The main reason for not being interested in keeping up with current affairs & the news is simply the lack of interest. Yah, I guess it makes me sound like a bimbo. The other reason is because news depresses me, like today. Well, actually, I've been quite upset since May, but knowledge of the incident today was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Before I could watch the evening news on TV today, I caught wind of the unbelievable killing spree that happened in Akihabara on Sun afternoon from one of my students. A Japanese man in his mid-twenties from Shizuoka rented a two-ton truck, drove to Akihabara, rammed into innocent pedestrians, crashed his vehicle & got out to stab those that he knocked over & other horrified passerbys. Within a matter of minutes, the sick man killed 7 & seriously wounded 10 people. He even posted messages on an Internet bulletin board detailing the lead up to his killing rampage. And all these happened at a place that is just 30 mins away on train from me. In Akihabara, for god's sake, a place that I've been to a few times on Sundays for after-performance-salsa parties. To think of that place covered chillingly in the blood of the victims on Sunday, June 8.....
And not so long ago, I heard of a man stabbing two women, a man pushing a stranger onto the train tracks thus killing him, and a woman assaulted, dismembered with her body parts flushed down the toilet by her male neighbour. Domestic news - all happening in Japan. And then, more devastating news of the hundreds & thousands of people who lost their lives in the cyclone in Myanmar & the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan.
I don't know if I'll sleep well tonight with all the thoughts of death & violence in my mind. What kind of world are we living in?
1 comment:
yeah... i use not to ead papers alot until i hit uni... then somehow news begin to interest me because u start seeing "adults" acting stupid with their political agenda. hence the saying, life itself is more unbelievable and twisted than a story.
i also felt that news aday seem to have lost its meaning. when we were growing up, i wonder if we have so much violence report. then everything change with the start of the kuwait war. Life as we know it was never the saw again. Tv began flashing worn torn visuals, of people dying of blood shed, of insane and needless poverty and famine. Then just when we thought life could get back on track, palestine start fighting with its neighbors, osama decide to challenge states, stupid bush decided his ego was too bruised to let the matter off easily and since then, news land scape has totally change. for a while i stop watching because everyday its about war. got depressing.....
so now, i am so clinical about death and gore that it doesnt affect me anymore. i think each generation will get more and more sanitised or nonchalent and accept that "violence" is way of life and part and parcel...
i am rambling again... but yeah, the killing at akihabara didnt surprise me, it surprise me that he didnt plan to kill more and suceed.... which thankfully was so....
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