i was talking to candybear last night on the msn, and she told me about her friend in london who was doing a course in law. apparently he was graded with only a “pass” and the professor made some comment like, if your parents aren’t lawyers, you can’t make it to the big, beautiful world of law.

i was chuckling to myself with a thought in mind: so if your father isn’t the prime minister you can’t be a prime minister lah! lol. by the way, the most popular newspaper in the entire nation published an article today whereby the prime minister asked us to stop arguing over the casino and move on. to me, he was just saying, “we (father and son?) made the decision and we gave you people face by allowing you people to debate about it liao, so everyone just shut up and leave everything else to us unless this thing screws up then we’ll come up with some blaming games ok? now get on with your lives! we are still a democratic and cosmopolitan country respecting all races and religion!” (die, what if there’s gonna be no more roti prata and char kway teow for me? better start packing up for exile in australia)

anyway back to the caste system thing, i thought the professor would fit in perfectly well in the rural areas of india, where the caste system is still very much in place.

in fact, i came upon a newspaper article not too long ago which highlighted the problem of discriminating against the lower caste systems in india. the problem wasn’t limited to indians in india. apparently this lady in london approached another indian guy who had lived in london for a very long period of time, about some business deal or something. so the first thing the guy asked her was which caste she was from. and when she told him she was from one of the lower castes, he shut the door in her face.

how unfair is that to the people from the lower castes? gosh i can barely believe that this kind of discrimination is still in place in year 2005. don’t tell me the first world countries don’t discriminate. even angmohs in some parts of australia, uk, usa, and god-knows-where-else discriminates against the minorities. what the heck, to think that most religions encourage forgiving and fogetting, living with an open heart and all these. there’s no saints on this world, but the least i expect is giving people a fair chance especially if you have zero idea of what kind of person they are.

i sound like i had a bad day? no lah, i didn’t. i trooped down to town today. now i owe seah fengyi ice cream from ben and jerry’s. (ps to fengyi: i wouldn’t cheat you of an ice cream hor!!) cos i dared her to turn up in orchard in t-shirt and shorts. so she agreed. and i really wanted one of us to bring along a camera so we can take photos of that (i mean, how often do you visit town in t-shirts and shorts?) and better still, i had this crazy idea: whenever we meet people we know on the streets we would get them to pose for pictures with her / us. after all everyone hangs out at orchard so we would definitely meet people we know. but then no cameras available, damn. and we did meet two of our classmates.

but we had a fun time strolling and walking around. even though our legs are now damn freaking tired and all of us ended up walking up in strange manners. to think that we were only walking around for less than 5 hours? gone were the days when i could walk up to 8 hours, no sweat.

tired ah.

we’re going to the zoo next week. to look at animals (?!) and to enjoy ben and jerry’s!