Another student's unwanted 'fame'

Wee Shu Min, a sophomore at Raffles Junior College in Singapore and daughter of a member of Parliament, found herself in the middle of cybercontroversy (see last week's "Student hit hard by Web fame"). She "sparked a heated debate on the Internet when she derided another blogger … for his views on the anxieties of Singapore workers," the UCLA Asia Institute's news service reports. She apologized and shut down her blog (after her college's principal and her dad said she'd been "counselled for using insensitive language." The blogger she criticized, Derek Wee, who works for a multinational corporation, had written that he was "concerned about competition from foreign talent and the lack of job opportunities for older workers" in Singapore. The student wrote, "Derek, Derek, Derek darling, how can you expect to have an iron rice bowl or a solid future if you cannot spell? There's no point in lambasting the Government for making our society one that is, I quote, 'far too survival of the fittest...' If uncertainty of success offends you so much, you will certainly be poor and miserable." She later suggested he "get out of my elite uncaring face." According to the report, "her attack was criticised by hundreds of Internet users, who accused her of being elitist, naive and insensitive to the lives of Singaporeans from humbler backgrounds."