For the love of coin

One of the comic books I read as a child and I still do occasionally is Conan the Barbarian, a fantasy character created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s. This character has appeared in a lot of mediums outside comicbooks, including a couple of films starring Ar-nuld in the early 80s, feature-length animations, and novels.

Now, Conan was a pretty savage fellow. But he had his own code of moralty and honor, one of which was that he’d typically have no qualms offing someone’s head if the latter double-crossed him, for example over “love of coin”.

And here’s the thing; the love for money and willingness to do the foulest deeds was what immediately came to my mind when a news article appeared in The Straits Times about how some residents’ cars in a condomium had been damaged. Apparently, these residents have dissented against en-bloc sales of the property. Because a similar incident had just happened, some are suspecting that this is the work of persons who’re unhappy with the dissenters resisting the deal:

HUNGER for en-bloc dollars looks to have turned vicious at a quiet private estate in East Coast.

On Tuesday night, two residents of the 530-unit Laguna Park estate discovered that their cars had been doused with a corrosive liquid, possibly paint thinner.

They were among the residents who had not yet agreed to put the seaside development up for sale. Earlier this month, two other cars belonging to the dissenting group were also vandalised.

Laguna Park residents told The Straits Times yesterday that they believed the vehicle attacks were ‘inside jobs’ committed by people who support the en-bloc deal.

For those of us unfamiliar with en-bloc apartment sales in Singapore, well the summarized version is this; there’s a lot of money involved for residents who want in on it, and the “a lot” is around a couple of million dollars each for owners in good properties.

There’s the old adage that money is the root of all evil. Still, it’s shocking that people who resort to such scum acts of vandalism if it’s indeed the work of greedy residents wanting to scare dissenters. What they really need is a Conan to smack their heads if not lop them right off for stooping so low.