.

I said for $7000 I would have to stand in the street corner and hawk 200 T-shirts just to pay these bloodthirsty sharks. None of that money would go to the shelter.

The reply was, "You know how many charities ask her to do this kind of thing or not?" My guess is a lot. So they must have made a lot of money by now.

As if charging charities is going to help the situation. Oh maybe it did, because I just said thank you and hung up. Her management either didn't get what I was saying, or they didn't give a flying pig's arse.

THAT to me, is far worse than NKF's first class tickets to anywhere.

London Blasts: the devil strikes again

2005-07-08T15:54:00.000+08:00

The Bible teacher AR Bernard once said of the September 11 attacks, that what we see in the natural realm (ie this world) is a reflection of what is happening in the spirit realm.

Something huge happened then. Something huge happened today in London and in the spirit world.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Ephesians 6:12

As a Christian I believe that the End is near, that's why the devil is panicking, in a rage because he knows his time is short. So he will start using evil weapons like terrorism to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).

This may have been a deed claimed by the Al-Qaeda but this is not a religious war. This is a war between good and evil. satan is using Islam as a tool to try to hit the Christian world, but Islam is not the enemy — the devil is.

Let's help in every way we can in the natural: send supplies, aid, encouragement.
But more importantly, for all believers reading this, let's PRAY. The powers and principalities of the spirit realm are destroyed by the power of God's word. If we destroy them in the spirit, they will not manifest in our world.

Put on the full armour of God as spelled out in Ephesians 6:10-18, so you can take your stand against the devil's schemes, not just in your life and in Singapore, but in all the world:
1. The belt of truth
2. The breastplate of righteousness
3. Feet fitted with readiness that comes from the gospel of peace
4. The shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one
5. The helmet of salvation
6. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
"And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests."

The ending has already been written: the battle is already won. But the devil is counting on the world not to have read the Book. Read it, so he can't fool you.

I pray for the families of those killed in the blasts, and for the comfort of the Lord to flood London and the nation. We must pick up our efforts, heat up our prayers and FIGHT. Terrorism doesn't get to win.

Yes, we DO have WMD Men's T-shirts!

2005-07-08T00:46:00.000+08:00

Have been getting quite a lot of guys asking whether we have a pink T-shirt for them: YES WE DO! They look like this!

Only available in one size but fits all I have met, including Lim Yu Beng, Ian Adamson (World #1 Adventure Racer dude) and national bowler Andrew Fang! (Also Rod Monteiro and Mark Zee but I need to go and dig out my photos)

Please do support. These are $38 each and can be bought by mail order. Cheques made payable to Women Make A Difference (WMD) International. Mail with your address, mobile and email details to:
WMD T-shirt Order
20 Eastwood Road
04-12
Singapore 486442

SPREAD THE WORD!

WMD T-SHIRTS GO ON SALE TODAY!

2005-07-06T19:16:00.000+08:00

Okay, this is IT!

Our fundraiser T-shirts, these lovely pink ones that say "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" will be sold at 77th Street at #01-31/35 Far East Plaza, as well as #05-03/04 Heeren.

They cost $39.90 and the first 400 buyers (of various sizes) will get a free bag.

All net proceeds go to UNIFEM Singapore, which will distribute the funds to shelters that house and rehab women and children who have been forced or sold into prostitution.

If anyone wants T-shirts for MEN or KIDS, we have very nice ones ($38 for men, $25 for kids) in very limited quantities, by mail order. Please email me!

Thanks and tell EVERYONE! We need to sell 900 T-shirts in three months!

Support Bertrand Lee!

2005-07-05T02:45:00.000+08:00

Bertrand Lee directed one of my plays, Dirty Laundry, adapted for TV by Lionel Chok and Juan Foo. We have only said "hi, bye" one time. But I loved what he did with it (really pathetic story -- definitely not one of my own favourites but in case you are reading, Lionel and Juan, I am forever grateful that you saw potential in it!!). He is bold, visionary and has a great style that is modern yet I feel, distinctly Asian.

Bertrand had a leg amputated following a nasty accident in Mumbai (he was run over by a 20-ton truck - I will reserve comment right now on the upside down traffic rules of India where to shake your head means Yes and Red Man means Walk Across The Street Now)

I do not believe that Bertrand's career has "ended" in any way. He is currently still in hospital and requires a series of operations, following which he will need to be rehabilitated to move again. He will need more resources than ever now to pursue his vocation — as we all know, Singapore is not exactly the most handicap-friendly place in the world.

