Confused Beauty

Do we have another air-head in the making? I don't know, but I am beginning to have grave doubts about the girls that were crowned first and second (and third and ....?) in the Miss Singapore World 2009 contest.

It is all well and good for friends to stick together and speak up for each other. But when the first runner-up, Ms Lee, a graduate of NTU's aerospace engineering, insisted that Ris Low should still represent Singapore in Africa even after Ms Low has bowed out, you have second thoughts about the quality of the person who came in second. Let's separate personal loyalty and national duty. One can, and should be, loyal to one's friends, but when that loyalty concerns the nation, then you should put aside personal feelings. Ris knows she has become a liability in the competition in Africa. She knows that she can potentially shame Singapore and give it a bad name. She knows she cannot be an effective ambassador and spokesperson for Singapore, much less win the title But it would appear that Ms Lee doesn't get the point when she insisted that Ris proceed to Africa.

If Ms Lee is now chosen as the replacement, I will cringe at the thought of Singapore's name being dragged through the mud of Africa. It'll be no different sending Ris.

Where did they get these 'beauties' from, anyway? Perhaps all those years of studying aerospace has gotten to her head, She should land and show us some maturity, not blind loyalty. One would have thought that she hasn't been reading the newspapers and blogs of late. Or if she had, she hasn't been applying her mind.

P.S. Its tough to be a beauty in Singapore.

Cheating beauty

Given the revelation of this year's Ms Singapore World, Ms Ris Low's conviction for credit card fraud, cheating and criminal misappropriation, numbering no less than 60 charges, and given that she did not reveal this to the organisers until after she had secured the crown, demonstrating her dishonesty and hypocrisy (I can only imagine the 'honest-to-God' answers she gave during the competition proper on her way to her now tainted crown), how can she represent the whole of Singapore on foreign soil? She can represent herself, she can represent the organisation that anointed her, but can she claim to represent the women of Singapore? If I were a women, I would cringe, though as a Singaporean, I still will cringe. Hey world, this girl doesn't show off the best of our girls - heck most of them are honest and hardworking, never mind that they may not have the perfect physical features and proportions. And many of them may have a problem or two with some physical or mental condition, but they don't steal credit cards and dine dishonestly at posh-posh restaurants.

Some talk of second chances and all. Well, yes, that is desirable. But to use Ms Singapore World to redeem yourself ultimately cheapens the Ms Singapore World title and brand. Actually, I don't care very much for Beauty contests, but if Singapore's name and reputation are at stake, that's when a line needs to be drawn. One may be compassionate and forgiving, but in the dog-eat-dog world out there in South Africa, any pretender will be mauled if she even has a spot of blemish. So the best thing for Ms Low is to give up her crown gracefully instead of hanging on to it so doggedly. I think she has already proven something. No point exposing herself to ridicule in South Africa. She will jeopardise the chances of all future Ms Singapore World at these competitions. The world will look at Singapore women with a different eye. It'll be a steeper slope for all future Ms Singapore World to climb on the world stage.

You don't want to be that selfish, do you?

Home on the net

This posting is not about life in Singapore. Its about life not in Singapore and the contrasts that it brought, at least as far as accessing the internet is concerned. You see, I have been away for slightly less than 2 weeks in Shanghai, and had thought that I could be connected to the internet and blogging and all, just like what I do in Singapore. I had been to Shanghai 2 years ago, and know for a fact that most hotels provide free broadband internet access. What's more, there is my spanking new netbook that will make the whole thing effortless, especially when it comes to lugging it around in my carry-on luggage.

So, yes, I was connected. All I had to do was to plug in the network cable into my computer and wallah, I am connected, or so I thought. The problem with China, even now, with its liberal capitalist approach in big cities such as Shanghai, is that it censors internet access to websites with a heavy hand. Popular websites such as Facebook and Blogspot cannot be accessed at all in China, or at least using the hotel broadbands in both hotels that I stayed in. Yes, I could not access any of my blogspot blogs!

