Hello Darkness, mGf...

Since starting Desi'S Place some eight months ago, the constant challenger to Desiderata to maintain stardard and quality scribing is a fellow Blogger from the neighborhood called Catsville, I often teAsed here. She's older than Desi by a month, by blogsworld birth reckoning, which meAns I'm lucky to have a Mentor. I have several Mentees under my wings, including one who flew away looking at some Wayward Wind beneath her own wings. That's okay -- there comes a time when role reversal takes place, I always tell my young charges.

There's a seAson, a reAson, and a Purpose for everything under heaven ...

So today this lazy, not so Ignorant or Insignificant.Coww here turns to a shortcut to end at least this one Wednesday's Child woe, or many more WC, if only some would listen, though they have ears,they would not hear, they have eyes, they would not see, though they have hands, they would not reach out.... But with all the five senses that God blesseth every Individual on The GOoD Earth, some would not feel, they do not want to feel ...for these Wednesday's Child in the plural, pleAse pause, and ponder the words, that someone who feels wishes to shAre, that follow:

"*******
A CONSCRIPTED BLOGGER from:


Yan's Corner - In Touch
Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Hello Darkness


Yes, you recognize that the title of this posting is taken from the song “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel ….

“Hello Darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.”

Is it an accurate description of the way many people feel today? They are living in darkness, without even knowing what’s wrong. We live in a confusing world. We are proud of our achievements. When we think of “darkness”, we think of uncivilized people, or people behind the bars.

But, “Hello Darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again” rightly describes the way people feel today!

I read one of our young ones’ blog occasionally. He is “popular” among the teenagers. Working with some young ones, I want to know what they may be exposed to. Recently, he posted his experience of taking “Ketamine” and even showed a video of him snorting the 2g drug! He wrote –


"It is a great drug. I love ketamine – every trip is always enlightening. It’s very intense and can be scary during the k-hole, but if you overcome your fear of death, it will be a great teacher to you."


That is darkness! A young boy who thinks that he has overcomed the fear of darkness, who thinks taking drugs is enlightening, who thinks the trip is a great teacher to him – he is living in darkness!

He even does not recognize what is wrong!

Yes, we are watching the world falling apart. Everyday, there are no short of news on violence in the newspapers. That is darkness!

T. S. Eliot's poem, The Rock, says,

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
And all our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the life we have lost in living?


I have nothing against this song. I even like this song, from my teen years to now, and I know, for many more years to go, I’ll still like this song.

My good friend, Desiderata looks at the song differently. It’s certainly enlightening!

posted by Yan, 8:48 AM | link | 0 comments


UPDATED at 10.44AM:


DESIDERATA once had a friend whose brother had been detained at the High Street remand cell on a minor "dadah" charge. At her request, I approached a CID officer (whom I greatly respect, not because he did me a favour) for help, and this was a fine example in the good olde days when The Police Force was still filled with upright, on-the-go officers, who sought to build rapport with us journalists --but I can't name him (I'd have liked to...) without prior permission. I'd just call him Mr K.

I wrote on a piece of pressbook paper a short note detailing the name of the "druggie" and sought Mr K's advice how to help the teenager, just about entering his 20s. Mr K came back with the status update the following morn, and advised Desi to counsel the friend that Mr K and his officers would NOT want to see "his" (friend's brother) face ever again in big, bad wolfish city of koala lumpuh, when many young dreams have been shatttered.

"Get him out of KL because if he doesn't, our experience and records tell us it's just a matter of time he will be back in our Hgh Street cell. Send him back to his small town or village and earn a decent living maybe doing an honest job," Mr K's wise words which I conveyed to my friend.

She promptly instructed her brother to do as Mr K counselled. The First RIGHT STEP!

More than 20 years later, I have not heard about this friend's brother getting into any trouble with the law again. I just pray he's fine, maybe now married, with kids of his own. Perhaps. It would be a trAgedy had he been back to another cell, another place, a later time, after a kind-heArted police officer went out of his way to give him "a second chance".

THANKS Mr K, wherever you are, may the Good Lord Bless thee abundantly. Also I hope my friend's brother had done the Right Thing by you...


Desi's caution is that Drug Experimentation may be exciting. Peer pressure will then lead an exprimenter into the regular habit of snorting; then graduating to higher, more sumblimal drugs, and before he knows it, he's hooked. And to feed his highs, he would have to resort first to petty theft, then robbery, then one fine day, the Lure of Easy MOney ...


Following is a 10-day-old news report, from Down Under pertaining to a drug trafficker facing the gallows. I wonder if some of our YoungOnes can discern a connection bewteen what mGf YAN has written out of concern, and this old news item I picked up from the archives to try to see some Light from the Tunnel of Darkness.



"***Australian drug runner faces death

October 21, 2005

A MELBOURNE sales executive is facing execution in Singapore after the failure of Australian pleas for clemency, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

The Australian Government had appealed for clemency for Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van, who has been on death row in Changi prison since March last year.

Nguyen was sentenced to death last year after being found guilty by a Singapore court of smuggling almost 400 grams of heroin from Cambodia via Singapore.

He was caught in transit at Singapore's Changi airport in December 2002 while on his way from Cambodia to Melbourne.

Nguyen was found to have 396 grams of heroin strapped to his back and also in his hand luggage.

Mr Downer said today Australia had failed to stop Singapore enforcing the death penalty on Nguyen, who said he had the drugs because he was trying to raise money to clear debts incurred by his twin brother."We are very sad that this has happened," Mr Downer said.

"We have done our best, we have done everything we can to save his life."

Nguyen, 25, was expected to be executed in the near future, Mr Downer said.

"(He) will be hanged as a result of this decision," Mr Downer said.

"There is no further appeal, this is the end of the processes of appeal.

"The execution is expected to be carried out fairly quickly which is the custom in Singapore."

Mr Downer said there was no question Singapore had followed due process.

"Singapore does have a mandatory death sentence for trafficking in heroin and they are applying it," he said.

"I'm afraid it doesn't come as a great surprise to us, I have been pessimistic about this case for a long time."

Mr Downer said Australia had pleaded for clemency via Prime Minister John Howard, Governor General Michael Jeffery and himself.

Nguyen is set to become the fourth Australian sentenced to death by Asian countries on drug charges, following the hanging of Brian Chambers and Kevin Barlow in Malaysia in 1986.

In a lesser-known case, Queenslander Michael McAuliffe died by hanging in Malaysia in June 1993 after serving eight years in jail.

In Singapore, the death sentence is mandatory for drug smuggling and more than 400 people have been executed there in the past 10 years.****"


The answer my friend
Is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind...