Remembering my first drowned body job

Last month, naval divers recovered the body of the 16-year-old boy who drowned in Seletar Reservoir.

For them, a 'drowned body job' or the recovery of a drowned body is probably the most gruesome part of their work.

Imagine being submerged in water for hours and combing the murky depths for a bloated corpse which sometimes has begun to decompose.

You're not sure you can find the body. If you do, you can finally go home and get a much desired shower. If you don't, well, you don't.

It isn't a pretty sight, let me tell you, although I was never a naval diver myself. And then you have to bring it to the surface.

Even diving gloves don't mitigate the horror of touching the cold dead flesh of a recently drowned human being.

And you never get used to it because drowned body jobs aren't frequent enough to allow you to. However, they are frequent enough for you to dread
them.

Unless, of course, you happen to be me. Then you almost sort of look forward to them. You see, many years ago, during my full-time NS stint, I was an underwater medic in the navy.

One of my duties was to accompany naval diving teams on their assorted 'jobs' in case of any medical emergency.

Fortunately, I didn't have to do any diving, even though I was in the first batch of underwater medics to complete the basic underwater diving course. The course was the most interesting thing I ever did in my life at that point. Since then, the most interesting thing I ever did was share a lift with MTV VJ Denise Keller. Twice.

My first drowned-body job was on St John's island. An old woman had fallen into the water while disembarking from a ferry and drowned. Our task wasn't to rescue her, but to retrieve her remains.

I remember that it was a lovely day, apart from the fact that someone had just died a horrible unexpected death.

I waited with my medical pouch, oxygen tanks and automatic resuscitator set on the jetty while the divers searched for the body below.

I think it was also the first and only time I had been to St John's. I was enjoying the change of pace away from my regular routine at the base medical centre - and then the divers found the body.

After she was brought to the surface, foam oozed out of her mouth, which is what usually happens in drowning cases. It was an indelible image for a bookish then-20-year-old homebody like me.

I was grateful my job wasn't to save her (so, no mouth-to-mouth, thank goodness!). My job was only to take care of my divers.

I tagged along for several more drowned body jobs after that, but that was the only time I ever saw a corpse.

Because of these memorable experiences and more, I now look back on my years of national service with a perverse nostalgia as I'm soon about to 'retire' as an operationally-ready NSman.

Is it simply the mourning for lost youth? Or is it due to the sad truth that if it weren't for NS, my life would be even more boring than it already is, Denise Keller notwithstanding.

My next in-camp training will be my last. It won't include drowned body jobs.

- Published in The New Paper, 24 July 2005

UPDATE: Dear Jack Neo, you don't wanna mess with this frogman

Great Singapore Sale is Christmas Part Deux

The Great Singapore Sale is like Christmas.

Except that nobody complains about the Great Singapore Sale getting over-commercialised because the whole point of the Great Singapore Sale is over-commercialism.

Like Christmas, it is a major island-wide annual sales event loved by shoppers and retailers of all races and religions, but without the downer minor-chord spiritual undertones.

However, unlike Christmas, the GSS offers none of that guilt-freeing pseudo-altruistic rubbish about 'the joy of giving'.

You're shopping for yourself - not your overbearing family, your fairweather friends, your vain-glorious boss, your back-stabbing colleagues or your incompetent underlings, but you, you, you! It's all about you, baby. So no gift-wrapping necessary!

Correction: At the GSS, you are not shopping for yourself, but for your country! Remember when Sars emptied the malls and emaciated the economy two years ago?

The fate of the GSS came to represent the fate of the Republic itself. Shopping, no longer a mere national pastime, became a matter of life and death. Buying that pair of lavender Bonia open-toe wedges at 15 per cent off at Robinson's became an act of profound patriotism.

Unlike the Great Singapore Sale, Christmas cannot be cancelled or postponed, Dr Seuss notwithstanding.

