Singapore

DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMEONE TO BLAME

It appears that no one in power in Malaysia has ever heard of being accountable for their actions. 

It does not seem that way across the Causeway. 

On Thursday, the chairman of Changi Airport Group, Liew Mun Leong, resigned days after Singapore’s High Court not only acquitted his former maid of stealing from him but criticised the allegations brought against her.

Liew, 74, had been the group’s founding chairman since 2009. 

In a separate statement, Liew said he had also resigned as an advisor to Temasek International and several other board positions he had been holding. He had decided to retire. 

The maid, Indonesia’s Parti Liyani was acquitted of stealing more than S$34,000 worth of items from Liew and his family. She’d worked for the family for a decade. 

In his judgment, Justice Chan Seng Onn said there was an “improper motive” for mounting the allegations against Parti. This drew the notice of the Attorney-General whose chambers then said the judge’s comments “do raise questions which warrant further investigations.”

It could be that Liew was told, even ordered, to quit but the fact remains that he did. And that might still not be sufficient to get him off the hook. 

Compare and contrast this to Malaysia where the truth varies but which is still a land of promise, especially before a general election. Here, the politicians like to make all the decisions without any of the responsibility. 

But the best proof that light travels faster than sound is the Malaysian minister or deputy minister: they all appear to be intelligent until they open their mouths. 

And no one, not a solitary soul, ever contemplates resignation as a consequence of stupidity or wrongdoing.  

The examples, to say the least, are legion. 

A full minister, with his family in tow, goes to Turkey and comes back without the mandatory two-week quarantine. When the news was leaked, he was fined RN1,000 after the fact. And this after a woman was jailed and fined RM8,000 for a similar offence. 

Neither has the minister ever apologised. 

A university student in rural Sabah climbs a tree for better Internet connectivity to take an online examination. When she posts this on her Facebook page, two deputy ministers castigate her decrying her post as fake. 

When they get lambasted online, they retreat in a hurry and another minister flies to Sabah to apologise to the family. One of the two deputies has since apologised while the other quietly deleted his offending post without apologising,  

Then there was the MP from the Islamic Party of Malaysia. During the debate on new drink driving laws, the not-very-informed lawmaker suggested that the Bible had been perverted presumably because it did not condemn the consumption of wine. 

When this prompted an uproar, the unrepentant MP advised Christians that they “had no right” to be offended as his statement had been “a fact.” 

The wannabe Bible scholar has been remarkably blasé about his thesis since. 

But why should we be surprised? 

A former premier has been found guilty of corruption, tax-dodging and gross abuse of power involving billions of dollars. Yet, as his judge noted, he has shown “no remorse” and has swaggered about since, appearing to all the world as the soul of probity. 

WELCOME TO THE RAFFLES

The Raffles Hotel in Singapore is located on what seems to be a misnomer of an address because there isn’t a beach in sight. 

But the imposing colonial-style building eponymously named after Singapore’s founder still squats along Beach Road. That’s because when it was built over a century ago, the sea was visible through shimmering palms in the malarial heat of an island Sir Stamford thought might be a nifty port. 

The malaria is gone but the heat is still around although it’s dispelled by the many ceiling fans that line the route our guide takes to lead us to The Courtyard. 

We have now been stuck in Singapore for over five months largely because we landed a day before Malaysia imposed its movement control order. 

Then, just when it seemed that we could return to home quarantine, some idiots were taped breaking home quarantine and that loophole got closed.  

So, we thought we’d have a drink at the Raffles which was, at least, vaguely historic. I mean, Somerset Maugham staved off the chills via stiff G-and-T’s at the hotel’s Long Bar. 

Alas, the Long Bar was closed due to the virus, Rudolfo regretted but assured us the Courtyard would be just as good. 

We are led to a table amid the strains of the Stones’ Paint It Black, which I suppose is sort of par for the course for six in the evening. Rudolfo is from Chile and he’s here because he “followed my girlfriend home.” 

You have to suppose that’s as good a reason as any. 

We scan the menu and that’s when you realise how good the island is at branding itself internationally.

We learn that the Singapore Sling was invented in 1915 in the Long Bar by one Mr Ngiam, a bartender whose verve with gin-based cocktails endeared him to so many British hostesses that it made his at-first-shyly-offered pink confection an instant hit. 

We didn’t have one though: they were priced at S$35 a pop. 

But the guy who dubbed it the Singapore Sling was a genius who put the drink, its origin, on the map. 

Why can’t we do the same thing?