Mercifully, though, I could access e-mail websites such as Yahoo, Gmail and Microsoft's Live.com. Otherwise, I would have been cut off from the rest of the world while in China, which had been the case before the 1980s, before Deng Xiaoping instituted his Black-cat-White-cat brand of pragmatism that has propelled its economy in leaps and bounds over the last 30 years. On the other hand, any website with the .cn country domain name (i.e. China for those of you who are clueless), such as baidu.com.cn, loaded extremely fast, with zero or near zero latency. Talk about favouritism!

So here I was, missing all the blogs and blogging and thus cut off from life in Singaore. My schedule was busy, and I didn't have ready access to printed news of Singapore, except perhaps to todayonline.com, Today's online newspaper, which I had delivered to my e-mail account. Curiously though, I never opened it up to read. I was more interested in chatting with people back home and then hitting the sack, so tired I was after a day's activities.

Happily though, I experienced no withdrawal symptoms with the limited access to many internet websites I frequent back in Singapore. And so I had a semi-voluntary news blackout for this period. Now that I am back in Singapore, the latest news appears to be Ms Singapore World, and yes, the F1 too. But the former makes for more interesting reading, though.

Glad to be back in Singapore.

Cult of religion

On the whole, Singapore takes a balanced approach towards people's beliefs, and their freedom to practice those beliefs. This was one of the major themes in the PM's National Day rally speech this year. And for the most part, this is something to be happy about. There will, of course, be some who think otherwise, when their 'religion' is frowned upon as they propagate values that are alien to a conservative society's, as is Singapore's. Amazingly, this atmosphere prevails when the government openly favours the Muslims in putting aside land for them to build their Mosques. Less so for Christian, who often have had to resort to gathering in house-churches, or abandoned cinemas or even huge conventions centres like those in Suntec City, paying an arm and a leg, to practice their religion every week. But we all live and let live. Religion is not about equality on earth. It is the afterlife, after all, that matters, isn't it? But some religions somehow miss this point.

Thus it is puzzling that peoples in other countries practice their religion in such as literal and earthly manner. This calls to mind whether they are following the letter of the law, and blindly at that, but have lost the spirit of these religous injunctions. For example, we hear of 2 Muslim women sentenced to caning for doing nothing more than drinking beer and wearing pants! Maybe in these places, such barbaric practices are the norm, that women-folk are accepted as the constant object of abuse in the name of religion, if not society at large - even by the women themselves. In the case of the women sentenced to canning, she perversely asked that she be caned. I often wonder if women like her have a sado-masochistic streak or are they plainly longsuffering in the name of religion? Whichever the case, it is probably no wonder that that section of society finds the whole thing quite civilised, proper, and (gasp), holy(istic).

Which reminds me. Today is 911 - the day of infamy when, 8 years ago, a few religious Muslim fanatics found it the height of their obligations to Allah, their God, to first hijack a plane, and then ram them straight into 2 towering buildings in New York City, thus attaining their ultimate religious state at the expense of thousands of poor innocent people. As I am reminded today, these people who perished were fathers, they were mothers, they were sons and daughters, husbands and wives, grandchildren and grandmothers....How can any religion find it right in its teachings that killing innocent people is the way to release? Yet as recent events have shown, in Jakarta for example, these religious fanatics have persisted in their perverse views. They will glady kill again in the name of their religion.

May such thinking and the people who continue to propagate them, face their just deserts when they see their God. Those who have already gone before would have been shocked to discover that they have died for a lie.

In memoriam, to the victims of 911

and terrorism the world over

May you rest in peace

Castle in the air

It was James Otis who first said that a "man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle...". Well, I am sad to observe that in Singapore, even the Law acknowledges that this is not necessarily true. There was a recent case where 2 people sued a man for not being dressed at all while he was in his house's kitchen. The inside of this kitchen faced a public area, and as the newspaper account went, these 2 women were walking pass it when they saw the man of the house all naked sitting in his kitchen. Their modesty was so outraged that they sued the man. The Courts agreed with the women and fined the man $2,000 for the indecent exposure and a follow-up act of agression against the same.

