tell me about it

Puppy and I caught Kung Fu Panda tonight at Orchard Cineleisure - the movie is AWESOME. There’s minimal dialog from most of the characters (Jacky Chan has about one and a half lines and several grunts), except for Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman as Shifu, but the movie manages to carry across very well. Every time the movie attempts to get vaguely serious, Po the Panda tosses in a wisecrack or some physical humor. Terribly hilarious :D

“There is no charge for awesomeness - or attractiveness.”

:D

As the movie ended (stay till the end for an extra scene!) we heard some woman screaming Hokkien obscenities from the exit to another woman still in the theater. Huh. A long long stream of obscenities (I don’t think I’ve ever heard that many strung together in a single sentence). We shrugged it off, but when we eventually exited the theater, we were faced with two women catfighting with one woman’s arms locked around the other’s neck, trying to drag her down right outside the door of the theater. Two ah beng-looking men had cornered another man who was down on the floor, wiping his mouth; it looked like they might have hit him. They were all yelling and shouting angrily in Hokkien; no idea exactly what they were saying but they were essentially cussing each other out.

From what we saw the victimized couple looked quite young, maybe early twenties or even younger than that. The ah bengs really looked quite vicious; the guy cowering on the floor had literally been backed into a niche, between a wall and a fire-hose box, I think. The other two were standing over him pointing and shouting and generally being extremely threatening. I’m sure the guy on the floor had been pushed or maybe even hit - why else would he have ended up on the floor and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand? The two girls were also crazy. One girl was in a beige top and white shorts, the one that was getting dragged down by the other. The white-shorted girl was the one who had remained in the theater while the other was the one who had left first. I guess they had waited outside to ambush the couple who had stayed in the theater. Must have been one hell of a grudge.

As per normal crowd behavior everyone was just milling around watching avidly. I immediately took out my phone and called the police - I refuse to be a part of Kitty Genovese syndrome. I told the dispatcher my location and what was happening. He asked me if there were weapons being used; I replied that I had seen none. He asked how many people there were and if any were hurt. I relayed to him exactly what I had seen. He asked for my name, confirmed my mobile number, and said they would send officers right away. In fact, the dispatcher could hear them shouting in the background when I called.

I suppose the fight had disbanded by the time the police arrived because one of the officers at the scene called me up to verify what had happened, about five minutes after we’d left. By that time we were already in the car on the way home. I clarified what I’d seen and apologized for disturbing them if there was no longer anyone there, but the nice police officer thanked me for my assistance anyway :)

Later, Puppy asked why I’d bothered calling the police; he said they would most probably have left before the police made it there anyway. Still, you never know, right? What if one of them had really grabbed some kind of weapon? What if someone had gotten seriously hurt? I’d rather have helped to prevent something like that. It costs me nothing to make that phone call to the cops and it’s their job to investigate possible incidents. If nothing happened, good - if the police had been able to stop a fight from getting too serious, good too. I don’t want to just be part of the crowd, merely gawking and watching people fight and hurt each other. I wonder if out of the crowd of about two hundred people, I was the only one who called the police.

I really wonder why strangers can get so vicious towards one another. Puppy thinks that he heard something about one of the guys knocking into one of the girls and then the guy from the other group retaliating. Not really sure. But if it’s an accident, what’s so difficult about a sincere apology and the other party accepting that apology? The problem is that people refuse to apologize and also refuse to accept apologies. We’re supposed to be civilized, people. Get rid of the ah beng ah lian mindset! Insulting each other’s mothers and whacking each other up does not a problem solve.

You’d think the world would have learnt that by now. Apparently not.

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