However, although the season can begin whenever we want, like October, it absolutely, positively must end promptly at midnight on Dec 25. Thank heavens someone invented the post-Christmas sale. Can a Post-Great Singapore Sale sale be far behind?

Unlike Christmas, we don't send cards wishing each other a 'Merry Great Singapore Sale'.

But, like Christmas, the Great Singapore Sale falls conveniently on the long school holiday for the kids to avoid jostling with the maddening weekend crowd when maxing out their parents' credit cards.

Unlike Christmas, there are no songs written about the Great Singapore Sale - yet.



But if you need some musical accompaniment to your bargain-hunting, you can download 'Shop Around', either the original Miracles' version from the '60s or Captain and Tennille's version from the '70s will do fine.

Something from the '80s? You can't go wrong with the Pet Shop Boys' Shopping.



For something more recent, there's Candy Shop by 50 Cent, which is not about shopping at all (sample lyric: 'I take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollipop'), but at least contains the word 'shop' is in the title.



Like Christmas, the GSS coincides with the Hollywood blockbuster movie season, perfect timing to hawk all those Star Wars and Batman movie merchandising. Well, the kids on holiday need to milk their parents' credit cards on something, don't they?

This November, the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire will lead the holiday blockbuster charge along with all the attendant merchandising, just in time for - what else? - Christmas.



It will be the young wizard's second major appearance of the year. The new book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be out soon. When? Why, in two weeks during the GSS, of course.

Finally, unlike Christmas, the GSS has no special trees, no Orchard Road light-up and no mythical obese elderly Caucasian male who likes children a little too much.

And the difference that makes the difference? No year-end bonus to spend.

- Published in The New Paper, 3 July 2005

Stop fare increase? Ha! Take a hike

So the public transport fare hike has been approved. Is anyone really surprised?

What surprised me was that people protested against the fare hike as if it would actually make a difference. Haven't we been through this before? Like only three years ago? In the middle of a recession?

Trying to stop the rising cost of public transportation is like attempting to halt the march of time itself. You might as well stand in front of a moving bus that will cost you a couple of cents more to ride from July 1.

I was watching Channel 5 news when the newsreader blithely introduced a report about how Singaporeans felt about the fare hike.

Over-reacting as usual, I yelled at my crumbling nine-year-old Sony Trinitron.

'How do you expect Singaporeans to feel about the price hike! We love it? We're not paying enough! We have too much money! Oh, the top execs of big companies are grossly underpaid! They need a raise!'

True enough, the first couple of 'men in the street' interviewed by the reporter were against the fare hike, as if that was news.

Knowing that would-be journalists are required to report both sides of the story to appear objective, I was wondering how the reporter was going to find someone who wasn't against the price increase.

Who would want to pay more for anything? The reporter did find the person. A woman appeared on-screen and said: 'No more than five cents. I think that's acceptable.'

Mouth agape, I was stunned.

Didn't she know that for lower-income workers who have to take public transport every day, even a less than five cents fare hike per trip adds up?

But the fact is that if fuel costs and inflation rise, we might have to go through the whole rigmarole again. Some things are beyond tiny Singapore's control.

Another fare hike will be announced. Another TV news report about how Singaporeans feel about the fare hike. Another public outcry.

And we'll still be paying more for fares.

In another three years, it's going to be deja vu all over again.



But I'm okay with it. I've accepted that the public transportation cost will continue to rise like I've accepted that I will grow old and die, unless I get hit by a moving bus. Then I'll be skipping the growing old part.

What irks me is all this 'public outcry' stuff - people writing letters to the newspapers complaining about how the fare hike is unjustified, the columns, the petitions, et cetera.

It's just so tiresomely predictable, almost Pavlovian. I guess we all just need to vent. Get it out of our system. If we're going to pay more for anything, we should at least get to bitch about it.

It might make it difficult for service providers to push through the next price increase. Who knows? Maybe one day, protests might prevail and prevent a price hike.

And we'll stop the globe from spinning around a little red dot.

- Published in The New Paper, 5 June 2005