Being a Hamidashimono

So I've been MIA again for some time. Again not because of the lack of power but because there hasn't been much going on. In fact, the power these days is starting to come back, and yesterday for the first time we had more than 10 hours of electricity in a day! So I've been reading the Straits Times online and catching up with the news on our lil' red dot. I must say that I'm getting more and more amused each day by the kind of stories the ST publishes these days. It seems to me that there either the ST reports on petty issues such as some american who stays in Singapore getting into the finals of some dream job competition or they screw up big time while reporting on big news like the NTU stabbing incident. And today I read about this
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_359346.html
which to me was like huh? I know it's meant to be some kind of preview to the Saturday print edition but this online version is hardly catchy enough to make me want to buy the print copy to read about some typical apathetic Singaporean. Maybe being in Nepal and reading and watching news where something big actually happens everyday (such as Maoists beating up and killing yet another journalist or students taking to the streets to protest against the load-shedding) made me changed my mindset about the kind of stories that can be defined as news. Maybe I'm disillusioned with what journalism constitutes, but why choose to be a journalist only to be stuck in the office everyday or go out taking some polls that you know dosen't really matter anyway? Call me idealistic, but journalism to me should be about being able to make a difference, however small, to the betterment of humanity in this world. I just don't see how a report on apathetic young Singaporeans will help to encourage more youths to become more politically aware.

And finally my load-shedding article is out on the Enquirer, two months after I had written it. Michelle read it and said it was very much my style. Slamming the spoilt young Singaporeans. Haha. Maybe that's my favaourite pasttime these days. And maybe like Yuko-san, I'm a hamidashimono-an outlaw in my own country, a Singaporean who loves being anti-Singaporean. Read my article to see if you think so about me: http://enquirer.sg/2009/04/03/and-then-the-lights-went-out/