So now, I am very careful about being decently dressed while I am at home. All the more so as many public, and might I say also private, apartments face public wakways and other apartments' windows. I once observed that in Hong Kong apartments, you could just reach out with your hands to touch your neighbours' window. Such was the congestion and design of their houses. Nowadays you can say the same about Singapore. At least you could see clearly into someone else's apartment.

Why would anyone move around in his/her apartment dressed to the zeros (as opposed to nines, i.e.?) Well, given Singapore's hot and humid climate, this would be the most sensible thing to do, actually. Nowadays, I sweat even when I remain still, sitting on my sofa chair in the living room. Sometimes, I take off my shirt and go around the house in nothing more than a pair of shorts. How short is my shorts? Well, that is my business. But that is exactly the issue. How much or how little must you have on before you offend the modesty of some prudish women (or men for that matter) and land up in court on the opposite side of the law? Nobody is forcing anyone to look into somebody's castle...err house. You are not forced to be a kay-poh. You choose to be one. If you take a look and see a naked man or woman in the house and am offended by what you see, that is your problem. You shouldn't even contemplate taking the owner of the house to court for exposing whatever. We talk of being tolerant when religion is concerned, but we must be equally tolerant of what the master of the house chooses to do, short of committing a crime. An act of indecency you say? What is indecent to you may be common sense to another, so long as it is done in his castle.

Rain or shine

All of a sudden, some locals are now concerned about the safety (and comfort?) that employers employ in ferrying their foreign workers to and from work. Right now, many of these foreign workers sit at the opened back of their employers' station wagons. Some of these station wagons, or lorries or trucks (whichever word you use depends on where you come from) are not covered, so workers hold on to whatever they can to steady themselves while the lorry moves. Some lorries have roof shelters, so when it rains, they are protected. Some have additional fencing so workers can sit on raised wooden planks installed across or along the sides of these lorries, probably making the ride more comfortable.

Responding to safety concerns, some people are suggesting a gamut of things - not about making the lorries safer, but suggesting that employers abandon the use of their lorries in favour of using buses and the like for ferrying their workers. One has even accused Singapore of being worse than what some 3rd World countries practise. For example, someone pointed out that China has laws that disallow the use of lorries for this purpose. Well I am not sure if that law exists in the first place, and even if it does, whether it exists nation-wide. Just becaues a local says so to make a point does not mean it is so.

I think in their fervour to make it safer for our foreign workers,we are forgetting one important thing. And that is to keep costs low for our business owners. Otherwise, these same businesses will lose out to our regional neighbours resulting in the retrenchment of these foreign workers. Then these best safety practices will be moot. It will be a supreme irony - that 'better' laws or rules that are meant to protect our foreign workers' safety will result in their being sent home prematurely. Sure we can have First World best practices. This also means we will have First World costs.

I have ridden behind open-top lorries and station wagons before. While it can be thrilling, I recognise the danger that it poses. But I also think that if passengers practice sensible care, this mode of transport can be quite comfortable and safe. Of course when it rains, it can get uncomfortable, but it is nothing that a tarpaulin cannot fix. Even with a roof, water can splash in, and you'd just have to wear a water-proof overalls for cover. Sure this isn't as comfortable and ideal as a bus, but if it is going to kill the foreign workers' job, which would they prefer? Before we pontificate on what our employers should do, shouldn't was ask them - the foreign workers, what they want?

Thank you foreigners!

Tunnel boring for Singapore's MRT circle line was completed today. (Today and The Straits Times, 18 August 2009, p12 and p4 respectively). The Straits Times had a picture showing the large boring mechanism in the background and everyone clapping and jumping in celebration. Normally this is unremarkable. Sure they should be happy. Its a job completed without any more loss of life. But one thing caught my attention about the photograph.

