It's been a while since I posted, and this is meant to be a blog for keeping in touch with friends and family while I'm in Oz so it's a little ironic that my first post in almost a year is the day (pretty much) that I touch down in KL.
Yesterday, I was looking through blogs and such, and caught my first sight of one of the supposedly scandalous pictures of Eli Wong. It was far from scandalous, but what really caught my notice was that this picture was of her sleeping with her glasses on. Now, perhaps this wasn't one of *the* pix, but one concocted from various shots online or somesuch. But I can reveal that I am in a somewhat privileged position. Because I'm quite sure, that Ms Wong does not sleep with her glasses on.
The reason I know this is because I, like many others, have been in a position to violate Ms Wong's trust and confidence in us, and creep into her bedroom late at night and take photos of her. Had it been my whim to do so. Eli Wong is a generous person. Not only have I taken advantage of her hospitality on so many occasions that at one stage she had a bed permanently set up for me, but I know many, many others who have also done so. Journalists from Indonesia, human rights workers from all over the globe, environmentalists, musicians... Eli and her housemates would welcome people into their home and onto their sofas. This is in the best tradition of all major religions, particularly Islam - the granting of hospitality to guests and weary travellers.
Of course, to my knowledge, none of these guests violated the reverse of that hospitality, invading Eli's private space. Not because of locks and keys (though there may well have been such, I never rattled at her doorknob), but because it's just rude, discourteous.
The point is, in this age of mobile phones and pinhead cameras, the only way to ensure your privacy is to lock yourself up. The most chaste woman, who piously provides a stranger with a glass of water and the use of her facilities, could find herself at the stranger's mercy, after he/ she installs a tiny video cam in her toilet. What do we do? We could decide that we all take after the people in 'The Machine Stops', live in little cubicles and never coming into contact with another human being.
Or we could be rational about it. Say, these things happen. How can we help the victims of this crime and discourage the perpetrators?
A lesson from Australia might be pertinent here. Around the same time the Hilmi Malek scandal broke (perhaps this would be a start, naming scandals after supposed perpetrators rather than victims), there was a story in a Sunday paper. A man had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempted blackmail, of AUD15,000. He had slept with a married politician, who has children, who he had picked up at an Internet chat site.
The court would not allow the politician's name to be mentioned in open session. And the blackmailer is banned from ever saying the man's name, even to his family. The issue of the anonymous politician's morality never arises - nobody knows who he is. It's possible that his wife discovered the truth - it would have been hard to keep such an affair secret, but generally the blackmailer was punished, the victim left to leave his life as he had before, though hopefully with more concern for the welfare of his wife and children.
