And on Saturday…

by Felix Cheong

SOME things in the universe are meant to defy logic. Train breakdowns. Not returning trays at food courts. Duterte and Trump.

And Hello Kitschy.

On Thursday (May 12), more than 400 people, eyelids heavy with sleep, bladders itching for relief, stood in line for 12 hours at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3 just to get into the Hello – so cute! – Kitty Orchid Garden café.

Before you get all catty about why these people had risked lowering the country’s productivity, let it be stated, for the record, that the café has made available every kind of Hello – so cute! – Kitty merchandise. You name it, they’ve made a cash cow out of this cat with no mouth, including food fashioned in the shape of Bart Simpson/Rupert Murdoch/Hello – so cute! – Kitty (pick the most appropriate answer).

This is good for the economy. When people are queuing like there’s no tomorrow, consumer confidence is back.

It’s time to party, like the late singer Prince once sang, like it’s 1999. Throw logic to the wind – as Mr Khaw Boon Wan did in Parliament on Monday (May 9).

The Transport Minister, popular with meme creators for some of the furballs he has coughed out over the years, used an analogy that had me scratching my head till it bled in three places.

In persuading the public to use, what else, public transport, Mr Khaw said, “At least (be a) part-time public transport user. It’s a little bit like being vegetarian. If you cannot do 100 per cent vegetarian like me…even twice a month is good.”

Wait a minute. So Mr Khaw is a vegetarian twice a month? Or a little bit 100 per cent vegetarian twice a month? Or he takes vegetarian public transport, part-time, twice a month?

If you understood what he meant, there’s a job opening for you as his interpreter.

Suffice to say, I’ve never come across any minister in “vegetarian” mode (part-time or otherwise) on bus 36 (which I often take to town from home). If you have, kee chiew please and we’ll treat you to a 100 per cent vegetarian dinner.

Still on vegetables – this time, grass. (No, not the sort you smoke. Don’t get us into trouble leh. MDA is still watching over our shoulders.)

The National Stadium, still young at two years old, is already balding like most men past a certain vintage/salary scale.

And, despite the Singapore Sports Hub’s assurance it’ll get the field ready with its “lay-and-play” technique (sounds like what the world’s oldest profession does, no?), it’s worrying organisers for today’s (May 14) Super Rugby match between the Sunwolves and Stormers.

I don’t know about you, but it still haunts me – I have to Xanax myself to sleep over it – that a $1.33 billion sports hub, the best money can buy with the best technology within its reach, has such a simple design flaw; its dome design does not allow sufficient light in.

Here, in Singapore, positioned one degree north of the Equator, blessed with more sunshine a day than it knows what to do with – and the stadium needs $2 million in growth lights to make the grass grow (and we don’t even care if it’s greener on the other side).

It’s enough to break wind.

Or more precisely, let off gas. In New York City on Monday (May 9), city officials deliberately let off gas, lots of it, through the Subway.

It was neither a prank nor a bad case of colic. The harmless gas (odourless and inert, like some of the rhetoric during last week’s Bukit Batok by-election hustings) was released to study how “how airborne material will travel through the subway systems” during a toxic gas accident or terrorist attack.

If the same exercise were to be carried out here, imagine what Mr Khaw, with his homespun wisdom to lay and parlay layman’s terms, would’ve said:

“If you’re vegetarian and eat a little too much cabbage, you pass, maybe, sometimes, depends on how you sit, a little gas. Not 100 per cent smelly but we know, and studies have shown this to be true, not dangerous to public health on public transport.”

“But if this gas, released by terrorists, toxic gas, it’s dangerous, the type that will kill both vegetarians and meat-eaters. So we do this test to study where the gas goes. Not so simple as opening windows 100 per cent to let the gas out.”

“It’s a little bit inconvenient, yes. But I always say: Better be a little bit inconvenient than 100 per cent dead.”

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Featured image by Guet Ghee Pang.

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The post And on Saturday… appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Felix Cheong