Steph shared a harrowing account of domestic violence which she suffered from a few years ago. The physical assaults are bad enough but it is the psychological trauma that causes the most damage because it makes it hard for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, and thus allowing the cycle of abuse to continue. This was how Steph remembered it in her case:
Looking back I can see how he chipped away at the cornerstones of my self esteem, my sense of who I am. He was always right. I was always wrong.
…
And after a while. I guess I believed him. I did feel less than him. So when he finally hit me. A small part of me knew it was coming, accepted it, and felt I had deserved it for making him so angry.
…
I felt responsible for his happiness. It was up to me to do the right thing, say the right thing, be the right person, to hold his anger in check. It was a massive burden to carry. It weighed me down every day but still I felt it was all my fault because I was the only one who provoked such blinding rage in him.
…
For the first time in my life I felt ugly. Like rotten to the core ugly.
…
After a few months with this guy. I was convinced that no man would ever want me. No man but him.
It wasn’t until a really bad episode landed her in hospital did the relationship end. Steph wondered how could she have been so stupid to have stayed in that relationship. And it’s not because her friends and family did not talk to her about it either; everyone pleaded for her to leave him. But for a woman in emotional turmoil, sometimes the most obvious choice does not present itself because she isn’t thinking logically anymore.
In a twisted way, being trapped in a cycle of domestic violence is like being so deeply in love that she does not see the flaws of the other person at all.
Her reality becomes warped and so selective that she can explain away all the negatives. She sees no other faults except her own, even when there aren’t any. Only when there is a shock to the system will she wake up to herself. Sadly for some, this may already be too late.
As friends and family, we have an obligation to speak up about it. Even if our words fall on deaf ears, if we see evidence of physical injury or trauma we are obligated to report it to the authorities. Whether or not she proceeds with charges is another matter. We have to make that first step for her especially when she won’t or is not capable of doing it.
You know how some guys do that mock hand-job, wanking motion with a closed fist to indicate that what they are hearing is either bullshit or boring? Check it out when one guy takes it to the next level, which is one level too far. Hilarious!
No nudity or exposed body parts, just lewd innuendo so it’s SFW.
This was performed by a NYC comedy troupe called “The Whitest Kids U Know” – some of their clips are available on their Youtube channel. More are available for download on their site.
In a nice part of the neighbourhood, in a house called “Oztraya” …
Pauline: I don’t like Muslims. From now onwards, I don’t want any more Muslims in my house. Mohammed: Erm hello, I’m still here? Pauline: Who are you? Mohammed: Mohammed. Pauline: You don’t look Middle-Eastern. Mohammed: That’s because I’m not – I’m Albanian. Pauline: Oh right, well then you look white. I suppose you are one of those Christian Muslims. Mohammed: A what? Pauline: You know, Muslims who pray with the Bible? Mohammed: Muslims pray with the Qur’an, not the Bible. Pauline: Whatever. I like what that James Baker guy said about revoking citizenship and deporting the families of convicted terrorists. I should have thought of that too. Bastard beat me to it. Mohammed: But what if the families have been in this country for ages? Pauline: No they haven’t. I’ve never seen any Muslims in Ipswich. You weren’t born here right? Mohammed: Yes I was. Pauline: Well then your parents weren’t, were they? Mohammed: Yes they were. Look I have no problems with these kind of rules if they were applied to everyone equally. Pauline: Too bad. Who asked you all to be terrorists? Mohammed: We are not all terrorists but what you are saying is that if one of us is a terrorist, all of us have to leave and never come back? Pauline: Too right. Mohammed: So if you had your way, David Hicks and his parents gotta leave as well – where they gonna go? England? They were from here! Pauline: Blah blah blah blah, that’s not my problem. Who asked them to have a terrorist son? Mohammed: *sigh* You do realise that two of our next door neighbours are Muslims right? Aren’t you gonna piss them off with this? Pauline: Who? Mohammed: Indonesia and Malaysia. Pauline: See what happened when they let Muslims take over their country?! Mohammed: Huh?! Pauline: Look, you are giving me a headache now. I want you to leave. Mohammed: If I leave, I want Wong to leave as well. Wong: Hey! What’s this gotta do with me? Pauline: He’s ok, he can stay. He’s still funny looking but at least he’s assimilated. And he can cook. Mohammed: Ok forget the fact that most of us obey the law and pay our taxes, that you didn’t even know that I was Muslim until I said so, and that one of us even plays in the NRL, tell me how I can assimilate further so that I may stay. Pauline: Here’s a bottle of booze. Drink it. Mohammed: I don’t drink, I’m Muslim remember? Pauline: AHA! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
My parents and I are big fans of Channel 7′s “Border Security“, a half-hour reality show shot mostly in and around Sydney International Airport focusing on the work of the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Departments.
