*SBS Drivers From China* – I’m fine having people from any part of the world working here in SG. This is God’s Earth and you can be anywhere you want to be. BUT I can’t take it when they can’t even speak simple English (or maybe they just refuse). Simple questions like ‘How much is the fare from X to Y?’ and ‘Does this bus pass by W?’. Most of them that I encountered were not polite (spoke with a stern face and unfriendly vocal tone) and they keep speaking back to me in the Chinese language. Apparently, nobody has taught them the important manners needed to be a front line service personnel, and please, you mean they don’t even know English? That’s absurd. This display of ugly attitude and inability to converse in a common language has got to stop, especially when you’re a service ambassador who meets hundreds, maybe thousands of people, mainly locals, everyday. Utter nonsense.
Vulgarities were hurled at Mr Hamzah Rahmat (above), with insults about everything including his parentage.
All this over a set of toiletries.
He had refused to let a passenger take his toiletries onto the flight as the items did not comply to size requirements.
“He got angry and started to call me names like insensitive b******, and just wouldn’t stop railing,” says the 35-year-old, who works at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3.
He stopped only when Mr Hamzah told him that the continued yelling could get him in trouble with the authorities.
It’s all part and parcel of his job as an aviation security officer to ensure that the carry-on luggage adhere to airline regulations, which means coaxing passengers to discard stuff they try to carry on board.
Indonesia’s punk scene is one of the biggest and most vibrant in the world. It’s a place where the country’s silenced youth can revolt against endemic corruption, social conventions, and their strict families. But in the world’s largest Islamic nation, political authorities and religious fundamentalists persecute this rebellious youth movement.
Nowhere is the anti-punk sentiment stronger than in Aceh—Indonesia’s only Sharia province—where 65 punks were arrested and detained at an Islamic moral training camp in which they had their heads shaved and clothes burnt. We traveled to North Sumatra to track down the last punks in Aceh, who still live under constant threat from the Sharia police.
SINGAPORE: A Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officer narrowly escaped injury after a hydraulic jack that was being used to lift a bus suddenly gave way.
This dramatic account by police officer Senior Station Inspector Akhbar Ali of how Indian national Sakthivel Kumaravelu’s body was extricated was heard on day seven by the Committee of Inquiry (COI) into the Little India riot on December 8 last year.
The COI was told that an SCDF officer was trying to extricate Sakthivel’s body from under a bus as a boisterous crowd ignored instructions to back away. Instead, the crowd continued to push the vehicle.
This caused the hydraulic jack that was lifting the bus to suddenly give way.
The SCDF officer was almost pinned under the bus and only just managed to get out in time.
He also managed to partially pull Sakthivel’s body out from under the bus. When the body was finally extricated, the SCDF officers placed a white cloth over the body.
Senior Station Inspector Akhbar on Thursday said he also helped to clear a path for the SCDF officers as they carried Sakthivel’s body to a nearby ambulance.
He also told the committee that he was angry and frustrated when he saw two police cars being flipped on their sides.
He said a group of foreign workers told the officers not to intervene as the crowd was violent and would not hesitate to harm them.
Separately, a traffic police officer – who directed seven others to get out of an ambulance and run – explained to the committee that they had not done so out of cowardice.
Station Inspector Muhammad Adil Lawi said he heard the rioters threatening to burn the ambulance, and evacuating was a “tactical decision” as he felt their lives were at stake.
There was also another vehicle which had been set ablaze near the ambulance.
“When I saw the fire through the cracked windscreen, I realised there was no more time to spare, and that the threat was very real,” he said.
Station Inspector Adil added that if they had not evacuated the vehicle, they would have been burnt alive.
According to his statement, the ambulance exploded shortly after they left the vehicle.
As the most senior officer in the vehicle, he said he felt a sense of responsibility, and directed the officers to run in the direction of Bukit Timah Road because he knew there were police resources there.
In the video clip of the incident – which was shown in court on Thursday – a group of foreign workers were seen opening the doors of the ambulance.
When asked if he knew whether these men were targeting the police, Station Inspector Adil responded: “I could not take the risk, because I don’t know if they were rioters or people trying to help us.”
The committee also heard that not all the foreign workers who were present at the scene of the riot that night were hostile, and some had even tried to help the police.
For example, a group of workers carrying a bag that appeared to be on fire tried to set a police patrol car ablaze, but were stopped by others in the crowd.
In another video clip, a man was seen dancing around a burning Traffic Police motorcycle and, shortly after, was pulled away from the wreckage by another man from the crowd.
Two other officers also described how they stayed at the scene despite being outnumbered, including Staff Sergeant Kamisah Hanafi, who was hit in the stomach by a concrete slab, and Traffic Police Officer Fadli Shaifuddin Mohamed Sani, who drew his baton and charged at a group of rioters several times to try and contain the situation.
When asked by the committee if he feared for his safety, or was worried that he would be overwhelmed and his weapon taken, Traffic Police Officer Fadli Shaifuddin Mohamed Sani replied that his purpose was to instill law and order, and ensure that no innocent bystanders were hurt.
He was commended by the four-member committee, who called his actions brave.
SINGAPORE – Sanity and happiness, Mark Twain once wrote, is an impossible combination.
In Yohanna Abdullah‘s case, it is all too true. She cannot afford to get too happy because that would trigger something in her brain and make her do outrageous things.
Like sunbathing in her underwear in Kallang Park, singing, dancing and flirting with strangers in public, and even marrying a foreigner she met online but barely knew.
The 47-year-old publications executive has bipolar disorder, a mental illness characterised by severe mood swings, from depressed (“low”) to manic (“high”).
Ms Yohanna has been diagnosed as Bipolar Type 1, which means she is prone to mania.
“I am generally a modest person but when I am high, I’m uninhibited and say or do as if there is no wrong or right. Whatever is right is what feels right at the moment,” she says.
She was diagnosed with the condition – which experts say is caused by many factors ranging from genetic to social – more than 15 years ago.
The divorcee and mother of two children, aged 17 and 19, believes it was triggered by a combination of factors: mother-in-law issues, the stress of juggling work and motherhood, financial problems and the discovery of her former husband’s affair with a colleague.
Her meltdown shocked many who knew her to be Miss Congeniality, an intelligent woman with a bubbly disposition and a promising future.
Chatty and articulate, Ms Yohanna is still grappling with the condition which turned her life into a roller-coaster ride, but says medication and the support of loved ones have helped her to manage it a lot better.
She had only a brief attack last year. This was a far cry from two years ago, when she had to be hospitalised in the Institute of Mental Health on at least 10 occasions.
