This morning I had a bit of a shock when I was reading through the newspapers – a man was murdered in Singapore.   I wasn’t so much shocked by the actual murder (though murder is understandably quite shocking), or even by the graphic pictures that the story shows, I was more shocked that I was shocked at all!  (are you still with me?)

It seems like years ago that I would turn on the television in the morning before heading to work, listening numbly to stories of rape, murder, school shootings, gang violence, hate crimes.  In reality this was only several months ago.  Perhaps living in Singapore has “re-sensitized” me to violence.

You would too if the biggest news stories in your city read something like this:

  1. Flash floods and a tree falls. And then another. [Actually, if you turn on the radio, you won’t hear about anything else.]
  2. Savage deer on the loose!
  3. Man jailed for “outraging [a woman’s] modesty.” This means he kissed her hand.  [FYI – you can also be an Outrage of Modesty offender if you stand naked by your window.  Our property managers have distributed several reminder memos in the past couple of months.]
  4. Auntie misbehaves in public.  Yes, this is the actual headline.
  5. And this one still makes me cringe:  Man punches retiree in the face.

So maybe, as many critics of Singapore will say, I’m not “living in the real world” and maybe I’ve lost my “spider sense” (though I’m skeptical I ever had one to begin with), but it’s a nice change of pace to be living in Pleasantville for a couple of years.  The real world is overrated.