When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) soared to 172 at 3 pm on Wednesday, Singapore's worst haze reading since September 1997 when the number peaked at 226. Then at 10 pm last night the PSI hit a new record high of 321.

Indonesian forestry ministry official Raffles Panjaitan said his government will be sending helicopters  into the skies above Sumatra to seed the clouds.  Injecting chemicals would prompt the formation of heavy ice crystals and speed up the production of rain to put out the fires that are mainly centred on peatlands in Riau province.

In Singapore Minister of Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan said whether a stop-work order will be issued will depend on the severity of the haze conditions. Apparently 321 is not scary enough, it's still short of the 387 number he racked up in millions to show off the city sights. Too bad they are all hazed over every year, this time of the year.

Balakrishnan insists cloud seeding will not work for Singapore as his meteorological boys are saying there's not enough cloud cover at the moment. Instead of sending helicopters over to help the Indonesians with the preparation work, he is sending the spanking new ex-army NEA CEO Andrew Tan over to attend a haze meeting. What the Indonesians need is more hardware, not more hot air.

Meanwhile Foreign Minister K Shanmugam got hot under the collar, when one sinful comment on his Facebook pages railed against the "million dollar minister" and called, quite accurately, the Government inefficient. As expected, the minister shafted the Indonesians for not ratifying a treaty on Transboundary Haze Pollution signed in 2002. It proves the point, doesn't it? The Singapore Foreign Minister had been sleeping since 2002, just going with the flow like the brigadier-general, until the wind changes direction. With FMs like that, who needs enemies?

Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew had to contend with another hallmark inefficiency of his own. About 250 commuters were  stuck in an immobile train for 1 whole hour. It would be interesting to hear the explanation from the SMRT CEO - another expensive bum parachuted in from the armed forces - why his staff could not move a stalled train with another working one. At evening rush hour when the 2 hour disruption occurred, the haze was edging towards 190, so be prepared to be smoked by (lack of) visibility excuses. More likely, someone forgot to release the brakes.

The irresistible force paradox is formulated along Newton's laws of physics, as when "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object." This paradox is a form of the omnipotence paradox, such as when the Minister refuses to budge, even as the COE hits another high of $81,751, another candidate for the Guinness Book of Records. Mr Sin was too kind to use the word "inefficient". Hokkien expletives are more in order.

I love the smell of haze in the morning.