This is the sort of news to spoil your day & cloud your thoughts for the following hours afterwards.

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/sub/latest/story/0,5562,282407,00.html? (requires registration)

THE search for missing eight-year-old Huang Na drew to a close on Sunday in the worst possible way: Her naked body was found badly-decomposed, unrecognisable and stuffed into a box less than half her size.

...

The girl was also visually identified by her mother, Madam Huang Shuying, 27, a China national who works here as a vegetable stall assistant. Her grief-filled wails filled the mortuary as she confirmed the find and she had to be helped out of the area by friends.

When the news of her disappearance first came out afew weeks back, my reaction was: "So what? what's it got to do with me?" Its not that I'm cold-hearted, its just that there's always that assumption that the girl will eventually be found safe & sound, & all this fuss will be then seen as being overboard. It just seems more logical to assume that here in "I can go out at 3am & not get killed" Singapore, we can at least be sure that sadistic tragedies are mostly odd annodotes from international news sources right?

At the moment I feel a sense of bitter anger. I'm not really sure who this anger is directed at - The culprit(s)? The police? Disappointment & a rude reminder of the darkness that dwell within Man? The realisation that a child of 8 years, who had many more years before her, had it suddenly snatched away? That a mother is alive to know that her flesh & blood has passed on before herself in such unimaginable circumstances?

I think to express sympathy & regret over this would mean nothing to everyone who is concerned. The fact is that this has happened. I won't be sleeping in peace tonight. Why did it have to end up like this?

-Thomas