TODAY: Foaming with fury

0401Voc020 MBloggers set up petition calling for a ban on foam sprays

A GOOD year starts off with a long weekend, or as blogger Re-minisce (re-minisce.blogspot.com) puts it, a “wild and wanton new year loonnng weekend”.

The weekend of wild celebrations aside, this is a good time to read what others are resolving to do this new year. Especially if you can’t think of any resolutions for yourself.

If you’d rather not read the same spiel about “being a better person” or “controlling my temper”, go to blogger Ngader’s Livejournal site (www.livejournal.com/users/ngader/), where she’s written a post called 101 goals for 2006.

Read more at TODAYonline [txt][pdf]

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Some goals of hers sound simple, such as No 82: “Try every single stall at the Maxwell Hawker Centre”, while others sound complicated enough (to me at least) to drive you bonkers, such as No 61: “Build a streamlined, all-weather, all-love wardrobe filled only with great versatile pieces”.

A far cry from her 2005 resolutions which were: “Take care of my eyes and take care of financial health”.
There’s the rub: A blog is essentially a journal and you can check back to last year’s resolution to see whether you met your goals or not. And as you’re sharing this information, you might feel the pressure of your readers’ expectations as well as your own.
Then again, baring your soul may be your thing, like blogger LittleMissDrinkalot (littlemissdrinkalot.blogspot.com) who reflects on last year’s loves lost and says that she doesn’t “want to start the new year as a crazy psychotic bitch. Maybe he likes me, maybe he doesn’t. I’ll find out, eventually”.

But let’s get back to the wild celebrations of the past two long weekends — and some controversy, too.

The one brewing right now among bloggers who attended street parties over Christmas and New Year’s, is over the scourge of aerosol foam sprays allegedly used by some party-goers to distract and immobilise (mostly female) revellers in order to molest them.

Even the doyenne of Singapore blogs, Xiaxue (xiaxue.blogspot.com) has weighed in on the matter, being a “victim” herself of the New Year’s party perverts.

“Being blinded by foam, and then molested while you are struggling with the foam on your face — how’s that for a happy new year? What is chewing gum? Chewing gum is nothing compared the harm caused by these foam sprays,” she asserted.

An online petition has even been set up (new.petitiononline.com/aerosol/petition.html) to collect endorsements calling for the ban of aerosol foam sprays at these parties. There are currently over 1,500 signatures on the petition addressed to “The Government of Singapore”.

Probably more controversial is the fact that these bloggers allege that most of the perpetrators were “foreign workers”, with blogger inex (www.livejournal.com/users/inex/) asking for future street parties and events to be “a Singaporeans-only event. Only those with pink IC and their foreign friends (a controlled number of course) should be allowed to participate”.

Oh well. New Year, new controversies — and all fodder for bloggers.

Mr Miyagi aka Benjamin Lee has been entertaining readers at miyagi.sg for over a year, and has resolved to keep his resolutions short.

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9 responses to “TODAY: Foaming with fury”

  1. Related Blogs: (see all trackbacks) -TODAY: Foaming with fury – http://www.livejournal.com/users/inex – Recent Runes – Blinky Mummy – juz brennan – Ban On Aerosol Can Sprays – With Regards to those Partying Foreign Workers

  2. arex Avatar

    i know people have been molested, and i know people who have been molested; some will jump at the chance to lay blame on the sometimes innocuous foreign worker, but an incident i witnessed on the recent new year’s eve has prompted me to respond to this interesting article by miyagi-san.

    what i saw was the utterly juvenile ways of two or three local boys. the small group of minors did a seemingly simple thing, and probably had no thought of what consequences their actions could bring. they passed one migrant worker at the downtown hotel next to the Istana, screamed “ah neh” countless times while jump-spraying almost his entire head and upper torso with foam like it was a first-person-shooter/fragger. Not being MYOPiC like us singaporeans, his eyes had not the protection of corrective lenses.
    He walked on, and so did the boys, laughing and mocking. i was enraged to have seen such unwarranted discrimination by young bigots possibly in the making [not saying that i’m not racist at all, we all have prejudices and are somewhat colorblind, but anyways]. surprisingly, no fight (or fight back) ensued, and i sorta admired the chap who kept on walking, only seeming to show a bit of disappointment while he brushed off the foam.
    i thought, hope he does not vengefully molest or kill anyone after that.

    my point is, actually i have no point. just that this reminded me of the small, little acts of racism that permeate most societies.

  3. arex Avatar

    i know people have been molested, and i know people who have been molested; some will jump at the chance to lay blame on the sometimes innocuous foreign worker, but an incident i witnessed on the recent new year’s eve has prompted me to respond to this interesting article by miyagi-san.

    what i saw was the utterly juvenile ways of two or three local boys. the small group of minors did a seemingly simple thing, and probably had no thought of what consequences their actions could bring. they passed one migrant worker at the downtown hotel next to the Istana, screamed “ah neh” countless times while jump-spraying almost his entire head and upper torso with foam like it was a first-person-shooter/fragger. Not being MYOPiC like us singaporeans, his eyes had not the protection of corrective lenses.
    He walked on, and so did the boys, laughing and mocking. i was enraged to have seen such unwarranted discrimination by young bigots possibly in the making [not saying that i’m not racist at all, we all have prejudices and are somewhat colorblind, but anyways]. surprisingly, no fight (or fight back) ensued, and i sorta admired the chap who kept on walking, only seeming to show a bit of disappointment while he brushed off the foam.
    i thought, hope he does not vengefully molest or kill anyone after that.

    my point is, actually i have no point. just that this reminded me of the small, little acts of racism that permeate most societies.

  4. Tucker Chang Avatar
    Tucker Chang

    Ban Foaming
    Not again. Whenever there is something wrong with something, there is a call to ban that something!
    Singaporeans need to grow up. If the govt heed every petition, soon, what’s left of the souls of Singapore?
    Resolution for 2006 – Stop using the word BAN

  5. Tucker Chang Avatar

    Ban Foaming
    Not again. Whenever there is something wrong with something, there is a call to ban that something!
    Singaporeans need to grow up. If the govt heed every petition, soon, what’s left of the souls of Singapore?
    Resolution for 2006 – Stop using the word BAN

  6. malarie Avatar

    this page doesnt tell much about gum at all!!!!!!goodness yall

  7. malarie Avatar

    this page doesnt tell much about gum at all!!!!!!goodness yall

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