He needs all the help we can give. $750,000 is being sought to help him. There is a Bertrand Lee Appeal Film Screening tomorrow night at GV Grand at 9pm. They are screening a retrospective of Bertrand's movies at $8. I believe you can get tickets at the door.

If you wish to give directly, go here for details.

Plight Of The NGO: "Sometimes I feel like the maid!"

2005-07-03T15:56:00.000+08:00

Me, my sweet WMD volunteer Yvonne and about 8 other women volunteers from UNIFEM Singapore spent Saturday afternoon (yesterday) packing hundreds of pink T-shirts for selling.

I very tired.

If we succeed in selling all 900 T-shirts we will raise something like $25,000.
I am trying not to think that this will only fund ONE shelter for HALF a year.
Sighhh.

BUT this needs to get done. One shelter for half a year still means we will help 30+ women/children to have a chance to be physically, emotionally restored, and hopefully trained for an alternative career to prostitution.

Today I also had the extreme privilege of meeting Mr Brown (more on that tomorrow) in person and having a long talk about why our country doesn't do enough for special needs. His beautiful daughter Faith has autism (his son Isaac is so cute I nearly packed him in my haversack and brought him home. Somemore can feed him luncheon meat!)

Sometimes, I look around me and feel really jia lat. There are so many things that need to be fixed. Here is an abridged list:

1. A governmental special needs body. It is not a problem of the NGOs that 1 in 250 children in Singapore have autism. Something is not right. As a country trying to be a bio-medical centre of excellence, we should be the country that finds the cause and cure for autism, which is affecting children around the world at a really alarming rate. Someone told me last week if things continue like this without active measures to stem the root cause, one in every 125 children will have autism within 10 years. It will affect MOE. It will cause brain drains as the more affluent parents of autistic children move to the US or Australia to seek medical help because it's insufficient here. Poor families with autistic children will leave them at home because care will escalate in price if left to private bodies, as the cheap, good ones are already OVERFLOWING and UNDERSTAFFED today!

Okay okay, I need to breathe.

I meet the parents of special needs children in Singapore quite often. I am constantly saddened by the same complaints that come up week after week: it's nearly impossible to get these children into normal schools, medication is so expensive, good teachers in places like Rainbow Centre get totally burned out and quit and it's hard to find replacements ...

Something needs to be done.

2. The upcoming IRs will cause a lot of social problems in Singapore. Is it really worth it for 35,000 jobs in the first year (probably halved by the 2nd or 3rd year as the more pathetic IR discovers it's not worth competing and pulls out of Singapore, causing a wave of unemployment -- wait, haven't we been through this with MediaWorks and MediaCorp)? Meanwhile, every accident-hounding 4D, Toto, mahjong addict will be permanent fixtures at the IR (so the IRs will just collect a hefty entrance fee from Singaporeans -- if $11 for a pack of Marlboros won't stop people from smoking, what's a fee to go and gamble?), families will be neglected, life savings will be lost, increase in suicide attempts, depression, drinking problems, divorces, juvenile delinquency ... all costing the government a LOT of taxpayers' money to fix, overworking the family courts and social workers/counsellors as if they are sitting around twiddling thumbs right now. It's like ngeh ngeh inviting trouble then spending a lot of time and energy and money trying to contain trouble -- your standard horror movie script.

I don't know whether to stay and fight or not. honestly it's things like this that make me want to move to Perth and fish for marron. Sheer stupidity. I got time to plan this escape.

But if I stay then I must fix this somehow, with the help of hopefully a few hundred thousand people. Any ideas are welcome.

PS If you say "Shut down STB and fire all the staff and use the money to hire counsellors and set up counselling centres since STB has failed so miserably to do its job", sorry that idea has already been taken. But if you have an idea on HOW to fire all the staff of STB then please post it.

3. We need to stop our men from going to Batam and Thailand and other poor countries for virgin or underaged sex. It's disgusting, they'll come back with diseases which WILL spread, and they are destroying the lives of children in another country. I definitely welcome ideas for this!

PS Potong is not possible. I heard all the junior guillotines are sold out, bought up by desperate housewives who suspect their husbands of having China mistresses.

There are many more problems around us that need fixing. We can choose to stay and fight, or we can pack and go.

