|
|
From all the comments left in this blog regarding accessible toilets and the difference between privileges and rights, we can now separate the wheat from the chaff. Commenting for all related entries will be closed henceforth. Thank you for an enlightening week.
-->In today’s The Sunday Times:
Oct 30, 200
All flushed over toilet blog
Wendy Cheng’s blog on loos for the handicapped draws a slew of complaints – leading 2 advertisers to pull out from her website
By Jeremy Au Yong
A HEATED online debate over toilets for the handicapped has caused local blogger Wendy Cheng to lose two of her three sponsorship deals.
Blogger Wendy Cheng found support from two unlikely groups. The Society for the Physically Disabled as well as the Handicaps Welfare Association see nothing wrong with sharing toilets meant for the handicapped, as long as the able-bodied give priority to the disabled. — STEPHANIE YEOW
Hair salon Kimage and nail studio Voxy pulled their ads from her popular website xiaxue.blogspot.com this week, after receiving complaints from Netizens about her remarks on loos for the handicapped. Only T-shirt maker LocalBrand is staying.
Both companies paid the 21-year-old to run their ads for three months. But after two months, Voxy wanted out while Kimage had just one week left.
While none would reveal the amount paid, the two endorsements are worth a three-figure sum to Ms Cheng.
Her loss was prompted by remarks she made two weeks ago in her online diary. She wrote that the loos – bigger and equipped with a sink – were not just for the use of disabled people.
‘Sure, if I see that you are physically disabled, and you need to use the toilet, then yes, obviously I will let you use it and go use a normal toilet,’ she said.
But at other times, the able-bodied can use it too, she added. Her blog entry also criticised a ‘rude’ disabled person in Ginza Plaza who had scolded a man for trying to use the loo for the handicapped.
It raised the ire of many. Her site was swamped by dozens of rude messages that accused her of being callous and uncivilised, which are among the kinder labels hurled at her.
Her critics argued that the toilets should not be dirtied by the abled-bodied who had many more cubicles from which to pick and use.
‘It’s a basic amenity for us. It is a right, not a privilege,’ said Mr Peter Tan, 39, a Malaysian blogger who is partially paralysed. He was so riled by her posting that he complained to the three sponsors, criticising them for endorsing her.
Others followed. By the end of last week, Kimage had received about 300 e-mail messages, prompting it to suspend its association with Ms Cheng.
Ms Monica Tan, director of Kimage, which has 15 outlets, said the chain was shocked by the huge number of e-mail.
She said: ‘It just became one big hoo-ha. There were so many e-mail messages I couldn’t finish reading all of them. I didn’t want to get involved.’
Similarly, a spokesman for Voxy admitted that the fracas played a part in its decision to end the deal, although there were other ‘internal reasons’.
LocalBrand founder Turodrique Fuad, however, is not pulling out even though he disagrees with Ms Cheng. He thinks the issue has been blown out of proportion.
‘There was nothing intentionally malicious about her post. I may not agree with her view but when you endorse a blogger, you have to accept that he or she is sometimes going to say controversial things.
‘You have to give them the freedom,’ he said.
Ms Cheng is known for speaking her mind. She has written about measuring penises and evangelising, and poked fun at the nude pictures posted by a blogger writing as Sarong Party Girl.
That she has enemies is no surprise. In July, a hacker hijacked her blog, deleted its contents and left rude messages in its place.
On the latest furore, she has supporters from an unlikely source. The Society for the Physically Disabled as well as the Handicaps Welfare Association see nothing wrong with sharing the loos as long as the able-bodied give priority to the disabled.
Right or wrong, Ms Cheng said the episode would not change anything. ‘I don’t think I have projected something that is extreme and I will write exactly the way I’ve always done.’
jeremyau@sph.com.sg
-->
Debt of gratitude
As blogging gains popularity in the country, a new trend is fast emerging – blogging for charity. MICHAEL CHEANG talks to disabled blogger Peter Tan about one such effort on his blog.
TWO years ago, they helped ease his dying mother’s final days, and today, wheelchair-bound blogger Peter Tan is expressing his gratitude to the Penang Hospice-At-Home-Programme by sacrificing something he holds dear – his trademark long hair which he has kept for almost three years.
Tan, who is paralysed from the chest down following a diving accident 21 years ago, has pledged to shave his head to raise RM5,000 for the Hospice programme. Hospice helped care for his mother Theresa Lim in 2003 when she was stricken with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Being wheelchair-bound, Tan had trouble caring for her, and Hospice sent a palliative care nurse three days a week during her final month to check on her and provide her with all the medical and nursing care she needed. Those visits made a difference in easing her pain, and also made Tan’s job of caring for his mother a lot easier.
Besides caring for his mother, Hospice’s staff also helped Tan. “I developed a pressure sore on my buttocks from long hours of sitting up tending to mum, and they dressed the sore too,” Tan recalled.
“I am forever grateful to Penang Hospice for coming into our lives at a time when we needed help most. When my mother was still alive, she used to tie my hair into ponytails for me. So it means a lot to me. However, giving away three years of hair will not be sufficient to give back to Hospice what it has given us.
Peter Tan: ‘I am forever grateful to Penang Hospice for coming into our lives at a time when we needed help most.’
“After my mum passed away, I vowed that I would do something for Hospice so that it could help other people who are in the same situation. However, disadvantaged as I am, I could not think of anything else except to shave my head to raise funds for them.”
Tan’s aptly titled Hair for Hospice campaign was announced on his blog, The Digital Awakening (www.petertan.com), earlier this month.
At the time of writing, Hair for Hospice has collected more than 50% of the RM5,000 target, and when the target is reached Tan will not be the only blogger who will be sporting the Kojak look. Four others – including one female blogger – have also pledged to go bald for the cause.
Tan’s effort is just one instance of an emerging trend in the rapidly growing blogging community in Malaysia – blogging for charity.
Through their vast network of blogs (also known as web-logs, or online journals), bloggers in Malaysia have been involved in several charitable activities, one of the most prominent being the worldwide Blogathon event on Aug 6.
On that day, bloggers all over the world stayed up for 24 hours to blog every 30 minutes non-stop to raise money for various charities. In Malaysia, the participants for the Blogathon were widespread and diverse in the charities they were blogging for.
Tan himself was involved with a collaborative blog called Bloggers are Morons, along with five other prominent bloggers, which eventually raised RM5,085.72 for Hospice. Another group of bloggers, which included young author John Ling and freelance writer Yvonne Foong, blogged to raise money for the Eden Handicap Service Centre.
Incidentally, Foong herself is the subject of another blogger charity campaign. Foong, who is a patient of Neurofibromatosis (an illness of the nervous system with no known cure), is raising money for her own medical fund by selling T-shirts through her blog (www.yvonnefoong.com), together with the help of several other bloggers.
To learn more about Tan’s campaign and for more information on how to donate to Hair for Hospice, go to his blog post at www.petertan.com/blog/index.php/2005/10/06/hair-for-hospice.
-->You are currently browsing the The Digital Awakening blog archives for October, 2005.
| compensation claims |
|
Urostomy |
