Good omens

Phones were buzzing and singing nonstop this afternoon about today's cave-in at the MRT construction site along Nicoll Highway. If I'd stopped to ask the cat sitting atop the neighbour's car bonnet, chances are it'd already been to see the queen and back.

Mozz and I didn't manage to get close enough to the site to snap pictures of the fracture proper, and we were turned away at the Concourse by security as well. Yeah I know, I should have hidden the camera. Silly me.

Frankly, I think the whole situation has been blown all out of proportion by the media in its frenzy to bring you the news now damnit now. People calling the radio stations and being put on air, some with interesting perspectives to relate ("billowing yellow smoke, smell of gas, crane toppled in"), some without ("my boss called to ask if anything happened to me, but I was safe, hahaha"). J ranted about how the reporters on the telly kept going on and on about the whole thing, as if it were a terrorist attack or such.

The injured will be sent to TTSH, the dead are dead, rescue teams search for the missing. It happened, now get on with your own life. Let the people involved settle the dust, and you can look in afterwards.

I am reminded of a comment Faz made once; when I'd given him the link to the Straits Times Interactive, and he'd read about the demolishment of the ANA hotel on the front page: "a hotel gets torn down in Singapore and it becomes front page news?"

Sure, it's big local news. Most of us grew up knowing where Nicoll Highway was, most of us cross it several times a year, if not just in one week. Most of us were not there when it happened. That's a blessing, don't you deny it. And in this "big picture" world, the collapse really is just a small detail. Isreal and the Hamas killings. Insurrection in Iraq. Maradona in hospital. Kevin Spacey mugged by youth in London park.

"Good thing it didn't happen during peak hour," said J. Now that is a significant truth. And I am so very glad of its reality.