Intolerance is Intolerable.

Most people in the US who have been reading the gossip pages of any regional newspaper would know about “Sister Wives”, a TLC-produced programme chronicling the lives of a polygamist and his 4 wives and 16 kids.

Now, whether or not polygamy is right or wrong is not the point of this post. After watching the 2nd episode I began to wonder how a man with 4 wives and 16 kids can afford to drive a flashy car. After posting this thought on Facebook (where else) I had a slew of comments but none as shocking as one that basically ran along the lines of..”this is typical of a M***** family”.

Nope, the M word is not Mormon.

To say that I was shell shocked is a gross understatement. A mix of embarrassment, utter disbelief and anger swept over me in waves. I was embarrassed because I had many good friends belonging to this faith and my first thought was how they would feel if they read this stereotype of their faith. Anger because I knew it was untrue and a sweeping statement, something that was a response from a person who probably did not understand the cultures of a different group of people. Disbelief because this was a young educated woman who grew up in a community of different races & religion and is now living in a foreign country where her race would qualify her as a minority and she is most definitely labelled a foreigner, someone “different”.

I would imagine that someone like her would understand the whole idea of discrimination and hate. Apparently not.

Some would say that she might not have totally understood the consequences of her response but for an adult living in our diverse world today where hate crimes and intolerance pepper our headlines, that is a simply irresponsible way of saying “I don’t care” (if there is anyway more irresponsible to say that).

My first reaction was, “how does one get away with saying and believing something like that”? An absence of knowledge does not make such a comment right. If you do not understand, you should not comment. Not least on such a public platform where you never know who may be reading that comment, whether it may be an innocent remark or not. But whether innocent or not, such a remark is just wrong.

And it is no thanks to the mentalities of these people that such hate exists in the world today.

Pictures!

Frankfurt

Ulm

New York City

The bears have landed

We’ve finally landed on College Station after many many adventures in Germany and in New York City which included being pushed around just to get myself through as an official immigrant of the United States of America, only to find out that the great Singapore Airlines decided (with no explanation) to leave one piece of our luggage back in Frankfurt while we flew to New York City. The best thing was, all our clothes & toiletries were in the bag.

That gave us a good excuse to check out the outlet mall near the airport hotel we were putting up in, but also caused a great amount of stress and whatnot. The even best-er thing is that there will be no compensation from SIA.

Bleah.

Well, we’ve put that behind us now and we’re now in College Station. Its a small town and everything is easily accessible by car. We’ve got a local mobile line (750 minutes shared, unlimited talk & web courtesy of T-mobile at only $109.00 a month!) and we even found an apartment! The only thing to do now before we start shopping for furniture and other knick-knacks is to cross our fingers and hope the lease gets approved. Here in the States, they take credit rather seriously. Whether it is applying for a mobile phone line or leasing an apartment, they’d have to do a check on your credit background before approving anything. It sounds simple, but its complicated.

More updates soon! Pictures in the next post.

Quick drop in from Hong Kong

Its as hot and humid here as it is back home on our sunny island, so we’re pretty puzzled why we still see (and hear) so many Singaporeans around (also, the June holidays have ended).

That however, is not the point of this post.

We are down to the last 4 teams in the World Cup. The whole.wide.world (in particular the Dutch, Germans, Spaniards, Paraguay-ians) are football mad.

But as usual, the best thing about World Cup is not an excuse to bond with your buddies over beer and swearing at the referee. Its also not the additional excuse to use more eye masks/gels/creams to battle the eyebags.

The best part about the World Cup my friends, is the eye candy.

If you don’t believe me, click here.

Fedex’s Amazing Shot

He may have lost the US Open title (Damn you Del Potro!), but Roger Federer still has dibs on the Best Shot Ever in what could be in the entire history of the US Open.