If one didn't know better, one could be forgiven to think that the boring took place somewhere in India. Every single person in the picture looks like an Indian! I don't see any Chinese, or Ang Mo for that matter. It just goes to show that the real credit for Singaporean's getting a world-class transport system is due in no small measure to some of our imports - foreign labours, just as it took our forebears - today's Singaporeans' fathers and grandfathers who hail from India and China, to build Singapore into the modern city-state that it is today. Even as Singapore celebrates its National Day, it bears remembering that our prosperity, our first-class infrastructure, comes from the toil and sweat of the very same peoples who settled in this land more than 50 years ago and whose sons from that same faraway land continue to do so today.

Yes, they are not doing it for free. But the smiles on their faces, and the jubilant cheering (I can only imagine this) shows how much pride they have in their work. Imagine, celebrating an achievement which they may never get to enjoy as they must go home to India (or wherever they came from) one day. Given that most Singaporeans are unwilling to work in such jobs anymore, we owe them a debt of gratitude in helping make our journeys to and from work faster and a lot more bearable.

Truth and pragmatism

"We the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as...."

This National Day, our 44th, much was made of it. We got as many people as possible to recite that pledge at 8.22pm during the National Day celebrations at the Marina Bay and everywhere else. Many would have reflected on the words in the pledge, what it really meant to them, why, as a student, they had to recite it every school day (except when it poured rain or H1N1 or SARS), and whether they even meant what they say.

It would appear that there are some who are dead serious about it. NMP Viswa Sadasivan spoke about squaring our public policies with the words of the pledge, something that, one would say, is obvious. You say what you mean and mean what you say, so the saying goes.

But, as any citizen and long-time resident would know, this is not exactly how Singapore works. There is what the Americans would call affirmative action - positive discrimination in favour of a particular race in Singapore from the very first day it was founded as an independent nation. So it isn't regardless of race. Maybe language, maybe religion, but certainly not race. The Chinese race is dominant but it has been pragmatic enough to realise that it lives in a sea of countries dominant in a race that is a minority on the island of Singapore. And that therefore, it must pay especial attention to this fact - discriminate, regard the race, in order to move forward toward happiness, prosperity and progress.

Some would disagree, as the honourable NMP does, because we would want to be true to ourselves and what we say. But ironically, we have to be schizophrenic if we want to maintain a semblance of sanity and order. On the other hand, when you think about it, a mother does not neccessarily treat all her children the same. One may born less well endowed. Another may be stronger. So a good parent will discriminate against the stronger in favour of the weaker because she knows that the stronger can fend for himself, whereas the weaker needs more support. Of course the wish is that one day, the weaker one will be able to stand up for himself and find his own place in society, confident, independent and contributing in his own way to others. This is called paternalism - a label that Singapore has had for a very long time. So all these are nothing new. MM Lee Kuan Yew reminded Singaporeans in Parliament on Tuesday.

Is this the best state of affairs? I think few would say 'yes'. Those who say 'no' look for a day when it will be. MM says it will take tens, if not hundreds of years, and even leaves it open if it will ever be reached. Many will agree that we are on a journey, that the journey is more important than the destination, because if and when we reach the destination, then what? Is it even a desirable goal in the first place?

But I must give credit to NMP Sadasivan for bring up the issue. I suppose that is what NMP's are for - to challenge the status quo, push the boundaries and provoke thought, whether one agrees with the proponent or not.

Uncock the bottle

Today is Singapore's 44th National Day. Today, Singapore is just as racially diverse as it was 44 years ago, perhaps more so. 44 years ago, we had Indians, Chinese, Malays and Eurasians. There were, of course, the Europeans - mostly British - our former British colonial masters who stayed behind to support a fledgeling nation, if only for a while. And among the locals, there were the sub-groups among the Chinese and Indians - the Cantonese, the Hokkiens, the Teochews, and among the Indians - the Malayalees, the Tamils, the Sikhs. The Malays were probably the most homogenous group, this land being historically theirs, until the British colonised Malaya.