By myself I know I do not have an ice-cube's chance in hell. But with God, nothing is impossible. Maybe with Mr Brown's influence we can rally for gahmen to do something concrete for those who need their help the most: the ones who cannot look after themselves, the handicapped, the sick.

Singapore: A Nation Of Child Sex Offenders?

2005-07-02T01:00:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I had breakfast with Eunice Olsen.

She was our resident politician in the WMD shoot (which came out in URBAN yesterday! Thank you URBAN).

She is one beautiful, smart, sassy girl. Totally into bettering the state of humanity in this world. I find it rare in young people, who either say PC things so that Lao Jiao like me won't give them flak for not caring, or who really really don't care and can't wait to change the subject.

Eunice can talk about helping kids, women, the poor all day long.

One point we agreed on, and it disturbs me, is that even tragedies are faddish in Singapore. People get tired of bad news fast -- except maybe when they live in close proximity to the danger, like SARS.

The issue of child sex tourism will be a long term one. Men in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and other affluent Asian countries are not going to stop visiting child prostitutes overnight. That is why our battle needs to be a long one also. The more education, the more outcry, the more we fight to protect our own family units, the more results we will have, but these things take time.

Will we stop till the men stop? The answer is no.

But we need soldiers, a moral and tireless army to fight this injustice. We need the next generation to rise up already, and make a stand. We love our country and we are proud of it. Anything that taints the name of Singapore needs to be eradicated.

I do not want my country to be called a nation of child sex offenders.

But if that's how Batam sees us now, I don't blame them.

In Eunice's words, "THIS IS WRONG! THIS IS NOT WHAT OUR COUNTRY IS MADE OF!"

As National Day draws near, I am thinking of this country that our forefathers painstakingly built from scratch. There are more good things about our country than bad, but that doesn't mean we should not work hard to cut out as many of the bad things as possible. I do believe that God has a special purpose for this island state, or we would not have prospered so remarkably in such a short time (not even 50 years!), and we would not have been spared from the ravages of natural disasters like the Boxing Day tsunami. The "close call" still makes me shudder when I think about it -- we were so near to the disaster but yet God's hand lifted us so far from it.

So I believe, whatever opportunity we get to do good now, particularly saving the lives of the innocents, we should do it, while we still have a chance.

Woo Hoo! 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize!

2005-06-29T10:46:00.000+08:00

Today, UNIFEM and SCWO will jointly announce that THREE Singaporean women have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Isn't that fabulous?!

What's even more exciting is a movement called "1000 Women For The Nobel Peace Prize" (www.1000peacewomen.org) where 1000 women collectively receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

In the last few months since we started WMD I've been moved (sometimes to near-tears) by the passion that Singaporean women have for children and women who are born into a life of poverty and who are forced into situations we wouldn't even put our worst enemies through. You are helping to bring peace into the lives of these children and women through your support.

For all the women (and men) who have donated their time and money to the fight against child sex tourism and sex trafficking, you are on my list of 1000.

"She extends her hand to the poor
Yes she reaches out her hands to the needy."
(Prov 31:20-21)

Why Aren't They Talking About Ho Yeow Sun?

2005-06-26T23:34:00.000+08:00

The lack of publicity in Singapore about homegirl Ho Yeow Sun, popularly known as Sun (quite aptly, since she is bright and cheery), baffles me.

I first noticed this young lady when I was working as Editor-In-Chief of ELLE magazine in Singapore. At that job, I didn't get to go out much and the only SUN I got was the few rays that came streaming in my office in the morning, killing my cactus.

But my intrepid young reporter Michelle Bong pointed out to me one day that there was this cute Chinese pop singer who was also a pastor. We were at the time planning for our 2001 National Day issue, always a big song and dance and we tried to feature as many Singaporeans who were making waves (and who looked good) as possible.

"How about the singing pastor?" asked MJB (her middle name escapes my mind now but that's what we call her)

She waves an album cover at me. What a wholesome looking lass. "She's a PASTOR?"

"Yah, got belly button showing and all."

"Okay, done."

I had nothing against belly buttons showing, and I still don't have anything against it. The only time I object to belly buttons in my face is when I have to look for them between two folds of fat. Which is why you won't be seeing mine anytime soon. But this Ho Yeow Sun, she's pert and cute as a button. Some people think she's lian but I never had a problem with lians ? Fann Wong is also very lian but she's cool to me. If you speak Mandarin then you can be lian. If you only speak English and look lian THEN got problem.

