'Senile delinquents' roam HK's streets, all sharp elbows and killer shopping carts

Tabitha Wang

voices@mediacorp.com.sg

IT ONLY took a few seconds. I had chosen my stuff at a Salvation Army charity shop and placed it on the counter to pay.

In the time it took to open my purse and take out the money, someone had swiped a choice buy, a branded sweater selling at HK$20 ($3.65). I chased after the "thief".

It turned out to be an old woman, looking as fluffy as a kitten but with claws like a tiger. She refused to relinquish her ill-gotten gain even after I asked the shop assistant for help. "How dare you young people gang up on a helpless old lady," was the gist of her lament.

Except this was no helpless old lady. She was a member of the Hong Kong Ah Pak and Ah Por club. You know, the kind who leap tall buildings in a single bound and chew sheet metal for breakfast.

The Hong Kong elderly are a deadly species. They may look like the next typhoon would blow them away but don't be fooled.

That one-foot-in-the-grave image is all an act. These are no shrinking violets. They make their own rules - because they believe they are above the law of the land.

There's no stopping these "senile delinquents". Jaywalking, queue jumping, a bit of petty "thieving" ... when they're caught, they just invoke the Confucian "respect thy elderly" tenet and confidently wait to be let off.

When buses come, they insinuate themselves into a queue of people who have been waiting for hours and expect entry. Woe betide you if you get in their way - they have elbows of steel.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been jabbed in the stomach trying to board a bus with Ah Paks who look like they were about to collapse from lung cancer.

It's not just bus or train queues - they expect people to give them way everywhere. My friend went to a recent consumer fair hoping to get some bargains.

She came home empty-handed but with bruised toes. The old folk were bulldozing their way to all the good buys by running their heavily-laden shopping-bags-on-wheels over everyone's feet.

Another friend had a run-in with an Ah Por at a supermarket. He had selected some tomatoes and put them in his trolley, which he left at the end of the aisle to pick up something else.

He returned to find an old woman happily putting his tomatoes into her trolley. He tried to stop her by pointing out the pile that was on sale behind them.

Instead of apologising, she glared and said: "But these are so much nicer than the ones over there." And left with his tomatoes.

A Singapore friend says there are just as many senile delinquents back home. "It's the whole Confucian thing. They think they can get away with murder because they're old and we must respect their age."

Tsk, tsk, old people these days. Whatever happened to the nice old ladies that I had known when I was younger? They were always so patient and lovable ... and never stole branded sweaters from under your nose.

English poet Jenny Joseph's Warning, When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple probably best sums up their attitude.

Voted the United Kingdom's most popular post-war poem in a 1996 poll conducted by the BBC, it spoke of how the poet planned to misbehave when she grows old and included the lines:

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

Well, hopefully what goes around comes around. Maybe I should start working on those elbows of steel now.

Tabitha Wang is going to booby trap her tomatoes the next time she goes shopping, so senile delinquents beware.

From TODAY, Voices – Thursday, 24-Sep-2009

PREGNANCY PROBLEMS

Pregnant woman to return newborn to biological parents

Sylvania (Ohio) - A pregnant American woman, Ms Carolyn Savage, has decided to give up her baby after an IVF blunder meant she was mistakenly implanted with another couple's embryo.

The 40-year-old, who is 35 weeks pregnant, and her husband Sean, will have to give up the baby boy to his biological parents when he is born in about a fortnight.

The religious couple have decided not to terminate the pregnancy but return the baby boy to his parents, who have not been named.

The mother of three, from Sylvania, Ohio, described her anguish after being told the baby she was carrying was not actually hers.

"The hardest part is going to be the delivery," Mrs Savage told NBC's Today programme.

"We moved from a position of shock to a realisation that this was actually going to happen. It has just been difficult, but we feel we made the right decision on how to handle it," she said.

The couple has two sons, aged 15 and 12, and an 18-month-old daughter, who was also conceived through IVF.

Mrs Savage learned she was pregnant with a boy in February after deciding to have another child using the last of her frozen embryos.

She had been having trouble getting pregnant and she was told by doctors this was the last child she could have.

The boy's biological parents have expressed their gratitude to the couple. Mrs Savage said: "We will wonder about this child every day of our lives."

"We have hopes for him, but they're his parents and we'll defer to their judgment on when and if they tell him what happened, and any contact that's afforded us."

The couple's lawyers were working to ensure that the fertility clinic that made the mistake "will accept full responsibility for the consequences of their misconduct". THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 23-Sep-2009

Image via Wikipedia

ATTEMPTED MURDER

Spurned man strangled, hacked at and tried to throw lover to her death

Teo Xuanwei

xuanwei@mediacorp.com.sg

BECAUSE of disagreements over their relationship and money matters, Diong Tiong Ngo's lover wanted to leave him.

