Tue, Dec 09, 2008
The Straits Times




My learning years in jail

By Philip Lee

HE SAYS it without hesitation: 'The six years I spent in prison were the best years of my life.'

Explaining why, Mr David Thorairajan, 27, says that the imprisonment changed him from a gangster and a failure in school to being a caring son and a university undergraduate today.

Mr Thorairajan, who is tall, slim and tattooed, speaks about his life in a voice so soft that it is at times nearly inaudible.

But his eagerness in wanting to help troubled youths emerges loud and clear.

'I am studying for a BSc degree in social science. I hope to major in psychology. After I graduate, I want to return to prison and help the young offenders the way I was helped when I was behind bars,' says Mr Thorairajan, a student of the Singapore Management University (SMU).

It was his second imprisonment in 2002 for voluntarily causing grievous hurt to a victim during a gang fight that turned out to be the turning point in his troubled life. Help came in the form of prison counsellors and a religious leader.

With so much time behind bars, he soon realised he should use it to fulfil what he had failed to do as a student - pass his examinations.

In school, he had played truant so many times that his teachers despaired over him. At one stage, his mother, a lab assistant, had to literally drag him to school. But the moment she left, he would disappear again.

He was retained in Secondary Three for three years. When he finally sat for his Nlevel examination, he failed.

Mr Thorairajan recalls: 'I was very immature then. I hated school. My home environment was poor. My father, a security guard, and I were not on speaking terms. He was home very late each day because of his job. Also, there were times when he would hit me.'

So at 15, he sought solace by joining a gang. His first serious brush with the law was in 2000 when he was involved in a gang clash during which his best friend was killed.

He was jailed for 18 months and caned six times for his act of violence.

Months after his release from prison in 2002, he was fighting again after he caught sight of the rival gang member who had killed his friend. This time he got six years and 12 strokes of the cane.

Jail time turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He studied and went on to pass his O and A levels. He learnt from the religious leader the values of love and forgiveness, and he embraced these fervently. In the A-level examination at the Kaki Bukit Prisons School, he was the top student in his cohort. He also threw himself into the many curricular activities in prison, among which was to be the news anchor in the prison's radio programme, News Behind Bars.

After his A levels, his mother sent applications on his behalf to a few universities in Singapore. He was then still in jail.

He secured a place at SMU this year after four of the university's officials, including Professor David Chan, who was then the interim Dean of the School of Social Sciences, travelled to the prison to interview him.

Mr Alan Goh, SMU's Director of Undergraduate Admissions, says: 'David is a picture of contrast and intrigue. He is cool and calm, almost Zen-like; yet he exudes a palpable sense of fire-in-the-belly with an intense determination to not only turn over a new leaf but to turn many more new leaves from the big tree with the yellow ribbon.

'This higher purpose of giving back to society instead of focusing just on himself marks David as courageous and outstanding ' and he is the sort of talent SMU would always keep a keen eye on.

'We rewarded him with a merit scholarship even when he did not ask for it - to launch him into a new and meaningful second life.'

The scholarship is valued at $5,000 a year and is tenable for the duration of his fouryear study at SMU, subject to good academic performance.

Now that he has got his life in order, he speaks a bit about the relationship with his father.

'I am today on talking terms with him. We still don't say very much but I ask him, "How are you today?" and he asks me questions like: "Have you eaten?"'

'When he leaves for work, he tells my mum, "Okay, I am going."'

'When he first said this, it surprised my mum, as she told me he had never done such a thing before. So, things are improving at home.'

Asked what Christmas means to him, Mr Thorairajan smiles and says: 'Previously, it meant clubbing and drinking but today, when I think of Christmas, I think of love and forgiveness.'

Study: iPad owners are selfish, unkind anti-geeks
by Chris Matyszczyk Font sizePrintE-mailShare52 comments Yahoo! Buzz
.Share 2550diggsdiggSo what does your iPad say about you?

Does it say you are forward-thinking, future-forward, for change, for progress and for a better world? Or does it say that you are a slightly putzish character who will blow $800 just to boost your lowly levels of self-esteem to around a +0.2?

I know you have been torturing yourself about this for some time. So, please say thank you to a company called MyType that took it upon itself to profile iPad owners.

MyType, which claims to help you "discover your personality type," examined the feelings of 20,000 of its own users on Facebook on the subject of Apple's magical revolution. And its conclusions might make you pick up your iPhone and make an additional appointment with your psychologist, confessor, or indispensable chatline companion.

For MyType concluded that those whose laps are adorned by the dancing pleasures of an iPad are members of a "selfish elite."