The two years following that were something else! Her albums sold a lot of copies, and she started appearing in magazines, newspapers etc. Of course, MEDIA being media (MEDIA is short for "Mean Egotistical Diatribe-Inscribing A******* ? I know, I was one/am a recovering one).

She's materialistic lah, she's very "unholy" lah, her congregation was forced to buy her album so that she could get a number one spot in the charts lah, she wears slutty outfits lah ... you name it. It started with one Her World article I read where she apparently flaunted her Prada bag et al and the worst of it was probably the article slamming her for her red Armani gown.

See, being a person in the media has its advantages. You don't believe 90% of what you read in the papers. The other 10% is just there to make you laugh.

Poor girl got ripped to shreds. Even my Christian friends (and I was not Christian yet) said, "She's asking for it lor." I heard of people leaving City Harvest because of the hoohah. I honestly didn't see the big deal. God's not stupid. If she was a fake He'd fix her.

I prayed for her, mostly for her to wise up to the Things Not To Do When The Media Are Looking.

The stupid thing about the whole business was that the REAL stories were completely ignored!

* DAVID FOSTER was her producer!!! She was in Hollywood wearing Armani because HE BROUGHT HER! Now THAT'S a story! How many Singaporeans have caught the eye of a legendary music producer?

* ARMANI sponsored her dress! How many Singaporeans get Armani to sponsor their dress in HOLLYWOOD?! Maybe Fann Wong only!

* The girl was obviously making it big! Why run a story about a freaking DRESS and a bit of cleavage (not as if you haven't seen any -- okay maybe just not on a Pastor but she IS a woman, and a nice-looking one at that). I searched and searched but there was no story on HER SUCCESS!

Baffling!

These days the media's calmed down a little over her. But still there's a bit of a boycott, if I might call it that.

Last year she hit the number one spot on the Billboard Dance Charts (Top 25), knocking off Destiny's Child even. Not just that but she had THREE CONSECUTIVE NUMBER ONES on the Billboard Dance Charts!!! Good grief, that's unheard of for any Singaporean!

The report in the Straits Times was a tiny couple of paras in Life.

But when another Singaporean climbs (YET AGAIN) Mount Everest, it's full colour picture in the News section, Front page, Page 3 or front of Home News.

Something's not right.

My husband asked me yesterday "How come Ho Yeow Sun's making it so huge overseas and here you hardly hear about her?"

I don't have an answer, or rather, I'm AFRAID to answer! Could it be that our multi-religious society "fail" to see her as a talented singer because they'd rather not deal? Could it be that they have beaten her up so badly in the press before it seems like a reversal of position for them to do any decent story on her? Do I really want to read about a lard-eating cardiologist who obviously has no respect for his own body when I could be learning more about this woman who is putting Singapore on the map AND SINGAPORE CHOOSES NOT TO NOTICE?!

Aiyoh. In my mother's (bless her soul) words, this is very "chek ark".

I had the honour of meeting Sun because of the WMD anti-child sex tourism project I began. She donated $10,000 of her (and a few friends') money to the cause! She also agreed to have her photo taken as part of a celebrity T-shirt drive that begins 7 July.

Right now she is in LA completing a Praise & Worship album that City Harvest is putting out. It will be TRES COOL -- I know this because I've heard the songs and the treatment, and I am a former music editor of ETC magazine and I know cool when I hear it (HAHAHAHA). I definitely am buying it, no pastor needs to force me to put down money for it.

She has also become the new VON DUTCH chick. If you need to know what Von Dutch is, WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING MY BLOG?! Just head out your door, down the street and it will be less than 10 minutes before you see a Von Dutch bag/T-shirt/skirt. It is only the hippest surf brand in California, and Madonna and Halle Berry are also in the Von Dutch Hall of Fame. If you don't think that's cool for a Singaporean, something is majorly wrong with you.

In a sense, I'm GLAD local press don't give Sun due credit. It makes her seem so much cooler to me. It's like Blogging: by the time the Singapore press runs a story, YOU KNOW YOU ARE MAINSTREAM! YIKES!!!! To be in the same category as Phua Chu Kang!!!! ARGH!!!!

