National Day makes people do crazy things like 'haka' cheer video & shuttlecock flag

Blame National Day.

Okay, maybe not blame National Day, but blame the people who seem to go a little nuts because of National Day.

Every year, starting in July, you see National Day decorations in every HDB estate, presumably put up by the residents’ committees (RCs).

Flags are to National Day what ex-SAF senior officers are to SMRT management – you can never have enough of them.

In the Yew Tee area where I live, the RC would hang something 10-storey high between blocks 673 and 673A. It could be one giant flag or many smaller flags arranged to form a number representing the age of the nation in case you forgot.





And it’s usually a disaster because at that altitude, the strong wind would wreak havoc on the display and it would be removed before National Day.

But the people who put up the display never give up.

Every year, they would hang something different up there, hoping to beat the wind. And almost every year, the wind wins.

If I were a cornier writer, I would say their persistence symbolises the resilience of Singaporeans who have faced countless challenges in the nation’s 53-year history. But I’m not.

I wish they would give up.

This year, they hung up one small flag with many little holes in it, presumably to let the wind blow through.



Unfortunately, the flag was misshapen due to the holes and from a distance, they resembled bullet holes. Our national flag looked like it had been through a war and Singapore lost.

What’s wrong with these people?

There’s something about National Day that seems to cloud your one’s judgment. For some people, the cloud can be a thunderstorm.

It’s like a form of patriotism-induced temporary dementia.

You hear the National Day songs so often that you can’t think straight any more.

So maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on the folks from Keppel Corporation who were ridiculed for their National Day cheer video, where they performed their awkward version of the haka, the traditional Maori war dance from New Zealand.



And you thought the Keppel Offshore & Marine bribery scandal was bad.

I guess I also shouldn’t be too hard on the Yew Tee RC. At least they try and they mean well.

Then one day, the bullet-riddled flag wasn’t there any more.

But it wasn’t gone – just moved to ground level. The wind claimed yet another victory.

That was when I got a chance to see the flag up close and realised the holes weren’t holes.

Plot twist!

The flag was actually made up of thousands of shuttlecocks.

Yes, the feathery thing you play badminton with that’s so much fun to say. Shuttlecock.



For the upper half of the flag, the shuttlecocks were painted red. The crescent and stars were just cardboard cut-outs, but I was still impressed.

All the hard work the volunteers must have put into collecting the used shuttlecocks and creating the 2.3m-by-1.5m flag symbolises the resilience of Singaporeans who have faced countless challenges in the nation’s 53-year history.



You might ask me, why shuttlecocks? I would ask you, why not shuttlecocks?

But why the RC initially hung the shuttlecock flag 10 storeys high where you couldn’t see the shuttlecocks I don’t know.

Maybe it was due to the patriotism-induced temporary dementia caused by National Day I mentioned earlier.

But now that the flag has come down to earth, they don’t seem so crazy after all.

Shuttlecock.

- Published in The New Paper, 6 August 2018

Plogging: Swedish 'fitness craze' is up and running in Singapore (and picking up litter)

Running to keep fit?

Why not help the environment by picking up litter along the way?

That was what 12 members of the local running group Superhero Runners did yesterday morning in the Rail Corridor.



It's called plogging.

And it's from the same place that gave us Ikea and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. The word is a mash-up of “plocka upp” (Swedish for “pick up”) and jogging.

Washington Post called plogging “Sweden's latest fitness craze” and it has spread to other parts of Europe as well as the US.

It has reached Singapore too.



Yesterday’s plogging event was the first organised by the Superhero Runners.

Some armed with tongs and others with re-used plastic bags, the ploggers started at 8.15am from a clearing near the Hillview MRT station at Upper Bukit Timah Road and made their way to a bus stop opposite Beauty World Centre.

Superhero Runners co-founder Neyton Tan, 32, made it a point not to buy large black trash bags for the occasion. “We’re trying not to generate more waste”, said the training specialist at a pharmaceutical company.









After 45 minutes, they collected more than eight bags of rubbish, which were deposited in a large bin at the bus stop.

