One Who Flew the Cuckoo’s Nest

This broadcast of “Are You Thinking?” comes to you all the way from Singapore just to show that I’m an equal opportunity awarder.

Over in Singapore at a prison lauded for its tight security, a suspected Islamic militant named Mas Selamat bin Kastari managed to escape from custody. The entire article can be found here. But the centerpiece of the article that underlines it all is here for your reading. The photo is from here.

“Wong Kan Seng, Singapore's deputy prime minister, told parliament that Mas Selamat bin Kastari flipped his trousers above the cubicle door before escaping through a window.

"The guard had assumed that the urinal cubicle was a secure facility and that Mas Selamat could not escape from it. This assumption was wrong," he said.”

Singapore must not have been reading my blog especially those prison guards. Assumptions are a bad thing!! Rarely are they ever a good thing. But I digress from my main point.

Singapore is a strong US ally and houses a lot of Western business. Naturally, they are subject to the primary export of the USA and that is Hollywood and our entertainment. So this is where the prison guards and the prison itself deserve an award. Of all of the ways to escape a prison or capture, going through the window in the bathroom is one of the most classical and often mocked methods in our entertainment.

But this suspect manages to escape a prison through a bathroom window and a double perimeter fence with no pants on and evades capture for going past 2 months? Razor wire on the top would make Mas Selamat a little concerned about little Mas Selamat. He went through a weakness in the fence? Did open a door and walk out or crawl through a hole while mooning the prison? Do they have any dogs to track his scent? The suspect kindly gave them his pants.

For all these reasons and more, the prison and its guards receive their “Are You Thinking?” award. They have truly been caught with their pants down.