She's about to hit the major big time. Her 4th single comes out this month in the US, and she has signed an album deal in LA and will be recording there. The album is due out next Feb. I'm not a dance music fan, but I'm sure she will do a great job. She's got some excellent names producing this album (see below)

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA (2 June 2005)?Sun's second single released in the UK, "Without Love" has conquered the dance charts, reaching Number #1 on ?Music Week's Upfront Club Top 40' Dance Chart and proving yet again the continual international success of "Without Love" and Sun. "Music Week" Magazine is Europe's industry standard for reporting music much the way "Billboard" Magazine in the United States is considered the ultimate resource. Sun and her #1 single shares the charts this week with singles from such notable artists as Mariah Carey, Ashanti, Kelly Clarkson, Kelly Osborne and Nelly. "Without Love" also hit #2 on "Music Week's Commercial Pop Club Chart" and #2 on "DMC" Magazine's Dance Club Chart as well.

"Without Love" which was produced by Jimmy Harry, who has worked with international pop superstars like Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue, and remixed by notable remixers such as Mike Rizzo, Tony Moran, Eric Kupper, and Peter Presta, "Without Love" previously went Number #1 on the US "Billboard Magazine Dance Club Chart" back in December 2004 and sustained itself in the Top 25 "Billboard" Dance Radio Charts for over four astonishing months. For the UK release of "Without Love," Bimbo Jones, Motiv8, and Steve Solasso were brought in to provide additional remixes.

Sun's next follow-up single will be "Ends of the Earth," which will be released in the USA this summer. Famed producers, The Underdogs, invited Sun to record with them in their studio when Sun was in Los Angeles in September 2004 and after only two days of studio time, "Ends of the Earth" was created.

What the Bible says about selling your daughter

2005-06-21T00:42:00.000+08:00

Found this in the Bible tonight. How apt.

"Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness."
Leviticus 19:29

Ain't it the truth. Parents in rural villages in Indonesia celebrate the day their daughter gets her first menses because it means they can sell her off to the brothels.

Hence they never get out of poverty, and their land is filled with wickedness.

God never lies.

Denise Keller Is Anti-Child Sex Tourism!

2005-06-19T17:57:00.000+08:00

Denise is very beautiful.

But the real star of this photo, shot by Wee Khim and styled by Johnny Khoo exclusively for WMD, is the pink T-shirt she is wearing.

The next phase of the anti child-sex tourism campaign by Women Make a Difference (WMD) starts here!

We got 8 celebrities and famous women who decided to Make A Difference with us by promoting our fundraising T-shirt.

Denise is wearing it � it says "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar!"

What is means is that when women come together in sizeable numbers we can really make ourselves heard. Thing is, what are we saying that needs to be heard?

We are saying that children that have been sold into prostitution need help.

We are saying that Singapore men going to Batam to have sex with 12 year old girls is WRONG.

We are saying that the well-educated women who are able to earn their own money and who have no lack of opportunities, have to help the girls who are born into circumstances which determine their only oppportunity they have is to be sold into prostitution.

Buy a T-shirt (each costs $39.90 incl GST and will retail at 77th Street at Heeren and Far East Plaza from mid-July). The net proceeds from every pack go to UNIFEM to help victims of the child sex or sex trafficking trade, to provide food, shelter as well as counselling to help undo years of abuse.

Tell all your friends about it. And look out for our full campaign in the press int he coming weeks!

WMD on Channel News Asia tonight!

2005-05-24T19:04:00.000+08:00

UGH!

My first live interview happens tonight on Channel News Asia at 9.30pm.

I insist on wearing my WMD T-shirt but just took an hour to match it to something remotely "proper".

For this humiliation I expect T-shirt sales to be rapid and wonderful! Haha!

To my friends praying for me — thank you!

I will be fine — God loves me and I know He will only laugh at me when I'm off camera.

Okay, the limo (as if) comes at 7.30 — I'm just done blowing my hair.

Watch it if you can.

Top 10 Reasons Why Men Seek Child Sex

2005-05-23T19:26:00.000+08:00

I've been asked this question a lot recently, since I decided to speak up against the child sex trade.

At the War Against Trafficking Alliance conference I attended at the end of April, I discovered a lot of things that I could scarcely believe. Apart from the shock of facing human depravity turned up to 11, I also heard the list of stupid reasons that men have for choosing sex with a child.

If I wasn't busy throwing up I would have laughed.

Here they are (some are translated so imagine they are 200% less eloquent than this).