Malaysia is supposed to have invented Yee Sang so let’s just christen it the Kay-El Toss and get on with it. Why not Seremban Eggs for Foo Yong Tan? Tambun pomelos, anyone? And so on, ad infinitum.

And the thing that simply screams out to Malaysians visiting the Raffles Hotel is this: Malaysia has a zero history – zilch, nada, zip – of preservation or maintenance.  

The Kuala Lumpur Railway Station could be every bit as colonially imposing as The Raffles but history hangs shabbily on its frame. It is grubby; it has Ficus (a parasitic vegetation) growing in its cracks and it’s downright embarrassing given the billions squandered on wasteful projects or outright theft. 

Remember the country’s rest houses? They used to be quasi-motels where you could get a good meal relatively cheaply and a clean bed/toilet for the same privilege. These used to be looked-forward-to staples back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now ask yourself: where are they now? 

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

We came back to Singapore about a month ago. 

It was about seven in the evening when we finally pulled into our service apartment block. Waiting at the lifts, we could see out the glass doors into the swimming pool area where we both heard and saw a raucous Latin American party in full swing. 

The salsa and hip-hop continued well into the night and we marvelled at the republic’s seeming certitude. We had just arrived from Kuala Lumpur where there was, and still is, a movement control order being enforced amid a complete lockdown. 

Much has changed since then. Singapore, which used to be touted as a global model for its handling of the pandemic, got knocked off its pedestal about two weeks ago. 

Indeed, when attempting to justify the huge numbers in the United States, talk show hosts routinely engage in bromides like “Even Singapore has had to…”

It would appear that the coronavirus is the great leveller of fortunes. 

Still, Singapore tries to be different by avoiding words like lockdown or controls. No, the republic has merely instituted a “circuit breaker” and, truth be told, it’s much milder than in Malaysia. 

The basic rules of lockdown still apply. You may no longer eat at restaurants and most shops are closed except for those selling essentials. In supermarkets Xs mark the spots where people might line up while still remaining safely socially distant from one another. 

Indeed, these markings are everywhere – in subway cars and buses, even lifts. And almost everyone now works from home. 

But the numbers keep rising ominously. At the time of writing, the island’s total number of infections crossed the 4,000 mark while Thursday saw the highest number of new cases in a day (over 700). 

The rules keep tightening to keep apace of the threat. Early on, for example, we were “advised” that wearing masks might be useful. And it was “recommended.” 

Very soon, it was not just desirable but necessary on pain of financial hurt or what the republic deems to be a “fine.” And it’s a fine thing too because enforcement, like death, is inevitable: there are closed circuit televisions everywhere. 

The subways and buses still run and, masked, we can still go walking in the Botanic Gardens. The joggers, however, are still allowed to run unmasked which is puzzling as they are probably the largest droplet-emitters in the Gardens at any one time. 

But this is Singapore, and no one questions authority. Sometimes, however, it’s carried to the point of absurdity. Case in point: yesterday evening, we spotted numerous people driving solo, yet they were wearing masks.  Why on earth would anyone have to wear a mask while driving alone in an air-conditioned car? One suspects there is no such rule. 

But Singaporeans have been conditioned over years to avoid chewing gum and people called Jay, walking. Methinks they are being simply prudent and prefer to err on the side of caution. Indeed, everyone follows whatever directives the Singapore government deems fit without comment or talk-back. 

It’s like PMS, it’s simply that, period!

Which is why, I’m continually amazed to read stories in the Malaysian press that relate to the sorts of things our countrymen get up to during the MCO – golfing, arguing, even yelling at the police. And government parliamentarians have returned to the bad old days of being appointed to cushy GLC jobs…Alas, it appears that nothing has changed. 

IT’S A ROYAL FLUSH AT MARINA BAY SANDS

From a purely academic standpoint, legalised gambling began in the United States out of a desire to bring a little more decorum to poker than the non-negotiable: “My Colt-45 beats your four aces.” 

Very quickly, governments all over the world realised that gambling, if severely taxed and zealously regulated, could prove a boon to public balance sheets. 

The desire to create something out of nothing based on nothing more than dumb luck and “a hunch” has generally proven irresistible to human beings the world over. 

The above hypothesis must be tempered against the notion that many religionists think, which is, gambling is the best way to create nothing out of something. 

Gambling as a business must also be distinguished from the business that is gambling as in, say, playing the stock markets or betting on horses. 

In any case, all this probably explains why P.T. Barnum, allegedly the Greatest Showman on Earth, coined the phrase: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

A qualified corollary to that saying is “a sucker and his money are soon parted”. Casinos have taken it one step further arguing that it was “morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money if he entered a casino in the first place”. 