Today, 44 years later, we have just as many diverse people. The Chinese dialect among the younger Singaporeans have almost died out, though there are still among them some, like me, who continue to speak Cantonese (or whichever dialect) at every opportunity. Some people think I am a Hong Konger, but I am never more Singaporean than a Singaporean. Nevertheless, the island's Mandarin only regime (particularly in the mass media) is stifling. It hides our identities, no, it has buried our identities, RIP. Our children no longer speak these dialects, not even if you tempt them with rewards beyond their years.

But we have been joined by people from all over the world - expatriates here to earn a living. Some have stayed - the Czechs, the Serbians, the Hong Kongers, the Shanghainese, the Beijingers, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, the Burmese, and yes, the Americans too - and married locals, producing yet other species of children among us. Truly, the Singapore of 44 years is now as diverse as it has ever been. Today, we are not puzzled by our neighbours who speak Hakka, or Hokkien. We are puzzled by very much more strange tongues when we travel the MRT subway. Though sometimes disconcerting, it is probably a good thing. We have retained, if not grown our cultural diversity. We remember that it has always ever been this way, though sadly, some feel threatened by strange skins and strange languages, as we did 44 years ago.

But this is the only way Singapore can grow. It is probably the easiest way. The locals want smaller families, either by choice or forced by choice - they want the good life above any toddler who may be a hindrance. They cannot see beyond 50 years later and what they will live by. Perhap the CPF kitty, their wholly-owned apartments, have replaced whatever need for financial dependence on children in our old age that our parents used to have. And anyway, in the hothouse of the Singapore education system, you probably really can only afford one, at most two. Not because of the financial burden - we are much more well-off than our neighbours in surrounding countries, but the social and psychological pressure that comes with having our kids perform in exams - twice a year - for at least 12 continuous years. Surely it is too much for any parent to bear, after they have borned their own 12 years?

But I am thankful for the relative peace and safety of this place. So I take this opportunity to wish all Singaporeans a very happy and meaningful National Day. Let's uncock the bottle!

PM Lee's National Day Message

Corporate Responsibility

Some call it Corporate Social Responsibility - CSR for short. Corporations see it as good PR to be seen to be generous towards non-profit purposes, for the good of the community, such as acts of donations to charities, organising meaningly charitable events at their expense, and etc.

Great Eastern Life just did that - not in the usual way we associate it with CSR, but it is CSR at its best. Why? Because its payback is not immediate nor guaranteed while it swallows, on behalf of its investors, the losses that have fallen on its GreatLink Choice investment products. My mother made a startling remark about 5 months ago - that bankers have become professional fraudsters. For all her life, she has kept her money faithfully in a bank, not under the bed, nor in the drawer. And she got us all to keep our monies in the bank too, for the interest that it would earn. So can you blame her when she put a substantial amount of that money in what a relationship manager called a high-yield structured investment product? She had wanted to open a fixed deposit account with the cash, actually. After all, she has been trusted banks with her cash for over 40 years. Structured or not, the banks are selling it and they must have evaluated the product's risk. They said it was low-risk high-yield. What's more, they also threw in the principal guaranteed / principal protected words. Little did we know that banks' definition of 'guaranteed' and 'protected' can be so convoluted that it would take a couple of lawyers to untangle it, or make it more confusing, depending on who you spoke to.

So, 'Thank you', Great Eastern Life and OCBC Bank (the parent), for taking what must be a difficult decision to return all the money that people have invested in structured products with you, knowing that their values have plunged 40-80% today. That's good 'ol banking - honouring people's trust and keeping their money safe, like it has always been, until recently.

Public love

Singaporeans, they can take things a bit too far. So when the word went out about fines beings dished out to people who were caught eating on the subway trains, I insisted that it be done on buses as well. Then people protested that drinking water should be allowed and yet others say: have pity on the babies - let them be fed (milk from a bottel, I suppose) on trains and buses.