1. "I went to the temple and they told me if I have sex with a virgin it will cure me of my impotence problem."
2. "Because we Chinese believe that the sex with a young girl has the power to take away the signs of aging and health problems."
3. "It makes me feel powerful."
4. "It's good for the girl to be exposed to this from an early age."
5. "I'm doing these girls an economic favour — without my having sex with them they won't be able to feed their families."
6. "It's no big deal -- they're going to have sex anyway in a few years."
7. "I feel rejuvenated."
8. "It's not as if they are Chinese girls or angmoh girls, what's the problem?"
9. "I heard it's a good way to cure AIDS."
10. "I heard it's a good way to prevent AIDS."

Men who have sex with children fall into 3 groups:

1. The pedophiles
These sickos need to have their brains reset by plugging a live wire into the back of their necks. They objectify very young children as sex toys. Many are not only into sex with kids but torture as well. There is a VERY SPECIAL HELL for people like them.

2. The preferential sex offenders
These are epitomised by the Temasek Poly lecturer nailed for soliciting sex with a teenage Thai boy. They like adolescents.

3. Situational sex offenders
This is the category most Singapore sex tourists fall into — go on tour, friends say "let's try" and they stupid stupid go and try "for the experience". These people would also try drugs in Amsterdam, sex with a "smorgasbord" of prostitutes of different races (I heard of a very famous Singaporean who did it and took pictures but I shan't get slapped with a slander suit).

Perhaps what chilled me to the bone the most was the story told to me about the Singaporean man who not only went to sleep with child prostitutes every week in Batam but came home to tell his teenage sons that he will bring them for a treat there one day.

He is grooming the next generation of child sex predators.

And so the cycle of evil continues.

We must do everything in our power to stop this.

Educate the men and the boys. Education can save lives.
Get men to stop thinking of sex as recreation — unlike tennis balls these kids don't just bounce back.
Start a new trend: go back to God's plan for men and women.

The 5 P's (courtesy of Prof Vitit Muntabhorn, receipient of the UNESCO award for human rights)
Prevention by activating the public
Protection of children (keeping them in school and out of trouble)
Prosecution of wrongdoers (seize their assets)
Provision of help (psychological recovery for victims, psychological intervention for offenders)
Personal and structural philosophy - promote the principle that all human rights are for all.

I am reminded of a short horror story by British writer and comic legend Neil Gaiman, called Babycakes (from Smoke And Mirrors). I am just going to excerpt it to make a point:

"A few years back all the animals went away... We wandered around lost, for a time, and then someone pointed out that just because we didn't have animals anymore, there was no reason to change our lives. No reason to change our diets or cease testing products that might cause us harm.

"After all, there were still babies.

"Babies can't talk. They can't hardly move. A baby is not a rational, thinking creature.

"We made babies.

"And we used them.

"Some of them we ate. Baby flesh is tender and succulent.

"We flayed their skin and decorated ourselves in it. Baby leather is soft and comfortable.

"Some of them we tested.

"We taped their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, one drop at a time.

"We scarred and scalded them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, we froze, and we irradiated....

"Some people complained, of course. But then they always do. And everything went back to normal."

Let's not let it go back to normal.

I'm A Barbie Mom

2005-05-21T01:00:00.000+08:00

I have a Bree complex.

My buddy Jude and I were lunching and she said "There's this quiz where you get to find out which Desperate Housewife you are most like."

I'm most like Linette but I have a Bree complex.

For my daughter's 4th birthday party tomorrow I am crafting a Barbie doll cake (where Barbie's gown is the cake). Coffee Bean offers a similar version with a fake Barbie that costs $80. I'm sorry, $80 is too much to pay for a fake Barbie.

I get great satisfaction doing stuff like this for my kids. When my business(es) have finally taken flight one day I will be writing children's books and painting nurseries for fun, in between my activist work! The only things missing are Bree's scarily perfect hair, her awesome body and her whitened smile.

So back to the cake. I bought a cheapie Barbie (your standard issue $12 one) and measured her for her "gown". Do you know that if Barbie really had legs that long and thin she would not be able to walk? That's why you only ever see her standing around, usually leaning on something.

Anyway her legs are so long that the bowl I'm using to make the gown is not deep enough (and if I use the bigger bowl the cake would be 13kg, nearly the weight of my daughter.

