Well, my letter, anyway. Not my anthology of poems that I’m writing about Singapore in lectures. I wrote to the Straits Times two days ago about the Bloody Daycare Centre which has pushed even my super diplomatic father’s limits, and he yelled at them to close the windows out of my window last week when monster child was screaming. You know, the sort of temper tantrum that makes you (I say you and not me because I hate children to begin with) want your husband to get a vasectomy. The massive one-off that makes you wish you never had the little brat. THAT kind of king of tantrums.

But it’s not a one-off because this kid is PSYCHO! If my kid ended up like that I would have STRANGLED it and wound up in the newspapers. For the record, my father says we were pretty well behaved. And my auntie says I was the cutest baby and toddler, because I was always smiling and everywhere we went people would stop to play with me which is why she had to cut my MRT joyride short every week to accommodate the 30 minutes – one hour walking back to my home. YES I WAS THAT CUTE. And smiley. Lucky no one called me Smiley.

We will pause here for a minute because I know you are all laughing your heads off now.

L’anyhoodle, my voice has finally been heard! BUT I am very very pissed off because the Straits Times had the nerve to dumb down my letter! Listen here. NO ONE IN THIS LANGUAGE-DEFICIENT COUNTRY IS ALLOWED TO CORRECT MY USE OF DICTION BECAUSE MY WRITING STYLE IS IMPECCABLY FLAWLESS. I TAKE GREAT CARE IN MAKING SURE MY SENTENCES FLOW BEAUTIFULLY, NOT THIS CHOP-CHOP AMATEUR GARBAGE YOU LINGUISTIC PRIMATES VOMIT OUT OF YOUR CREATIVE WRITING CLASSES!

Let’s face it, if you need classes to be creative, you should just throw all hope out of the window. This is why I need to become an editor. Then I can yell at people for writing badly, which is MY PET PEEVE. I HATE IT WHEN SHIT GETS PUBLISHED, LIKE TWILIGHT. AND JEREMY WHASISNAME BRITTLEBONES.

ANYWAY. Here is my ORIGINAL letter, not this
whacked up thing some moron DEFOULED. Massacring my perfect prose muttermuttermutter.

Over the past few years, the property next to my family home in Opera Estate has been leased out to a string of daycare centres. This means we face a constant barrage of are constantly barraged by the sounds of children screaming and crying. But the latest in the series, The Little Skool-House International, which appears to be a nursery for toddlers, has pushed us to the limit quite possibly pushed our limits.

As this daycare centre has chosen to run its activities in the rooms next parallel WHAT, YOU CAN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND PARALLEL? to our house, we have begged BESEECHED repeatedly, BECAUSE I WOULD NEVER USE SOMETHING AS PRIMITIVE AS BEGGED, NOT TO MENTION THAT I WOULD NEVER BEG its staff repeatedly to keep the noise level down, to no avail. Only recently have they consented to close most windows, which are located some 3m from ours.

However, this is not a very effective way to curb very effective means of curbing the noise, as the cacophony of shouting and squealing continues to be clearly audible in all our rooms. Often, a certain excitable teacher who encourages the rowdy play even drowns out the children's voices. And closing the windows, whether it is theirs or our own, is useless whenever a particular child chooses to throw a tantrum on an almost daily basis, triggering the other children to start crying as well.

For those of us who need to work, study for final exams, or catch up on much needed sleep, this is intolerable. Effectively, we no longer look forward to coming home to peace, but dread the pandemonium peace but pandemonium. Look, this was just CATCHY. Surely there are regulations safeguarding the rights and sanity of residents if commercial enterprises are allowed in residential neighbourhoods?

Chua Su Yin (Miss)

You see? YOU SEE? ‘Dread the pandemonium’? That is CLUMSY PHRASING. People here have NO STYLE. Why do we even bother with newspapers? On a side note, I thought I took out the bit about sanity in ‘regulations safeguarding the rights and sanity of residents’. THAT’S the sort of thing that should be edited out.

And this NEANDERTHAL said:
Thats life..live with it.if you cant then move..on to the next knob letter

WELL I HOPE LIFE GIVES YOU CANCER, A HEART ATTACK, FIVE MONSTER CHILDREN AND NO HANDS. How DARE you call my letter a knob letter! Just because morons can’t comprehend a real issue because they ARE TOO POOR TO LIVE IN LANDED PROPETIES they dismiss it add in useless criticisms. Well, what comes around goes around! May a bunch of teenagers move into the HDB flat above him and play on their drumsets and electric guitars all day and all night so he loses his job and can’t afford internet!

To sum up, here is the poem I composed when I was epilating my legs.

Singapore’s a shithole
Of linguistic primates
It’s ugly, fugly everywhere
No wonder everyone migrates.

The people here are stupid sheep
They deprive old men of seats
They have appallingly poor taste
And sound like parakeets.

Sucky Singapore
Smelly Singapore
Stupid Singapore
Shitty Singapore

Going to post the page to the daycare centre over the weekend.