Well we might as well get started.
There just happens to be a copy of yesterday's Straits Times in the Airline Lounge and it was like slipping on a comfy pair of old slippers. Things are very, very different. The old ads for weekend specials at Yaohan are the same as they were twenty years ago. There is no rugby news but half page badminton reports. The obituary columns are still fascinating with all their formal pictures taken of the dear departed about fifty years ago.
The tenor of the news has not changed either. Whilst the Herald is spending time reporting the latest Mongrel Mob (or Filthy Few, Headhunters, Black Power.....) outrage complete with name supression for everyone from the alleged perpetrators through to the paper boy, the Straits Times is telling us what countries who are serious about law and order do about things.
There is on the front page a picture of a bloke who is apparently a famous TV presenter. Name and inside leg measurement there for all to see. He is accused of drunk driving at a level of 53mcg/100ml breath alcohol. He is 'lucky' to have been released on $10,000 bail. Then there are the twelve anglers who hired a boat from a Punggol (north coast of S'pore) marina for an evening of piscatorial pursuit. They cut the engine for a spot of drift fishing and strayed into Malaysia's territorial waters. These are the standard 12nm from the coast and Singapore is about half a mile from Malaysia as the crow flies and so this transgression at the whim of the wind and tide is not hard to achieve. Anyway instead of going home to Toa Payoh with a sweetlips for tea these poor buggers are sitting in Kota Tinggi court house. There is of course a picture of all twelve and they don't look that chuffed with life. They are looking at $10,000 (don't they have any smaller denomination in S E Asian legal circles) fine and a few months in choky. Think on that next time you are drifting off Anchorite.
The financial section of the paper is almost twice as thick as the news section which gives you some idea as to where the priorities of this business - I mean country - lie. I left Singapore twelve years ago having lived there for over a decade and you can not imagine how much I am looking forward to spending a week there amongst good friends and immersed in a society for which I have an enormous amount of time. Maybe not everbody's cup of tea but I love it.
Now if we could just organise a work experience month for the S'pore government in, say, Wellington............
No comments:
Post a Comment