OCTOBER 5 — The haze is like purgatory veiled in dry ice.
I love the KL skyline of late. It’s like the city is situated 20,000 feet above sea-level. Looks like heaven, smells like hell.
Do you see all the ICU surgeons walking around the city? They should get matching surgical gloves. Who needs Asthma Awareness campaigns now?
Guillermo del Toro should drop by Singapore and film Pacific Rim 2. Monsters emerging through the mist — oooh!
Except… who needs Jaegers when every Kaiju will collapse from asthma the moment they pop their ugly mugs outta the ocean? Our friendly sea-monster movie would be like the recent young adult apocalyptic fiesta, Haze-Runners. Both films are rated API 300 and you need to watch them with a face mask.
Our haze reveals who our super-natural Malaysians are. We now know: They would be every man and woman who, despite the sky looking like cotton-candy, still participate in walkathons and mini-marathons. Heck, the only “athons” I care about now are eat-athons, sleep-athons and bitch-athons (don’t get me started; I mean, what was he doing, giving a speech at the United Nations... was it about how to really run a donation campaign? “It’s a mind-set change, ladies and gentlemen. Raise the bar. Think in billions…”)
I’m serious. Khairy should track down all those folks in KL doing workouts in the open air and groom them for Rio 2016. These guys will win the 5,000m in 50 seconds. Maybe we should have an Olympic event called Hazing: Get into a helicopter, fly into the haze and bungee-jump, up and down, up and down — anyone whose lungs hasn’t exploded after five minutes wins Gold.
Taking the region’s pulse
If you’ve ever been to a Chinese sensei, you know one of the first thing he does is take your pulse. A 10-ton trailer could’ve rammed into your Wira and your limbs could be all over the place, but hey the guy’s gotta check your pulse first.
Why? Because, unlike anal-oriented and fragmented Western doctors, these Chinese uncles (they’re rarely aunties—hmm) gotta “feel” your body as a whole. The pulse is like the window to the whole organism. If you tell him you’ve got high blood-pressure, the sensei won’t simply want to lower your BP; he wants your body to be holistically well again.
Now, imagine if a mega-Sensei checked the pulse of our region — what would he be listening for other than the haze? What would he be concerned about apart from the immediate symptom? My guess is he wouldn’t be pumped up about simply removing the smoke and pollution from the skies — he’d also want to ensure the land as a whole is clean. I’m thinking this sensei would say that SEA is suffering from over-consumption, over-construction, over-everything.
The haze is like an elemental dump-site taking flight. It’s our trash thrown back to us. It’s a return of the national repressed.
How come offices never take a break? We close schools. We cancel outdoor activities. We stop flights. But the economy itself has to continue. Paradoxical, for isn’t it the obsession with economic activities which engendered the haze in the first place?
Who cares about the value of our ringgit when the outdoors smell like burnt underwear? Who cares about the next “Resort Living in the City” mega-development project when the smokers are breathing fresher air than the non-smokers?
I was at Changi Airport recently, there was a strange sight: All the non-smokers wanted to cram into the smoking room. It was unreal.
Jubilee and humility
I know Malaysians aren’t big fans of Jewish theological concepts, but have you heard of the Jubilee? In the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, the Jubilee was a once in 50-year event in which, for an entire year, the land lies fallow. All debts are cancelled, prisoners set free. It was a socio-political Reset Button. But most importantly — in the context of KL looking like a meat freezer — it was also an economic and environmental time-out.
Let the land, the air, the animals and Nature as a whole take a bleedin’ break. Quit worrying about the GDP and just consume what’s already produced. Stop thinking NEW and start reflecting on RE-NEW. No need to bother with “customer experience”; muse instead on “Imagine the Land as Customer.”
Rest. Relax. Chillax.
Of course, capitalism knows no year-long Jubilees. It only understands two-week work-from-hotel vacations.
So maybe our only chance is to reframe and reap what value we can.
More haze, more flights cancelled, less jet-fuel burnt. Our economic appetites are chastened. Kinda like a kid who, in the past, had every Transformer toy he wanted but who’s now being told to take a hike, finish his veggies and enjoy the worn-out Snakes & Ladders instead.
In Jubilee fashion, the haze reminds us that economics isn’t everything.
Recall in 2010 that Icelandic volcano blew up, and 95,000 flights were grounded? Many travellers lamented their fate on TripAdvisor, but let’s face it: It’s not every day that Mama Earth tells the hubris-soaked hu-MANS to stop whatever they’re doing and just be. “You want to fly to London? Nope. Not gonna happen. Ash cloud. You can row there if you wish”.
I like what Ultron said to the Avengers: “You want to save the world, but you don’t want it to change.”
We don’t want real change, so now our cities — our entire region—look like Everest base-camp at dawn. Maybe we should just enjoy the view and recognize that unless we reimagine the way our industries and economies function, we’ll have more such picturesque scenes.
If nothing else, the haze brings humility. And that’s always a good thing?
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