Now there is a swing the other way. Somebody suggested that amorous behaviour on these public transport vehicles be banned. Yes, it is not uncommon to find couples smooching away on public transport nowadays, hugging, kissing, dozing of each other's shoulders, if not the chest in broad daylight with the bus/train engine at full blast, as if there are no private spaces for them to do so. But hey, why discourage the behaviour? Taxpayers have had to throw millions of dollars to get people to be amorous behind closed doors in order to up the population numbers. Why don't we just let people go about their courting habits in full public view? It's their choice, really. If they don't mind being watched, I don't mind watching either.

Well, its an Asian thing, some say. Not very prim and proper. Some people are very sensitive to these things. Well, let me say that unless you are the parent, you have no business stopping them, unless they begin to take their clothes off in the process of their smooching. Otherwise, what is so bad about seeing two people expressing affection for each other? There's hope for mankind yet when there is love, whether its in the privacy of their spaces or in the publicity of the bus.

So boys and girls, keep doing it. God knows how life is so stressful nowadays without somebody telling us to sit straight and not even hold your partners' hands while you sit side by side on the bus, or the train.

Speak easy

I wonder why some people are still so hung up about speaking Good English in public, that there must only be one version of the language - the Queen's. A reader of Today was aghast to hear Singlish spoken and concluded that Singaporeans haven't progressed all that much, language wise.

Just the other day, I was having lunch at a just opened shopping mall. 2 teenage girls were sitting at the same 4-seater table with my companion and myself. One of the teenagers was a Caucasian. From her accent and tone of voice, I guess she was an American. The other teenager looked and dressed no differently from the typical Singapore Chinese teenager, except that when she opened her mouth, not for the food but to speak, she revealed a deeply accented American voice. They conversed in English, that much I could tell. But this Chinese girl's English was difficult to comprehend - I told my companion after they had left. It was heavily accented and she spoke so fast that it took all of my years of training in that language to understand what she was saying. Even then, I failed to understand her. Not that I wanted to eavesdrop, but you cannot not hear, you know, when you are seated next to each other in congested space. She was probably speaking 'well-formed' English, not Singlish. But you know, I would prefer Singlish any day. Language is about communication, and whatever and however it is done, so long as the message is conveyed, language has fulfilled its function.

This is not to say that 'standard' English has no place at all. Don't we all naturally switch to it when we need to address an audience in a formal setting, or when we converse with people whom we are not familiar with? We start off there, but when we become familiar with each other, we switch gear and converse in a manner that shows our affinity. I once tried to speak in full sentences all the time, but found that it formed a barrier to communication in some informal settings. So I have reverted to 'switching languages' as and when the occasion calls for it. Anyway, Singlish as a language has seen development over the last 50 years. We should embrace it and treasure it.

Demoted Bug

The gates have been lifted. Now, people getting flu is happening like a flood around me. 2 colleagues have taken medical leave, one as long as a 3-day MC. He wasn't that sick when I had lunch with him last week. Mr Khaw Boon Wan said in Parliament the other day that 53% of flu cases in Singapore from here on in will be due to H1N1. It would appear that he is correct?

Well, nobody is counting anymore these days, except the really serious cases at the hospitals. You get flu? You get flu, period. Except now you get a generous dose of MCs with your medicine (probably Tamiflu), and strong advice to rest at home. Yeah, let's dispense with the alphanumerics H1N1. People appear to be immune to its name nowadays. It is so widespread the world over that the bug has joined the ranks of the seasonal flu virus. What ignominy - to be referred to as a common bug. So some medical people are predicting the coming of H1N1V2 (version 2, i.e.). Somehow, such dire predictions have lost their shock factor. That is the problem when actual experience de-sensitises you.

Can I look forward to a visit by H1N1? According to Mr Khaw, there is more than a 50% chance that I will, what with the stories I hear of nowadays about colleagues and their children and their children's friends, and...

