Damn him.
It took him a moment to say something brainless and insensitive and he gets a freaking fan page!
I have been working damn hard with Her Closet and blogging in and out reaching out to so many people, sacrificing time with my family and sleep and I do not get a fan page?!?
Ok I am just pretending to be a sore loser.
Really.
My stats are maybe not as high as celebrity bloggers but I have my current stats are not pathetic either. I have readers sparsely from all over the world and I know women do read my blog. Men too maybe but many of whom I do not know.
The great thing is that my blog never had to hold any kind of reputation since I started because I am NOT a celebrity blogger. I do not need to specifically mention about haters and not even bother about whether there are many likes to my blog post.
Bah!
Of course there are sporadic comments that just makes me jump off the chair but I am very quick to get over it. Very. In fact, I will actually laugh it off. Life's just too short. Everyone has a choice. Period.
I was very busy in the office the morning when Alex Chang made headlines.
I was like "What the heck is going on."
Thanks to twitter, I twitter hopped and these were what I found.
Dear Alex Chang,
There are many reasons why I called you an idiot and I just do not know where to start. Firstly, it is not called the Malay Chant. It is called the Azan. If you do not know the terminology, you can always say that it is the call for prayer.
Are you Buddhist? Because you called out for the Buddist Chant on Vesak Day.
Then you are really a shame because I met really wonderful people in the SOKA association who would hold my hands up and down the stairs despite being only 3 months pregnant then. They occassionally message me to ask me about my pregnancy.
Our call to prayer will take no longer than 5 mins and during the month of Ramadhan will be an indication for us to break our fast. As per the Mac'Donald's management, they would usually play Class 95 in their restaurant. Ok so maybe one of the staffs made a blooper just to check if they could break their fast. Would you be so heartless to diss them on facebook? Those brothers and sisters of mine have been fasting for 14 hours with no food nor drinks. What if you were the one fasting? Would you expect people to be forgiving too?
What is 5 mins of the call for prayer?
You want to compare it to the length of Buddhist Chant?
Now you know why I called you an idiot?
Then finally you decided to thrown in the towel and send in an apology to our Muslim friends.
I do not sense any remorse from you. Because in the first image, you still stood by your ground after 11 hours of the first comment which meant that you were firmly rooted with your opinions.
But you forgot the world is not small because of the internet. Within what I felt was moments, all of us knew that you were working with Singtel and they are giving you counselling. May I suggest some community work with you in the Muslim society so you can adapt and accept that Muslims are part of your Singaporean friends.
Sure there are many other fans of yours who synergically listed down the list of things which they were unhappy about the Muslim society e.g about how the cars are blocking roads during Friday prayers.
Our mass prayers take no longer than 2 hours. How can you compare to your cars which are parked in front of churches to cater to your mass from 9am to 5pm on Sundays.
Your group mentioned about Malay weddings which made a lot of noise at the void decks.
Sure. It is a celebration. Try going to Egypt or China and see how their wedding celebrations are done. Wouldn't you respect that too? Plus we do not get married every other weekend and within the same cluster of blocks, how many Malay weddings do you see in a year?
Must I also add that our events will definitely end by 6pm - max.
But can we also mention that now at Geylang Serai where we are trying to inhale the festive mood of Hari Raya, we ended up inhaling the smoke and ashes from your 7th month Hungry Ghost. You have one stage in front of Tanjong Katong Complex, one at Paya Lebar and another at Eunos MRT. Can we tell you not to get in the way and find some place else?
Plus I live next to a Taoist Temple. They beat cymbals every month. Can I tell them my stomach feels very squeezed when I hear them and tell them to stop?
And if you are really talking about blocking roads during our Friday prayers, do you find this acceptable? Hogging the road for A WEEK!
If you notice, I did not raise things which I feel I need to tolerate from my Non-Muslim culture but I must commend you for taking the chance and not thinking a step further.
You need to understand that Singaporean Muslims are very liberal with many school of thoughts. While these school of thoughts may not agree with one another, there are many basics of Islam which we respect and drive together as a community.
Naturally as a minority, we can consider ourselves as a small unit still preserving much of our very own culture.
Singaporeans are known to be complaint kings and queens. Even I do. I complain about the characters (and not cultures) of my Chinese, Malay and Indian friends but I do have chinese, malay and indian relatives and even they are in my line of heritage.
So the key is really to be tolerant and not to touch on the sensitive cultures.
I will still love to go to Little India for my Paper Masala Thosai and look forward to the next Chinese New Year with my in-laws for Lo Hei!
xoxo