So,since the Sicilian act of breaking one's legs is out of the question (but not left unconsidered, mind you) I decided, let's hide her feet in styrofoam.

So last night at 11.37pm, I was cutting up foam boards glueing them together, and stabbing one (1) standard issue Barbie doll into the foam. She stands, I score, I go to bed.

Tomorrow, my daughter will get a chocolate and ice-cream cake with vanilla icing and hundreds-and-thousands, with a real Barbie wearing it. In 20 minutes, the cake would be demolished and chunks left uneaten (how much cake can a bunch of 4, 5, 6 year olds eat?), and Barbie will have been yanked out of the cake, nekkid and left in the sink with a plastic bag over her head to keep her hair from getting wet.

Is it a lot of work for 20 minutes of display and a photo? YES.
Is it worth the fun? YES.
Is it worth seeing my daughter's face when her cake has a real Barbie in it? ABSOLUTELY.

So I think here I am putting in so much time effort and a bit of money into one cake for my 4-year-old girl.
Just an hour away in Indonesia, a 14 year old girl is giving her body, her shame, her dignity to feed her family.

It shouldn't be this way. I will work hard just to make sure it doesn't stay like this. And the best birthday gift I can give to my little girl is a deep faith in Jesus and my protection and comfort at all times.

Child-Sex Tourism: Why Don't They Get These Guys?

2005-05-18T14:23:00.000+08:00

In today's Straits Times (17 May 2005, Page 3 and H4), Theresa Tan (my younger, brighter, smarter, better-writing, passionate young friend of the same name) reported on the issue of child sex exploitation by Singaporean men being brought up in Parliament.

I've been on the bandwagon since visiting the website of a US 501C organisation called Shared Hope International (www.sharedhope.org) that runs rescue missions of young women and children who have been forced into prostitution. The stories ripped my heart to shreds, as they would any humane, intelligent human being not possessed by satanic forces.

It's new to me, but the trade is as old as the Bible. That doesn't make it right. These are CHILDREN we are talking about. In villages around Surabaya, Indonesia, for example, parents wait till their daughters get their first period and gladly sell them off to "friends" and "farangs" who are going to give their daughters a "job". These girls may be told their going to be doing sales. They just don't realise they're also the product they're selling. In India, mothers are known to sell off their daughters that are eight or nine to be "dolls" in brothels. These girls, who if they were living in Singapore, would be pulling on their uniforms and getting on the bus to school and studying for their Primary Three streaming, are kept in cages, and every 15 minutes some FULL GROWN MAN is going to come along, tap them on the shoulder, take them to a room and rape them.

I say rape, why? What does an eight-year-old know about sex? What is she SUPPOSED to know about sex at eight? Her reproductive system isn't even completedly formed yet. There is no way to have "consensual sex" with an eight year old. If it's not consensual, it's RAPE. If she's underaged, it's RAPE.

So Singaporean men would probably say, "No lah I'm not so sick as to take advantage of an 8-year-old. That's sick, doesn't even turn me on."

Listen, a child is someone under the age of 18. So it's rape if she is 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Many of the girls working in Batam, the ones the pimps sell as "virgins" and charge $500 for — let me tell you the truth.

A: they're NOT virgins. When these girls are first brought to the brothels and forced to work, they are locked up and RAPED repeatedly, BEATEN till they submit and have lost hope. So if Singaporean men think they're getting a virgin, they may as well give me the $500 and I'll give them a bottle of olive oil — EXTRA VIRGIN, since they want virgin so much.

B: they're underaged. Some are 11, 12. Others are 14, 15. Most have makeup on, and they are instructed to say they are above 16 (the legal age in Indonesia) if asked. We know better, because we have spoken or seen these girls who run away to shelters, and they are definitely underaged.

Some of these 14 year old girls (who should be in Sec 2, wearing a uniform and going to school) have serviced between 300-400 men already.

Their bodies have been severely abused. (Many are given drugs to stay "happy" for clients)
Their spirit has been broken to pieces.
They have no self-esteem.
They believe they have no escape.
Some die from the abuse — some men beat up these girls, and just pay extra for the fun.
Some get pregnant and die, because their young bodies cannot sustain a full-term pregnancy.
They are told that if they don't work, the agents will send people to kill their family.
They are made to believe that this was what they are good for only — meat for the market, and this is their lot in life.

Would you do this to your own daughter?
Would you stand by and take it if someone did it to YOUR daughter?
Or your sister? Or your friend?

