Haze thy neighbour

Right now, and for the last couple of days, Singapore's favourite website must the NEA's (National Environment Agency) PSI (not pounds per square inch, but pollution standards index) page which reports the 24-hourly and 3-hourly reading of the air in Singapore by region. The region with consistently the highest reading is the western part simply because it is geographically closest to the source of the smoke emitting from the island of Sumatra, which is one of the largest islands of the more than one thousand that make up Indonesia. But the rest of Singapore is no less polluted with find particulate matter that is harmful to health.

The bloody Indonesian government. It can't decide what to do about it. It can't decide how to stop this annual occurrence, it can't decide if they would want Singapore's help to fight the fires causing this air pollution, it can't decide who to point the blame at - i.e. businesses which practice the slash and burn technique, and even if they do, they cannot decide if they want to act. Right now, one can only say that Indonesia is impotent, really, it can't do anything about the problem, or chooses not to. All they are doing is wayanging away. Singapore is just a red dot and dots do not matter, I suppose. Not today, not ever. They're not going to change, unless their generals and wives visit the island for a shopping spree. But that's it. Its a spree, they are gone like the whirlwind and the haze comes back. And the rest of us, its neighbors, are left to hold the ball and suffer the consequences. It doesn't matter whether Singapore has strict emission rules, from the car to the cigarette, and punishes those on the island who pollute the place.  There's always the island of Sumatra, shaped like a cigar, which smolders away 2-3 months of the year.

I am not going to visit Indonesia for leisure for a long while now, blame the %#4%@&* idiots which calls itself a government.