So the press had a field day today with new revelations in the NKF saga. I had fun reading the Straits Times today with nothing but NKF reports.

Well, I’m sure everyone has read or heard about it, so there’s no need for me to talk at length about it.

I just wanted to express my amusement over a quote by Mr Durai who, way back when, declined the committee’s offer to give him a $96,000 bonus, opting for $60,000, instead.

“I would not be doing justice to the hundreds of patients whom I have to cajole to pay their fees — which they do grudgingly. I know this will be painful to my wife who has to contend with the little resources I can provide her and the children. However, I believe that someone has to make the sacrifice…”

(It turned out to be a farce anyway because he received a bonus of $126,000 that year, but that’s not really what I want to talk about.)

What I’m actually wondering is whether Mr Durai has ever been poor. Or even of average wealth. Because if he has, statements like that wouldn’t have crossed his mind, much less passed his lips.

So he declines a $96k bonus, asks for $60k instead, and the poor wife suffers.

“I know this will be painful to my wife who has to contend with the little resources…”

Little?

That, surely, is an understatement. Because, you poor things, you’re only getting a $60,000 bonus this year. How can the word “little” ever justify the meagerness of that pithy amount?

Oh, the painful irony.

This is kind of like when a thin person says “Oh, I’m so fat, I have to go on a diet” in front of a fat person.

Or a teenager saying to a prisoner, “I have no freedom at home, you know.”

Or, perhaps, closer to the point, Paris Hilton telling any one of us poor sods here, “Aww shucks, my daddy cut my allowance by a million dollars a month and now I only have five million, how am I ever gonna survive? I hate everyone.”

I know the world is not equal, can never be equal. But it just kind of very rudely jolts one to the harsh reality of life to know that there are people who are living way beyond your means, yet they can still find themselves lacking.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be plenty happy and crying tears of joy and thanking every force in the world from the kitchen sink right to the drops of water vapour on the peak of Mount Everest if my husband (not that I have one) ever brings home a bonus $60,000 cheque.

So I’m a poor sod and $60,000 is huge to me. Bite me.