Clearly a power-hungry, self-centered iPad owner.

(Credit: CC Veronica Belmont/Flickr) Should you find this characterization slightly offensive, might I add that the company also concluded that iPad owners are power-hungry, unkind, wealthy, sophisticated, and disproportionately interested in business and finance.

Do you see yourself in this description, oh iPad owner? Are you the sort of person who sees a dying man on the sidewalk and simply crosses the road to avoid his pain? Are you the type who would happily sell your wife, mother, and child for an acronym in front of your job title? Do you fall asleep thinking about what percentage you are getting on your checking account?

While you consider this, might I offer you a description of your antithesis?

Apparently, those who are most critical of the iPad are "independent geeks." Yes, you Linux-loving, open-sourcing, hard-core-hacking, phone-jailbreaking, techy-tinkering die-hards are the most likely to see an iPad, see red, and see your way to ululating with venom at mankind's superficial plight.

Should you happen to be one of these people, please gird yourself for a cold blade abutting your spine, courtesy of MyType's Tim Koelkebeck.

He wrote on the MyType blog: "As a mainstream, closed-platform device whose major claim to fame is ease of use and sex appeal, the iPad is everything that they are not."

I delved a little deeper into the research in order to find the aspect that, perhaps, offers the most accurate depiction of the difference between the haves, the have-nots and the I'll-never-have-that-crap-in-my-houses.

MyType asked its guinea persons which of the seven deadly sins they are most susceptible to. The independent geeks, those deep critics of the iPad identified "greed" as their biggest weakness. The power-hungry narcissists, on the other hand, admitted to gluttony most of all.

Gluttony just beat out lust.

Surely, on hearing this, you will conclude that this is one of the most accurate pieces of research ever conducted in the twisted history of mankind.

Jun 25, 2010
Jailed 5 months and caning
By Elena Chong, Courts Correspondent

Oliver Fricker was sentenced to five months jail and three strokes of the cane for breaking into a protected place and vandalising an SMRT train by spray-painting two of its carriages. -- ST PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW

CONVICTED vandal Oliver Fricker was sentenced to five months' jail and three strokes of the cane on Friday evening for entering a protected place and spraying paint on two carriages of an SMRT train.

The 32-year-old IT consultant is appealing against his sentence, according to his lawyer, Mr Derek Kang.

Fricker, who went to jail on Friday, had admitted to a vandalism charge and an offence under the Protected Areas and Protected Places Act. He did them with his friend, Briton Dane Alexander Lloyd, 29, at the SMRT Changi depot between May 16 and 17.

A third charge of cutting the perimeter fence of the depot was considered during his sentencing.

The graffiti on the train with the large words McKoy Banos was seen by many commuters and members of the public before it was reported by a SMRT staff two days later.

Seeking an appropriate jail term on each of the two charges, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sharon Lim argued that such serious breach of the law could not be taken lightly or viewed as a mere prank. The duo, she said, were experienced graffiti writers who had targeted the SMRT train which is the backbone of Singapore's public transport system.

Fricker could have been jailed for up to three years for the vandalism charge; and up to two years for entering a protected place.

my first and ever POST/

JAILED FOR SEX WITH TEEN,14.

a teenagers was first asked if she knew what "3P" in sexual parlance meant.

when it was explained to the 14-year-old that it was short for having a threesome in bed, the teenager was at first shocked, but said she was game,

she then went on to experience it first hand.

her initiator was a malaysian who was looking for a 3rd party to have sex with him and his fiancee.

the couple were the teenager's housemates. the ''session''took place last december in the girl's flat, which her mum had rented for her.

the teenager's mother had remarried and the girl could not get along with her mother's new family.

after the incident, the man's fiancee told him she had regretted having''shared'' him with someone else.she also told him not to have sex with the teenager again.

the fiancee is now pregnant . the man was jailed for 7months on two counts of having sex with a girl under 16.

a third similar charge was considered. he could have been jailed for up to 5years and fined up to $10,000 on each charge.

in my point of view, i felt that it was very foolish of the teenager to agree to the act . she does not think of the consequences behind all these action, and how it would affect her and her families. when it happened for the first time, the girl should report this to her mum, or i should say she should not even agree to the act. but yet she did not say anything, and it happen for the 2nd time. i think that the girl's parent are also partially responsible for what had happened. no matter what, they should not leave the girl to stay with outsider. if nit, all these would not have happened. as for the man, i think he is very disgusting. and the fiancee of the man, is very foolish to allow his boyfriend to have sex with another person. and the most importantly, the girl is still underage. didn't they think of the consequence?