how do u move on.....

ST Nov 13 2004

Life after death
Huang Na is dead. But the nightmare will stay forever with her family as well as that of Took Leng How, the man charged with her murder

By Ong Soh Chin

IN THE last month or so, the country stood still as a nationwide search went on for Huang Na, the eight-year-old girl who went missing.

I, too, was riveted. And when her body was eventually found, I felt sick to my stomach.
Apart from the obvious heartbreak element of a missing child found dead, Singaporeans also bonded over the shared sense of horror that there could be a child killer among us.

One can barely imagine the horrifying sequence of events that led to Huang Na's body being discovered naked and decomposed in a cardboard box thrown into the undergrowth at Telok Blangah Hill.

My heart goes out to her mother. I can't even begin to comprehend her grief.

But at the same time, my heart also goes out to the parents of Took Leng How, the 22-year-old vegetable packer who has been arrested and charged with the crime.

While it is devastating to lose a child to horrible circumstances, it must be just as unbearable to realise that one's own child could have inflicted such a horror.

While watching the Huang Na case unfold, I have been moved by the reactions of Took's parents.

Simple folk who run a fried kway teow stall in Simpang Ampat in Penang, they have seen their business suffer as a result of the incident.

Said Mr Took, 52, in a press report: 'Some customers even point and whisper, but it's just something we have to bear.'

He also said he is not sure if he will be able to afford a good lawyer for his son.

The Tooks have two other sons, aged 23 and 20, and a daughter, 19.

When he and his wife came to Singapore by bus from Penang to attend the hearing, they had to apply for passports, indicating that they had probably never stepped out of Malaysia before, not even to neighbouring Singapore.

Mr Took wanted to go to Huang Na's wake at Clementi to talk to the girl's parents, but was advised against it by a relative.

Instead he went to the Singapore Buddhist Lodge and prayed at Huang Na's altar, asking for her forgiveness and for her to rest in peace.

He said: 'I know there are many reporters and many people at Clementi. We're from a small town. Our knowledge isn't wide. We won't know how to respond to that sort of spectacle.'

Indeed, how does one respond?

The monumental reevaluation and consolidation that Took's family must now face reminds me of Mikal Gilmore's book, Shot In The Heart.

Gilmore, a music journalist with Rolling Stone, is the youngest brother of Gary Gilmore, the infamous American killer who murdered two men and who was subsequently sentenced to death in 1977.

In 1979, he became the subject of Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Executioner's Song.

But it is Mikal's 1994 book which is the more compelling of the two, simply because it is written from an insider's point of view.

As much as it is about his brother, it is also about the author's attempt to make sense of his own life - how he managed to escape his brother's horrible fate, even though they are flesh and blood.

It is a brave book, heart-rending at some parts, chilling at others, in which Mikal painfully peels off the layers of his troubled family history to reveal the awful truth at the centre.

When something this horrible happens, it is all too easy to blame ourselves. No doubt Huang Na's mother will find it hard to forgive herself for leaving her daughter alone here while she left for China.

But, really, many of us leave our kids in the care of trusted friends and family members, without a second thought.

If he is found guilty, Took's parents, too, must be wondering if somewhere along the line, they had done something wrong to their child, something that could have triggered off his actions.

They must also be wondering if they really knew their son.

And his wife, who now has to look after their young son alone, must agonise over whether she really knew her husband and whether their son, who is 14 months old, has inherited his father's secret genes.

These are private hells that every individual prays he or she will never have to go through.

The dead die, and they are gone.

But it is those who are alive that must make sense of the devastation.

Mr Took told the press he wanted to speak to his son again: 'I just wish to ask him two questions to dispel the doubt in my heart - 'Did you do harm to people?' No matter what his answer is, I will also ask him, 'Is it true or false?'.'

I don't know if he ever got his answer. But I want to tell him that maybe the answer is not so important.

When reviewing Shot In The Heart, New York Times reviewer Kathryn Harrison wrote: 'Mikal Gilmore's triumph is that he pushes his readers beyond being helplessly enthralled witnesses to the point where, with him, we might consider not only that violence and evil do exist within the limits of predictable human behaviour, but that there is evidence of another equally mysterious force, which some of us would call grace.'

Sifting truth from lie is only part of the dark journey. Indeed it was Mikal's. But at the end of the day, there will be questions that will forever remain unanswered. And circumstances can only be blamed to a certain extent.