The 2009 global financial crisis hit many countries hard. One such nation was Singapore which then began looking for an industry that was recession proof. 

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist in the People’s Action Party to get it, and the island introduced two casinos dubbed “integrated resorts” because they boasted other facilities like theme parks and the like. 

It worked spectacularly. Wikipedia, my general reference of choice, describes the Singapore integrated resorts as some of “the most profitable casinos in the world.”

With that in mind, you would expect the casinos to pull out all the stops, right? I mean, giving back something to the customer is sound business sense and quite moral to boot. It’s even quoted in the Bible: “It is in giving that you receive”.

So now you might understand the sheer scope, the imagination, of the idea embodied in the next sentence. 

Six toilets at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore have received the six-star rating from the Restroom Association of Singapore – RASA to its friends and admirers. Indeed, it’s the first toilets in Singapore to be awarded its top rating.

Under the toilet grading system, six-star or “magnificent restrooms” are expected to use smart technology and employ cleaners who have completed a Workforce Skills Qualification module in washroom cleaning. 

You need a diploma to clean toilets? Well, only in Singapore. 

Everything is all very IT and so Applesque that you’d think Steve Jobs had miraculously been resurrected. I mean, these toilets have detectors which measure the level of ammonia in the air only to relay this information to cleaners via SMS.

Once odour levels exceed a certain threshold, a text message goes to the cleaners with information about which toilet is affected. Said toilet then plays the theme song from Ghostbusters. In short, nothing is left to chance. 

Of course, there can be too much of a good thing. One employee got so carried away by Elon Musk’s predictions of a “paperless” future that he had to be dissuaded from removing all the toilet paper from said rest rooms.

Now consider, if you will, how the toilet rating agency might react to being asked to rate local Malaysian rest rooms. 

The whole experiment was called off after the restrooms at the budget terminal were given an F9 rating with a “OMG, I’m out of here” outlook. 

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT THAT LITTLE RED DOT

In 2007 or thereabouts, we were informed that Tony Tan, the chairman of Singapore Press Holdings at the time, was coming down to Kuala Lumpur and would like to meet all SPH correspondents for breakfast at his hotel. 

I was the KL bureau chief of Singapore Business Times at the time and so was duly present and accounted for at said meeting.  Mr Tan tuned out to be a bespectacled gentleman who arched a supercilious eyebrow on learning that all of us, except for Reme Ahmad, were Malaysian.

“Really?” asked the man who would go on to becomes the republic’s seventh President.  He volunteered that Malaysians had “serious issues”, the final word of which he articulated with some surprise and not a little distaste. He pronounced it carefully too and it rhymed with “misuse.”

On the plus side, it appeared that we were creative, even a nation of copywriters. As an example, he cited the acronyms we came up with to name our highways – Duke, Plus, Elite or Sprint. 

At the time, I thought he was being condescending and I remember being repelled.

In hindsight, I may have misjudged the good Mr Tan. 

Since January, my wife has taken up a position in Singapore and I have spent a great deal of time there. Mr Tan must have got his insights about highways just by listening to the traffic reports. 

“Traffic is backed up on the PIE and don’t even think about going on to the AYE. But the SLE is fine and both the MCE and the PKE are only mildly congested. ”

No, the MCA is not a high school examination and neither is SLE a disease. They are all highways, parkways or expressways. 

Given the grim reality of ceaseless traffic reports on the radio, you too might want to call for copywriters. 

As an island nation, Singapore is a lot more humid than, say, Kuala Lumpur. But you wouldn’t know it, not if like us, you stay in a serviced apartment. Perhaps power is cheaper there because our apartment is always cold to the point of intolerance. I went around shutting off the various air conditioning units in each room the first day we arrived and it’s still cold. 

It’s like that everywhere – the hotel lobbies, the restaurants. The temperature seems permanently set at 18 degrees. You really have to exercise like crazy to sweat in the gym as the cold there is of operating-theatre quality. 

And you get used to it after a while, walking down Orchard Road. You know, the old now-you-chill, now-you-bake feeling as you alternately experience a cold gust of air-conditioning from one open store front before you step back on to the swelter of downtown Singapore. 

Even so, there is much to appreciate about Singapore – its cleanliness, its safety and, wonder of wonders, its absolute absence of potholes anywhere. 

And there is an ingrained element of maintenance in its culture that we would do well to emulate. Every time I enter the country, I am struck by the number of people on trucks I see pruning trees and shrubs so that they are not a liability during violent thunderstorms as they regularly are in Kuala Lumpur. 

There’s a lot right about our southern neighbour. We should accept that reality with grace.