I'VE been accused on this platform, the ST Blogs, for writing from my ivory tower and not understanding what the man-in-the-street goes through.

Honestly? I was rather baffled when that particular phrase was repeatedly commented on my first few blog entries (albeit from just one particular person). What had I written that prompted readers to think that? Or was it just someone who didn't like me personally?

But yesterday, I realised I might just possibly have been living high up in an ivory tower all my life after all.

That was after I'd watched Taken.

(WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead.)

Currently being played in the cinemas, it's about a retired CIA agent who single-handedly busts an international sex slave ring when his 17-year-old daughter is kidnapped upon her arrival in Paris.

(The loss of a family member was particularly impactful because it starred Liam Neeson who, so sadly, has just lost his real-life wife Natasha Richardson to a ski-induced head injury.)

Now, we all know about the international sex trade - from the crude bartering of children on the streets in Thailand to the more sophisticated pedophile businesses run out of orphanages further afield.

But snatching young tourists, getting them hooked on drugs and so dependent on pimps that they are forced to service men - willingly or otherwise - sometimes to the point of death?

And that's just the sell-side. On the buy-side, are there really people who sit around in suits in a darkened room, drinking champagne while bidding for virgins auction-style during a high-society ball?

Okay, maybe it's all just Hollywood's overactive imagination. It was co-written and produced by Luc Besson after all. Still, as the saying goes, there's no smoke without fire, right?

I was reeling when I came out of the cinema and thoroughly sickened by the callousness and cruelty people are capable of.

Naive? Probably. Resident of an ivory tower? Perhaps.

But at least I know enough of the world never to share a cab with a stranger. And I really hope my fellow Singaporean girls know at least that much too.