"However the SAF is not a charity organisation and does not owe anyone a career."

Perhaps.  But no one is perfect, and some people are less perfect than others.  Such people may not deserve a third, or even second, chance if we measure them against the harsh standards of our meritocratic society which owes no one a living.  But they, as we all, are human, and humans make mistakes, some more than others.  And I sympathise with the person complained against in this case because I realise that I too am fallen, have made my mistakes, and am saved only by grace.

The day will probably come when Hongyi makes a bad mistake.  Mathematically, the probability of this increases with age.  It may be - I hope not not because I know him personally but as one who is fallen - that when this happens the traditional and new media as in this case will scrutinise his error (possibly magnify the scale of it) and amplify his pain.  Then, he will better understand, what it means to be unforgiven.

Phuket turned out to be a disaster.  We made the mistake of bringing my mother and my older sister, the former of whom was inexplicably obssessed (to my grief) with shopping for gifts for almost everyone back in Singapore, instead of leisurely soaking up the sun at the beautiful Dusit Laguna resort.

Her assessment of Phuket ?  "I don’t think I want to come back here again", she told me.  "There’s not a lot of shopping".

She even spent an hour shopping at Changi after we landed, looking for a present for my youngest sister while Jed starved.

Sigh.

Also, on our last night in Phuket, Jed got into severe coughing fit which lasted so long that we thought he might have swallowed something when we weren’t looking.  It didn’t help that he - cute only now that the trauma is over - would point to his throat when we asked him "where pain ?", and that he wasn’t interested in drinking milk.  So while putting him to sleep, I mulled if we should send him to the 24 hour clinic next to the resort - not that we were very prepared to entrust our son to a foreign doctor with qualifications which we were not sure we could rely on.  Anyway, Jed eventually fell asleep and woke up the next day (thankfully) perfectly normal.

Am off to Phuket this weekend for a badly needed holiday, with Joyce, Jed, mum and sister.  Not quite sure how much of a break it will be though, since I think I’ll be doing quite a bit of baby-sitting.

Reading Job 18 this morning, I could not help questioning if the origins of the phrase "bovine stupidity" lay in verse 3, where an offended Bildad asks Job -

"Why are we regarded as cattle
and considered stupied in your sight ?"