A student of mine was asking me on her blog how is it that my comments on her tagboard are usually made so early in the morning. Well, my day actually begins very early. I’m usually up by 5:20 a.m. where I’ll head to the study room to check the morning headline news and emails from work, then wake Ling up at just before 6 a.m. before hitting the shower to get prepped, and then make two Starbucks’ mugs of coffee-to-go for Ling and myself.
The early morning preview of news before I head to the office is actually a pretty critical morning event, since it’ll let me identify the news items of interest for the day so that I can follow up when I get to the campus later. I’m usually in the office at 6:45 a.m., where I’ll spend a bit of time reading news, catch on The Straits Times news and discussion forums, and visit my students’ blogs. It’s usually quite dark and almost spooky so early in the morning, since the next colleague to arrive at work is usually an hour later or so.
In any case, this morning’s routine was no different, but there were three items of news today that struck me on how different each circumstance was but yet all three ended in the same way. The first is local news, where at Outram MRT station a Police officer shot dead a fellow who’d just fatally knifed his drinking buddy. It’d happened on an afternoon, and created something of a scare as bystanders attempted to get away after shots were heard. The second involved how a 54 year old Good Samaritan, Roger Kreutz, who gave chase to a pair of thieves who’d just pilfered the tips jar at a Starbucks outlet in St. Louis County was killed when he was run over by the car driven by the escaping thieves. The third news item concerned a 22 year old student, Eve Carson, at the University of North Carolina who’d been recently-elected student president, but was tragically fatally shot several times by a currently unidentified assailant.
The first was the silliest. Why he’d knifed his drinking buddy can only be ascertained after further investigation, but I’m guessing it’s a silly argument that occurs when your brain has been smothered in booze. More nuttier still is that he tried to run after the stabbing, and when cornered by police instead of giving up, chose to charge at officers waving his weapon.
The second story reflects an individual with quick-thinking reflexes to match, despite the tragic outcome. I wonder how if this incident had happened in a local Starbucks outlet, would Singaporeans be gawking, turning away because it’s none of our business, remembering the time to buy 4D for that magic number, or worse still fishing out our handphone cameras to post pictures for posting to Stomp later. The last story is the type that makes you numb with the insanity of the incident, as early reports state that Carson’s murder seemed to be random with no motive. There’s a bunch of Youtube videos with one especially meaningful and poignant: it shows the promise that Eve Carson held for her peers at the UNC, but now cannot be fulfilled.
Four lives lost, three different circumstances, and all three tragic and very sad in their own ways.
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