It’s probably a coincidence, but the mainstream media does seem to have followed my advice and mined for stories outside Hougang. Shocking headlines appeared on Wanbao last Saturday. A school principal, high ranking civil servants and professionals were caught when an online prostitution ring was busted. A scholar is believed to be among them. This is outrageous. This is disgusting. I was utterly shocked and flabbergasted that the online service in question failed to protect their clients’ privacy! Talk about a discreet service.
But no matter how well-run the business was, it is illegal. What about the clients? Is it also an offence for them to patronise unlicensed online prostitution services? I’m not a lawyer, but according to one cynical “expert”, prostitution in Singapore is legal as long as you register your business and pay taxes. Our unfortunate school principal might not have gotten into trouble if he had been willing to pay more and gone to some pricey escort agency to pick up an SPG. But I don’t think they have Korean girls over there. Too bad.
Let’s backtrack to the time when I was climbing Kinabalu with a friend of mine. We met a group of Singaporean men. They were all married men and they met one another in Shenzhen when their companies sent them there. After their return to Singapore, they found that they missed each other so much that they decided to hold regular gathering. Climbing a mountain seemed healthy enough. But while chatting with them over dinner, the men revealed an interesting (but not startling) fact. They all had frequent sex trysts while working at Shenzhen.
I’ll save the lurid details for people who buy me drinks, but just for my readers, the guys had a whale of a time playing as hard as they worked in China’s economic capital. These guys were not your regular Hokkien pengs or Ah Bengs. Far from that. They were highly educated people holding MBAs and other impressive degrees that will make them ministerial material. If the identities of these men were revealed and published in our mainstream media, it’s sure to cause an uproar.
Concerned parents who leave their kids to their maids are going to scream at the schools, wondering what they have been teaching. Anxious wives are going to scream at employers, wondering why they have allowed their husbands to go partying when they should be watching Chinese soap operas in their apartments. The moralists are going to scream at everyone, wondering aloud what has happened to our moral values and wondering silently when they’re ever going to be posted to Shenzhen.
But as far as I could tell, these guys were not keeping mistresses and taxing the family’s budget. How should we judge them? Should we even judge them at all? I’ve said on Blogtv that if you check enough closets, you will find skeletons. The question is, is it that important for us to know what is in everybody’s closet as long as they do no harm or even perform brilliantly in their respective professions?
Weakness and fragility are part and parcel of being human. Whitney Houston has just left us. At the height of her career, she had some of the most powerful vocals in the industry. But drugs and immoderation took their toll. According to reliable sources, Whitney may have lapsed into unconsciousness after a heavy dose of alcohol and sedatives and drowned in the bathtub in her hotel room. How can this happen to someone idolised by millions worldwide? Because she is only human.
Does anybody know that Ip Man was an opium addict with a few questionable sources of income? And unlike what was depicted in the movies, he had been beaten quite a number of times in competition. I’m not saying that people like Ip Man shouldn’t be honoured, but why are some of their admirers so naive to insist that their heroes must be perfect?
Fortunately for Ip Man and Whitney Houston, most people will remember them more for their talents and achievements rather than her shortcomings. If only we could embrace a broad-minded, holistic view and extend such compassion towards our MPs, preachers, teachers and school principals.
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Thank you for this article, Dr Chan. My sentiments, exactly! Kennedy and Clinton had their mistresses galore but that doesn’t stop them from being considered giants among those who entered the White House. Even the widowed Q Victoria had her discreet John Brown. What Sgreans must understand is that when we vote, we send people to Parliament, not to the pearly gates
Very fair and down to earth comments. As humans we do have vices. It’s very bad to dig into others’ private life. So long as he didn’t commit any offences such as cheating, swindle, harm others etc why shld he be punished?
When will we be like the US where Clinton did his little side entertainment and yet still served out his full term. He is still walking tall commanding tons of money making speeches and appearances?
Logically, if a person dedicates 99% of his life to educating the young and doing a very good job of managing a top school at that, I think I can accept it if he secretly spends 1% of his life looking for Korean girls online.
I remember I had a very strict PE teacher in Sec 2. He made some of us run till we threw up. I didn’t like him as he always told me that I was unfit (yes, I was very unfit back then). Then one day, I caught him smoking at a hawker centre near my place. Imagine what I could have done if I had a camera phone and a Youtube account. I could have ruined his career by posting that video and letting it go viral. Thankfully, there was no such technology back then.
Thinking back, he was actually the best PE teacher I ever had. Today, I remember a lot of what he taught me about fitness, but I remain a non-smoker. What injustice I would have done to myself if I had ruined his career.
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