If you say no, then do something about it.

*********************************

But back to why the government is so reluctant to do anything about this.

Prof Ho Peng Kee, ex-ACS boy and classmate of my ex-boss Michael Chiang. I like the man. I think he has dignity. I think he also has the unfortunate position of being the elected voice on this issue.

He says that Singapore needs to observe the laws that have been put in place, extra-territorial laws that other countries like Australia, Thailand, the US practise where if a man from Australia goes to Thailand and abuses a child there, he will go to jail when he returns to Australia.

It may not be the most fast-acting law. It IS hard to prove that a man went from Singapore to Batam to a brothel where he goes to a room, takes out his penis and penetrates a 12-year-old. You won't have pictures to prove that the act happened (or they'll just appear on the internet and service thousands of other sick freaks). BUT as long as a man goes to Batam for the express purpose of sex with a "young girl" or "virgin" you can assume she's not 25.

I think it's a good law. Because:
a. If you catch them, they get duly punished.
b. They only need to KNOW that they WILL definitely get punished when caught. It's a matter of time. Knowing becomes a deterrent.

In a survey done among child sex offenders who have been caught and interviewed in prisons in Australia, the number one deterrent for them is GETTING CAUGHT. They have a fear of it, which is why Internet child porn has mushroomed, because it's a crime you can commit in the privacy of your own home. But I'm happy to note that in parts of Europe and the US, getting caught with porn in your home PC is proof you are a child sex offender and YOU WILL GET THROWN IN JAIL.

These laws may not work the same way as getting the Traffic Police to stand under some trees and catch ozone-killing motorcycles from Malaysia. But that they are in place (let me quote the speechwriter of our MPs) SENDS A SIGNAL.

And we SHOULD be sending a signal: we should be telling our men,
"STOP BEING A PREDATOR — YOU ARE ONLY BEING PATHETIC!
SEX WITH "VIRGINS' DOES NOT CURE YOU OF IMPOTENCY, STDS, AIDS, COUGHS, COLDS AND OTHER AILMENTS!
IT IS A CRIME TO HAVE SEX WITH CHILDREN (IE PERSONS UNDER 18 YEARS OLD) HERE OR IN OTHER COUNTRIES!
YOU WILL GET CAUGHT AND YOU WILL GO TO JAIL!
YOUR FACE WILL APPEAR IN THE PAPERS AS A CHILD SEX OFFENDER AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE RUINED!"

and perhaps most importantly, that GOD SEES EVERYTHING WE DO. You can run, but you cannot hide.

So what should the government do?
Impose the law.
Do it now.
Every day that you do NOT do it, means another 40 men get to abuse one child.
Every day that you do NOT do it, means that Singaporean men will think the government is lenient on child sex crimes.
If a better law comes along, AMEND the one you have now.

Mr Ho is correct in saying that the government cannot do this alone.
You are not doing it alone.
Welfare groups have been fighting this for YEARS.
Groups like WMD are going to fight it for YEARS.
But we need moral and financial support.
We need the public to know.
We need men to be told the truth and to be slapped into behaving.
We need our neighbours and our neighbours are already FAR AHEAD OF US in the progress of nailing child sex offenders!
Singapore is Jurassic in its approach!
All this only contributes to accusations that we are a patriarchal society — our government will be seen as an indulgent father who doesn't believe in disciplining his sons' abominable behaviour. Worse, people might start to think our government has misogynistic leanings! I won't have that, because I don't believe it — but that is what INACTION and INDECISION is going to suggest.

So do it!

=====================

WHAT CAN YOU DO, MY FRIENDS?
- Tell everyone you know about this.
- WMD will be raising funds with UNIFEM very soon through sales of T-shirts and bags to fund shelters for these children and women — SUPPORT THAT.
- If you know anyone who goes on sex tours to Thailand or Batam or Vietnam, tell them about this law. Tell them what has happened to these kids. Tell them that the law will be imposed and they will be caught. Tell them that God can see their crime, and He will punish anyone who abuses the innocents. Tell them to stop going. Buy them a beer and take them to see Revenge of the Sith instead.
- Write to the Straits Times and tell them how you feel.
- Feel free to add comments to my Blog.
- And most of all, PRAY EVERY DAY. We war not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities that we cannot see (spirits). The prayer of a righteous person is effective.

Be blessed!

Theresa