Talking Back

Saturday morning a girlfriend and I sat on a bench outside the Queen Victoria Market thoroughly enjoying the glorious and warm day, huge bratwursts, on one hand and eyes busily checking out people who are passing by. Half an hour of doing so and our food all gobbled up, we discuss our findings. A surprisingly high proportion of the men we saw were quite young, decent and good-looking, which makes us wonder, is the fruit and veggie market now the place to get a kick of checking out the opposite gender? Many are clad in khaki shorts, nice tees, simple thongs (flip-flops ok!), stylish sunnies, and holding on to their bags filled with veggies and bread. In our minds, eye candies who can whip up a meal from real stuff and not from boxes of Lean Cuisine? Very nice indeed. And then we figured, hmmm... surely there's a catch, they would either be married, attached, or gay. Bummer.

***

Some people will die from lack of attention. And I am all for letting them so. Those who would try so hard to come up with a story of their own to match other people's stories, those who would purposedly raise their voices and stress their words so that everyone could hear about how they are the highest paid amongst their circle of friends, those who would not wait for others to finish talking before they do a monologue disguised as a dialogue - I am bent to ignore, feign deafness to, and let rot the egos of these beings for they really do stretch my patience, and I am not very patient especially on a Monday.

***

Where can we be safe? Nowhere really. All around us, we see warnings and signs of possible terrorist attacks - suspicious bags and boxes, dodgy parked cars, etc. People are being educated on how to identify these activities. But can we really? Excuse the sarcasm, but most of the time things happen first before preventative measures are put in place. Talk about foiling terrorist plans and tightening security, all but half baked potatoes. The sad sad president of the US talked about not being afraid, not faltering in the face of terrorism, but really... seriously and honestly, terror has already been instilled in the hearts of people. So all the fancy talk are just rubbish. Very recently, some claims have been made that bombers of the London Tube had earlier been instructed to release sarin gas in the change room of Edgbaston Cricket Ground to "wipe out" the Australian and English players. Reports said that a cricket-loving member of the group objected to this and so went on to carry out the London Tube bombing instead. Everyday in the papers there is news about new terrorist activities, or terrorist capture, doesn't it show that it already has gotten into us?