Miss Christina Leo, 30, an accountant, said: “I wasn’t surprised by the amount of trash but by the type of trash I collected.”

Apart from the usual plastic water bottles, beer cans and cigarette boxes, the haul also included an umbrella casing, outsoles of shoes and a large glass bottle.



And that was just from 2.5km of the Rail Corridor.

But can plogging go mainstream in Singapore?

Ms Anuja Aggarwal, co-founder of Secondsguru, an information portal on eco-friendly lifestyles, said: “We have seen plogging pick up in Singapore, but pure plogging, that is, jogging and picking litter at the same time can be rather hard.”

But for a Superhero Runner like Miss Leo, it’s not a problem.

She said: “I find that it’s a great way to bond, exercise and at the same time, do good for the environment.”

- Published in The New Paper, 30 July 2018




UPDATES:

Forbidden fruit is smelliest: I was cast out because I wanted to eat durians

When I go out, I usually take the stairs instead of the lift in my HDB block as I live on a low floor.

On several occasions, I would see a man talking on the phone and smoking in the stairwell on the second storey.

Not only do I get nary a neighbourly nod or wave, he avoids eye contact with me altogether.

I suspect that this is because he knows that I know that what he is doing – smoking in the stairwell – is prohibited by law.

And to acknowledge my existence is to acknowledge his own guilt.

Even when I don’t see him in the stairwell, I often see cigarette butts on the steps.

I want to tell him to stop.

But even though I am a non-smoker and frown at such law-breaking, I know that confronting him would just make it unpleasant for both of us to continue living in that block.

So I would just walk past him with a resigned smile that he pretends not to see.

In a way, I feel sorry for him. He is probably forced to smoke in the stairwell because his family don’t allow him to smoke in his own home.

Last week, my sympathy became empathy as I was similarly treated like an outcast by my family and co-workers because of something that emits an odour apparently even more objectionable than a burning fag.

Ironically, I don’t even eat durians that often.

Sure, I rushed to McDonald’s to get the D24 Durian McFlurry on the first day it was available, but I’m not one of those hardcore aficionados who can tell the difference between Mao Shan Wang and Chen Show Mao.



It’s just that with durian prices dropping to the point where a couple of sellers were literally giving them away, I didn’t want to miss out.

The problem is that when it comes to buying durians, I’m a virgin. All the durians I’ve ever eaten in my life were bought by someone else.

And being a virgin, I’m afraid to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous durian sellers.

So I did what any 52-year-old man would do – I called my mommy.

Two days later, mommy called back to tell me she had bought 20 mini durians for $1 each (not free but close enough) and I should go to her place to pick some up for myself.

She even packed them in a convenient plastic container for me so I didn’t have to deal with the thorny husks.



I collected the package on the way to work and planned to eat my haul at my desk.

As I was opening the container, I was interrupted by a co-worker who had sniffed something in the air-conditioned air. “Come on lah, you’re going to stink up the whole place,” he said, almost like a threat.

I guess he wasn’t a durian fan. So I sheepishly put the container away without eating anything.

For the rest of my shift, people around me kept asking in disgust: “Why do I smell durian?”

I would admit in shame: “It’s me.”

I had fallen for the myth that if you’re a true Singaporean, you must like durians.

Shockingly, there are actually many true Singaporeans who can’t stand the stuff.

I know my wife hates durians, but I always thought she was an aberration. You know, like Singaporeans who don’t eat spicy food.

As it turns out, the king of fruit is also the forbidden fruit.



When I got home, the reception was even more hostile. My wife wanted to burn my clothes because of the smell, with me in them if possible.

Our two children also loathed the fruit. They were presumably brainwashed by my wife.

She told me if I wanted to eat the durians, I had to do it “like a thief”.

And that was how I ended up in the stairwell with my plastic container of $1 durians from my mother.

It may not be as illegal as smoking there, but if anyone walked by, I would probably avoid eye contact.

At least I didn’t leave any durian seeds behind.

- Published in The New Paper, 23 July 2018