straws and bottle caps, crushed beer cans and fast food wrappers, tissue and plastic bags, lighters and cigarette ends... it annoys the hell out of me to see all the litter in naung park, which are left almost entirely by non jalan naung residents - especially since the park has become a short cut for mrt commuters, though even before that there are always young people canoodling in it and rowdy school uniformed teenagers leaving behind evidence of their orgiastic excesses (i don't doubt it was one of these groups that set one of the bushes on fire the other week, though i'm quite prepared to grant they did it accidentally. still, teenagers are terribly callous and careless!)

my pa says there's no good cursing the darkness so last night after dinner we went and bought long-stemmed charcoal tongs from ntuc and went out to naung park with a large plastic bag and cleaned up all the litter. one of the neighbours eyed us curiously from over his gate (my dad called out "just doing a little cleaning up!" in explanation although i'm sure that just sounded more dubious!) and another, who was washing his car, pretended (?) not to see us, which disappointed me i hoped rather that more of the neighbours would see and come to help, though then again i think my dad's point was to do it ourselves and with no fuss to anyone - he is not the kind of man who would organise the neighbours into a cleaning team. "it only takes us 5 minutes, and the playground looks so much better." he says.