It’s exactly how you’d imagine it and the usual themes are these:
People smuggling in drugs in fanciful and creative, but ultimately flawed methods.
Same goes for parcels and containers arriving into Australia containing prohibited and counterfeit goods.
Visitors arriving in Australia under false pretenses or with fake documents.
Not declaring commerical items to Customs, or food and other organic items to Quarantine.
The bulk of the offenders shown on the show though are people who break Custom and Quarantine laws. Just like how you’d see signs reading “Drug trafficking carries the death penalty” at most South-East Asian airports, there are big signs in Australian airports telling you to either dump all organic material at special bins or declare them if you are unsure. They say that ignorance is not an excuse, but it sure is entertaining.
Most of the people depicted are always shown being asked about the immigration card completed upon arrival, specifically about goods declaration, “Do you understand what you have entered in this form?” And all would always say yes and then the next scene would cut to the Custom and Quarantine officers pulling out food, plant or organic items from their luggage.
Then there are those who brazenly flout the laws by bringing in suitcases filled with just food or organic material, or commercial quantity of goods that are obviously not for private use.
It’s formulaic and we would see the same things being done by Australians and other nationalities repeatedly, but week in, week out we would tune in to watch it without fail. And I have a theory why: it’s fun to watch people mess up and get caught because it makes us feel better with ourselves. We like to think that we would never be that stupid, and we would never break the law. The show is a validation of our moral and intellectual superiority, a feel-good pill to be taken once a week.
Put it another way, the show is an equivalent of “sux to be you”.
Though I wonder if we laugh at other people’s misfortunes enough, is karma gonna be a real beeyotch and bite us in our ass when we least expect it?
I had thought about doing a navel gazing post, a straight and dry diary-type entry about what I did on the weekend.
I could tell you about how I lost the ticket to DJ Hyper’s show on Friday night at Ambar, how I drove into the city during Friday lunch to get another ticket, and how the show ended up disappointing, and how Simon, Lydia and I left early.
I could tell you that how a system administrator’s job is like a fireman’s – when there’s no fire, it’s actually very mind-numbing. But there was such a fire on Friday when we lost connection to ALL our production servers, those that serve customers and their applications. I could tell you that I drove to our data-centre through peak-hour traffic in the city around 4pm. I could tell you how I spent 2.5 hours in the data-centre trying to work out the kinks, listening to the drone of hundreds of computers whilst catching glimpses of smiling office types walking to the nearest pub.
I also could tell you that I had to go into the office on Saturday to finish off what I was doing Friday afternoon before I had to rush away to our ailing servers. Yeah Friday was a total drag on the start of the weekend which was only salvaged by copious drinking and Anne Savage at The Rise.
So yeah, I could have done a navel gazing post but I remembered – only pretty female bloggers can do that.
I came to that conclusion based on the search-engine traffic to my posts about Dawn Yang and Daphne Teo – two female Singaporean bloggers whose entries are light and fluffy like cotton-candy. Though they must be doing some things right to get insane traffic and to continually get people to search for them on the Internet right?
I mean I haven’t written about them for a while and I’m still getting daily traffic to these posts below, listed in chronological order. And yes, this is a cynical ploy to hook in more traffic.
I mentioned “30 Days of Night” the graphic novel a few months back, and how it was being made into a film starring Josh Hartnett and Melissa George. A quick refresher: above the arctic circle, there are nights that last for 30 days during the winter season, and guess who loves to play in the dark? Vampires. They descend upon a small town in Alaska and all hell breaks loose.
Here’s the uber creepy movie trailer. There’s no gore or cheap scares in it – just an utter sense of dread, like how are they gonna get out of this “when day doesn’t come?” And I like the look of the vampires in this film. They’re gritty and demonic looking as opposed to the stylish fashionistas dressed in black leather portrayed in other vampire films of late.
I rushed into the pharmacy looking for some condoms. As I approached the family-planning aisle, I see you kneeling down looking at the rows of selection. I didn’t want to turn around and walk away since you already saw me and I didn’t want to look like a fool. So I stood behind you awkwardly, waiting for you to pick.
You turned around and smiled at me.
You: Err hey, which ones do you normally use?
Me: Err …
You: I haven’t dated in a long time and I’m just starting again.
Me: Oh right. Well erm, I don’t like the thin ones.
You: I thought all guys would prefer the sensitive ones, don’t they?
Me: I like to last longer.
You: *eyes light up*