A fine society

Eating on the MRT (subway trains) and be fined $30? I say, fine them $500 - the amount that is applied ever since I was a kid. Don't you fine it ironic that 30 years ago, it was $500 and today, when Singaporeans are more affluent, you fine them as measly $30? It would solve the problem immediately. Otherwise, it'll be like the case of the guy, who was fined $1,500 recently, retorting that it was JUST ONLY that amount, that he could afford it, that it was no big deal. And why just only the MRT? Just the other day, there was a whiff of ham and cheesey smell when I was on a bus travelling home. Lo and behold, the teenage girl sitting just in front of my seat was eating away, oblivious of the aroma. Well, ok, the food smelled good, but what of noses that are less appreciative of the smell of ham and cheese, or what if she was eating something more, err, exotic? And this isn't the first time. Slightly more than two years ago, I captured on my HP camera a picture of a teenager eating away on a subway train and blogged how I noticed more and more people eating away on MRT trains. Well, it about time SMRT did something about this anti-social behaviour.

Yes, Singaporeans have become more affluent, and with it has gone the social graces that we lament about nowadays. I don't know if it is due to the lifestyle - that we need to fill in every waking hour of the day doing something besides looking out the window of life passing by on a bus or a train. But there is a good reason why food and drinks are not allowed, just as it is forbidden in offices and some other places, except canteens and restaurants. Food left behind in these places, whether intentionally or unintentionally, attracts creepy crawly vermints that can destroy things, besides scaring some people, especially the fairer sex, out of their wits. I know because I have to prepare to carry my wife when such creatures appear.

There are certain things that were done better in the past than now. How about it - lets up the fine to $500. That'll not only stop the littering, but the bugs will also stop appearing. Ahhh....heaven on earth.

An Inconvenient Virus

The Influenza A H1Ni virus is not a deadly virus. Yes, it has killed more than 12,000 people worldwide, but I understand that this number pales in comparison to the numbers that die from the seasonal flu virus, which I caught last week, probably from someone in the MRT Train while going to work a week earlier. Yes, 2 weeks ago, I have had a person sit next to me who was sniffing mucus all the way to my destination. I optimistically hoped that he had a case of sinus. Then there was the case when a woman sneezed while standing next to me in the train. Fortunately, she didn't sneeze in my direction, but she was standing next to me.

With over a hundred people identified with H1N1 and not a single fatality in Singapore, people are beginning to treat H1N1 as a variety of the seasonal flu. Only this flu strain is so new that we don't have a vaccine against it yet. Some pharma companies have announced positive results towards a vaccine but we do have other drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza, which have proven effective against it.

Really, the problem with H1N1 is not that you die from it. The inconvenience is that you get 'jailed by association' for it - a minimum 7-day quarantine period - either on your own, or in government mandated locations. That means that you can't earn a living, you can't socialise, you can't see your kids or your husband/wife. (Well, ok, for some people, this can be a blessing). Nor do they want to see you during this 1-week jail time. And you get to go to this 'jail' not because you carry the virus, but that you have been in contact with a person or persons who carried the virus. That's why people are afraid of travelling - not that they will die, but that they will be locked up. So holidayers who have gone overseas over the last couple of school vacation weeks will be treated as a separate class of citizens once school starts. Some wouldn't be in school with the rest of their classmates.

One only hopes that these vacationeers won't 'elevate' those who have stayed home to that separate category of people. So I thought it ludicrous that people think they can 'get away' from these complications by their staycation plans. What if that staycation involved a 4-day 3-nights at the Swissotel the Stamford over the last weekend, or even into this week when more athletes from around the region show up at the hotel?

So staycation or vacation, it makes no difference in Singapore because Singapore brings the world to its doorsteps anyway. The only way to avoid the bug, whether of the seasonal variety or the H1N1, is to go to 'jail' - voluntarily. No turning right, no turning left, just go straight to jail. That's what most of us are already doing, anyway. What an inconvenient virus!