There was a discussion with friends from Vegetarian Society over coverage of boycotting shark-fin soup for wedding dinners in the news… about whether it involves etiquette in rejecting invitations that include the dish and speaking against the dish during such dinners. Here is my reply:
It’s all very simple, methinks… We just need to sincerely look [...]

The maniacal Joker in ‘Batman: The Killing Joke’ by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland tries to make Commissioner Gordon snap mentally by giving him physical and mental torture, while proclaiming that ‘All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the [...]

Some lyrics from R.E.M.’s ‘Everybody Hurts’:
Well, everybody hurts sometimes.
Everybody cries.
And everybody hurts sometimes.
And everybody hurts sometimes.
So, hold on, hold on…
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on…
Everybody hurts.
You are not alone.
Everybody Hurts – is this not the First Noble Truth for us unenlightened ones? To clearly and personally recoginise and [...]

I once listened to someone’s grievances overnight.
She was planning to kill herself.
When dawn broke, she felt reborn.
I didn’t give much advice
because I didn’t know what to say.
In fact, I shared my grievances too. (We wept hard.)
It was the power of empathy,
of being there for each other,
of self and mutual acceptance, that healed us [...]

A Tit for a Tat (77)
Tit: I think he suffers from some mental disorder.
Tat: Which one?
Tit: It doesn’t matter.
Tat: What do you mean?
Tit: Can you imagine the days when disorders like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD… weren’t well researched?
Tat: Yes, but what are you trying to say?
Tit: I think it’s unfair to just classify him [...]

A Tit for a Tat (26)
Tit: In case you don’t know, he’s not ‘normal’, in the sense that he suffers from a mental disorder.
Tat: I see… that explains some of his less than normal behaviour.
Tit: Do be more patient than normal with him.
Tat: Yes, it’s would only be normal for me to be so, since [...]

Inspired by the existentialist novel, The Outsider (L’Étranger) by Albert Camus:
Sometimes we remark that
someone is strange,
as if it’s a fault of theirs.
But it’s often our fault too,
for not seeking to understand
why they seem strange to us.
Not trying to understand
those who seem strange
makes us strange too.