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  Business Times Singapore 22 Dec 06
The five (or more) people you meet after the flood
By Jaime Ee

IT could well have been the 24 hours that changed our lives, when all of Singapore was united in misery as more rain than we thought could possibly fall from the sky did - and the government did nothing to stop it.

So traumatised were we that when the sun finally peeked out from behind the clouds like the errant child who forgets to turn off the bathwater, it was as if the darkness of life had been lifted, and we could finally see the light.

Yes, I am in a Mitch Albom kind of mood, and I am perhaps not the only one to have emerged from my pile of damp laundry with a new appreciation for the sun and electric clothes dryers.

Let me introduce you then, to the Five (Or More) People You Meet After The Flood.

The bewildered motorist. He is the one sitting in the driver's seat, wondering why the car in front of him could easily navigate the flood waters with no problem, but when he followed suit, he experienced the sensation of water rising up to his ankles.

When I met him, he was blankly staring at the water that was rapidly rising to his knees. 'Look,' he said. 'Guppies. Do you think if I sit here longer, some bigger fish will come in and I can catch them for my dinner tonight?' I explained to him that the bigger fish were only in the Lornie Road area, not in Bukit Batok, and that it would be wiser to get out of the car rather than sit there and count how many red guppies were swimming around him.

The stricken weather forecaster. 'But the weather charts said, mostly sunny with scattered showers,' he said, shaking his head and rummaging through stacks of printed graph paper. 'That's what it always says. Where does it say, non-stop yukky rain, major flooding, and floating Christmas trees and occasional lorry?' I gently put it to him that sometimes weather forecasters get it wrong because they tend to work in windowless buildings.

The equally stricken novice bomoh. I found him hastily gathering his sodden equipment which included some bulbs of garlic, chilli padi, shells and shredded pandan leaves. He, too, was shaking his head in near despair. 'The regular bomoh who controls the weather before National Day parade and the occasional poolside birthday party was on leave, so I stepped in to try to stop the rain,' he said. 'But I'm a bit new. I usually do school sports days, and admittedly my track record isn't very good. But I thought I could do this. I think I got my spells mixed up. I might have used too much pandan.' I ignored him and went on to the fourth person.

The lady with the plastic bag over her head. 'Oh, is it over?' She asks warily, peering out from the two eye holes she poked out with her fingers. 'Who would have thought it would rain on the very day I forget to bring my umbrella? This is terrible. But one thing I have realised is that the NTUC plastic bag offers much more rain coverage than those from Cold Storage.' She politely declined my offer to test out a plastic bag from Shop 'n Save.

Santa Claus. He is seen diving into the flood waters, occasionally coming up for air. 'Rudolph! Rudolph! Where are you?' I'm afraid I couldn't help him on account of the fact that technically, he does not exist.

The true-blue Singaporean. None the worse for wear, he is out and about. 'Bloody weather,' he says. 'First so much rain. Now it's so blinking hot.'
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