While scientists step up the search for life on Mars, it’s all we can do down here on the Red Dot to see the outline of the MBS building on the horizon.
We shouldn’t really grumble, as we’re lucky here in Singapore. First of all, we’re lucky just to be here (I could stop there but I won’t). We don’t get typhoons, hurricanes, tsunamis or earthquakes. Dark things do happen but not half as much as in other countries. We get the odd Outrage of Modesty or Shoplift, but serious crime is rare. That said, to coin Adam Levene, it’s not always rainbows and butterflies, and we do have our own little menu of minor points:
1 Lightning bolts – we’re a topspot for this very real and present danger. There are alarms beside most public and school swimming pools and they sound out when they need to.
2 Flash floods – Orchard Road, of all places, floods every few years. That’s like Oxford Street being shut because it’s knee-high in rainwater.
3 Sunburn – another very real danger for idiots like me who go to Sentosa for the day but forget to ‘do’ their back. Am hiding from the skin doctor for a few months until the strap marks go.
4 Dengue Fever – we lived in a red zone for this last year, several friends caught it, one entire family checking in to a hospital ward together for several days: nasty.
Most of these things are avoidable though. You don’t have to go swimming in a storm. You can stock up on mossie stuff (though the buggers sometimes get you anyway). I’ll leave out snakes, spiders and monkeys because then we’re getting into household pets, sort of. Number Five, though, is a beast that’s hard to beat:
5 Yup, The Haze – smoke drifting across our country from seasonal crop-burning of peat fields in neighbouring Indonesia. Compared with other bits of Southeast Asia we are again lucky here, as it’s far worse for those living in the areas themselves than it is for us.
Here, it’s bad for those with dodgy lungs, but it’s mainly just a pest. At best the air smells smoky and you can’t see the sun. At worst, pharmacies run out of N95 masks, schools close and a small percentage of the population do feel properly ill in the lung department.
On really bad days, though, you simply can’t go out. You might sprint to a local shop if you need to, but you come back fast and wear your mask en route. You can taste it in the air. When it rains it’s dusty rain: very strange. Eyes prickle, throats hurt. Most schools had to close across Singapore last Friday – that’s an entire country of closed schools – and in parts of Malaysia schools were shut for three days on the trot, and still are closed on and off. Kids are running feral in the condo. We let them out to play on all but the worst of days, because we’re now in Week Four of the annual phenomenon that is only ever meant to last a week or so at most, and the children are all going bonkers.
Our school canteen – exposed to the air on several sides (as is the style here) – is closed every day this week, so children must take in food and eat in the classrooms. No huge hardship but a bummer if, like SM, you’re addicted to canteen pizzas and hate sandwiches, not to mention the knock-on financial effect for our catering supplier. Dogs and cats feel the choke too: no one escapes it.

Following it all online, and working out the PSI count (PM10? PSI? AQI?) is a sport for some, a dinner party topic for others, a real concern for those who need to see if and how The Haze is going to affect them that day/week/month. The fog brings out the best and the worst in people. Politicians go through the annual motions:
Singapore politely offers help. Indonesia accepts and then declines, pointing out that its neighbours are among the countries who buy into the whole farming thing in the first place, and noting that the same neighbours also don’t complain when it’s fresh air from Indonesia blowing their way. Fires are at last put out, sometimes after a longer while than usual, and then we do it all over again next year.
Meanwhile, monkeys die (as do some humans, according to the odd news report) and people’s houses burn down. Those who don’t have a computer at all won’t care about reading up on any of this, they’ll just want to survive another year of it. What the answer might be is beyond our guesses but frustrations are rising, notably amongst the expat communities who head to Bali and Phuket when things get really bad. This year seems to be an El Nino of a Haze, and flights to clearer skies can be had at the moment for the price of a bottle of wine here in Singapore (wine IS expensive, though).
This year the whole foggy business has touched base with fashionistas, as a natty range of fancypants masks is selling out across the island. We’ve got ours already: free 24-hour courier delivery, perfect fit and pretty trendy if I do say so. I don’t go anywhere without mine, though I do find it hard to enjoy a glass of white while wearing it.
I’m a some-time dodgy lung person so I don’t especially enjoy our foggy days but the worst that’s happened to me of late is that I mistakenly took my mask out to the school bus stop as well as a cup of coffee, then couldn’t decide on the best use of my mouth. October trips were planned this week for years 4 through 9 but camps were all cancelled, every single one of them. For the school it’s a huge headache, for the kids [OK, for some kids] it’s disappointing, for the camps I should imagine it’s a logistical and financial nightmare. For me it means steering a much more painful path through a three-day social marathon that would have been entirely doable had I not had to get someone up every morning and tackle the horrors of homework, shower and bedtime every night. And I can’t go road running, so my next planned event, in December, will be much more painful than previously anticipated. That’s it, though – could be worse.
We’re off to Japan in two weeks time and as our flight steers a carbon-ripping trail through hazy skies I’ll breathe a big old oxygenated sigh of relief at eight days of Nippon air. The best I can do on return is look for Palm Oil products in shops, and then ban them, and sign any petition I can find that needs signing.