As Mikal so poignantly showed in his book, the end of the tunnel can only be reached through acceptance and the belief that there is hope still in humanity and in one's soul.

I cannot pretend to understand the suffering of the families of Huang Na and Took Leng How.

But I hope that in this dark period, they can eventually find in their hearts the grace to move on with their lives, and the ability to not only forgive others, but also themselves.


(totally agree wif e following article....hehehe...)
ST Nov 15, 2004

Women are more generous than men
Sorry to say this, guys, but I realised that when I went fund-raising in the business district recently

By Pradeep Paul

AS BEFITTING the name of this column, here is another take on the gender divide.

Only, instead of pointing out yet another female quirk or oddity - yes, I'm brave, and yes, I'm not very bright - I'm doffing my hat to the women of Singapore.

They are definitely more charitable and generous than their male counterparts.

The reason for this stroke of revelation? No, it's not my kindly colleague who threatens to poison me with her cooking.

It was a couple of hours of pan-handling in the business district.

Last month, my editor led a team of Straits Times employees to Raffles Place on a mission.
Armed with nothing more than uniform T-shirts and our smiles, we were there to raise funds for The Straits Times Pocket Money Fund.

And we were to do it by accosting strangers as they scurried about on their lunch break and sticking a collection tin in their faces.

Accompanied by some employees of Caltex, which threw in cute soft toys and sweets as a form of rewarding the generous, we fanned out.

Some headed for the MRT exits. After all, a steady stream of commuters would yield some donations.

Others swarmed around the foot of Caltex House.

Some used their charm.

The pretty women just had to stand with the tin in their hand and smile. Men walked up to them with money in their hand.

One of us - she threatened me with bodily harm if I named her - used psychology.

Zeroing in on office workers who looked like they had just had a hearty meal, she asked if they'd had a good lunch. She asked them what they had eaten. And then sucker-punched them with an emotionally charged line about how some schoolchildren do not have lunch because their parents cannot afford to give them pocket money.

Seeing the competition, I decided to wander down Change Alley and try my luck there.

Flashing my biggest smile and holding up the tin that was labelled with the name of the charity, I walked up to people and asked if they'd like to donate some money.

And it was a revealing experience.

Some people stopped as I approached them, even if they were deep in conversation with friends.

They looked at the tin. They listened as I spouted: 'Good afternoon, I'm from The Straits Times and we're collecting money for children whose parents can't afford to give them pocket money.'

And they dipped into their wallets readily.

Others would smile, hear me out, shake their head in a form of apology and carry on.

And then there were some - was it coincidence that all of them were in high-powered corporate gear and reeked of money? - who walked by me like I didn't exist.

There I was, smile on high and starting to say 'Good afternoon, I'm fro...' when I realised I was talking to myself. The person had sidestepped me like a rugby winger in full flight and kept going.

Now, I'm not saying these are stingy people. They probably give more to charity in other ways than what you and I earn in a month.

But what about the basic courtesy of acknowledging a fellow human being who approaches you on the street?

Hey, it was broad daylight and all I was packing was a smile, a tin and some cute soft toys.

p Sure, collection drives are a dime-a-dozen in these tough times. Sure, there are post-lunch meetings that beckon. But what about basic courtesy?

Guess they don't teach that in the school of big bucks.

Oh, did I mention that all these types that I met - however briefly - were men?

Most of the women I approached that day at least heard me out. They gave me a minute of their time, even smiled.

Some confessed they had never heard of the Pocket Money Fund but, when told that it was for school kids who could not afford to buy themselves a curry puff at recess, readily pulled out a couple of bucks.

Others said they knew about the Fund and slotted $10 notes into the tin. Some generous women even donated $50.

In fact, by the second hour, I had even mastered the art of spotting the 'donators'.

Too young, no point. They had limited allowances and too many things to buy.

Too old, not much point. They had their own survival on their minds.

It was the Mums and soon-to-be-Mums who seemed to be guided by maternal pangs when they pheard about hungry children. They gave willingly of their money, their time and their smiles.

By the time we got into the bus to head back to the office, I had learnt a lesson in human behaviour. And it didn't give my gender very high marks. Clothes may make the man, but they certainly don't complete him.

So, there you have it: I admit women are more generous and more courteous than men.

Although to this day I'm not sure if the women dug into their handbags because of their innate generosity or the cute soft toy that I traded for a donation.