The spat instead led to a chain of violent events that saw the 52-year-old strangle his lover, and hack at her with a chopper before hurling her down from outside her third-storey Ang Mo Kio flat.

Diong also slashed the woman's 14-year-old son when he tried to intervene. Fortunately, both mother and son survived the violent attack.

Yesterday, the Malaysian, who is a Singapore permanent resident, was convicted of attempting to murder his 51-year-old lover and causing grievous hurt to the boy on Nov 7 last year.

The victims cannot be identified because of a court order.

The High Court heard yesterday that Diong's extramarital affair with the Indonesian Chinese woman had started in 2006 after she was widowed.

At first, Diong provided for the woman and her children, giving them money and renting a place to stay.

He also made promises to marry her after divorcing his wife.

But trouble started brewing after Diong's coffee shop was repossessed for redevelopment and he could no longer take care of them.

Unhappy with having to work as a cook for others, Diong decided to go into his mistress' business of selling bird's nest products, but then failed to repay her on several occasions.

On Nov 7, things came to a head after Diong again had no money to pay her and she decided to break up with him. Infuriated with her decision, Diong strangled her until the boy rushed out from his room.

When she asked him to leave her flat, he grabbed a chopper, chased her down outside her flat and began hacking at her head.

The boy was also struck by him when he tried to shield his mother from the attack.

With the woman's son looking on, Diong then lifted her by the thighs and proceeded to flip her over the parapet.

She survived the three-storey fall but fractured her spine and legs and had multiple cuts on her head and arms.

After several surgeries, she was discharged from hospital after 18 days. The teen was warded for 15 days for his injuries.

Diong will be sentenced on Sept 29. Both of his offences carry a possible sentence of up to 15 years' imprisonment, fine and caning.

But he will not be caned because he is over 50 years old.

From TODAY, News – Wednesday, 23-Sep-2009

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

ISLAM IN FRANCE

Burqa furore hints at internally-conflicted political discourse

Muslims in France wear the niqab (left) while the burqa (centre, right) is seldom seen in the country. AFP

PARIS - It is a measure of France's confusion about Islam and its Muslim citizens that in the political furore here over "banning the burqa", as the argument goes, the garment at issue is not really the burqa, but the niqab.

A burqa is the all-enveloping cloak, often blue, with a woven grill over the eyes, that many Afghan women wear, and it is almost never seen in France. The niqab, often black, leaves the eyes uncovered.

Still, a movement against it has gotten traction within France's ruling centre-right party, which claims to be defending French values, and among many on the left, who say they are defending women's rights. A parliamentary commission will soon meet to investigate whether to ban the burqa.

The debate is indicative of the deep ambivalence about social customs of a small minority of France's Muslims, and of the fear that France's principles of citizens' rights, equality and secularism are being undermined. French discomfort with organised religion is aggravated by these foreign customs, which are associated with repression of women.

Mr Andre Gerin, Mayor of Venissieux, a Lyon suburb with many Muslims from North Africa, began the affair in June by initiating a motion, signed by 57 other legislators, calling for the parliamentary commission.

"The burqa is the tip of the iceberg," Mr Gerin said. "Islamism really threatens us." In a letter to the government, he wrote: "It is time to take a stand on this issue that concerns thousands of citizens who are worried to see imprisoned, totally veiled women."

A few days later, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that "the burqa is not welcome on the territory of the French Republic".

The French press has been full of heated opinion pieces. Women wearing the niqab, many of them French converts to Islam, have said that they have freely chosen to cover themselves after marriage.

Passions have run so high that when domestic intelligence issued a report saying that only 367 women in France wore a full veil, it seemed to make no difference. For many French Muslims, the entire discussion is an incitement to racial and religious hatred.

Mr Mohammed Henniche, secretary for the private Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis, said: "I think choosing to use burqa instead (of niqab) is not an accident. They chose a word that is associated with Afghanistan, and that spreads a negative, scary image."

Even existing laws are misunderstood, he said, with a woman refused entry to a bank because employees thought a head scarf was illegal.

"French political discourse is internally conflicted," said Mr John R Bowen, professor at Washington University in St Louis. There is confusion about different kinds of public space, he said - the street and places that belong to the state but are not freely open to the public, like schools.

However, Mr Bowen does not think there will be a law banning the niqab. THE NEW YORK TIMES

From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 02-Sep-2009

Image via Wikipedia

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Image via Wikipedia