Covid-19

Transparency

| pinaymama@sg

A couple of weeks ago we received a thick, official-looking envelope from the Singapore government. Lo and behold, it was a booklet about the 2020 Budget.

Inside was a high-level overview of where the various budgets – the Resilience Budget, Solidarity Budget, Unity Budget, together totalling nearly S$60 billion (around US$43 billion or over Php 2.1 trillion) – were going and how the money was being used to support families, seniors, workers and job-seekers in the wake of Covid-19’s devastating economic impact.

The information was clear and simple to follow: this is how much we’re allocating to you, this is where we’re getting the money, this is when you’ll receive these benefits.

From a practical perspective, it was relatively easy for a layman to know how the government support would be given. There was no reference to obscure laws normal citizens would need to Google to understand; there was limited use of technical jargon. None of “To cover the funding requirements for the implementation of Social Amelioration Programs per Republic Act No. yadda-yadda” but more of “Up to S$600 for all Singaporeans aged 21 and above in 2020”.

The message was replicated in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil — Singapore’s four official languages. Apart from the physical booklet, the budget details were also shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and government websites. This ensured the widest reach to the broadest section of the population.

As a non-citizen, I will not benefit from any of these support packages. But I appreciated the little booklet nonetheless. It seemed to me a genuine effort by a government to serve, to be truly transparent and helpful.

Not all hold themselves to the same level of accountability.

Think critically dear readers,

Lockdown and The Last Dance

| pinaymama@sg
Image credit: Netflix

It was a sign of how far we’ve come since the 1990s when, after finishing the first two episodes of The Last Dance – a much-anticipated Netflix/ESPN limited TV series about Michael Jordan’s last season with the Chicago Bulls – I told my husband, “O, i-play mo na yung susunod” (Play the next episode) and he replied, “Walang susunod, next week pa” (There’s no next episode, wait until next week), I was momentarily taken aback.

What? In this age of Netflix’s autoplay-the-next-episode and real-time news feeds, they’re making us wait*?

But wait we did. It evoked faint memories of other, small intervals of anticipation:

… minutes, for Donita Rose to play my request on MTV Most Wanted (there was no YouTube replay option back then, I either heard the song or didn’t),

… hours, for my favourite cable channel cartoons those early Saturday mornings (no alarm clock needed!),

… years, for the next Harry Potter book to emerge from J.K. Rowling’s imagination (excruciating, when I devoured the latest instalment in mere days).

*

I’m not a basketball fan, by the way. Unlike my husband, a.k.a. Hub, who watched the series like it was a ‘greatest hits’ reel. The Shot, The Flu Game, The Shrug, The Last Shot – he’d seen them all before.

But The Last Dance remained a compelling watch, especially for me seeing most of the behind-the-scenes dynamics and winning shots with fresh eyes. Jordan’s career followed the classic storytelling arc – a solid beginning (a hungry and talented athlete eager to win the NBA championships), crises in the middle (Jordan’s father’s murder, his alleged gambling controversies, tensions with Krause as team GM), and the final redemption (winning his last NBA season proving all the naysayers wrong).

There were moments in the series that left me emotional – that scene where Jordan bawled on the floor after winning a Father’s Day game following his dad’s death felt so raw, I felt like I — along with the rest of the world — shouldn’t be watching. It felt so personal.

All the elements of a good TV drama, right?

*

The Last Dance, for me, will forever be linked to our early days in partial ‘lockdown’ here in Singapore. The last episode aired two weeks shy of the circuit breaker period ending.

We couldn’t step outside. Working from home and managing home-based learning for our kid blended the days and weeks into each other, though I recognise the privilege of having these options.

Hub and I needed a break and The Last Dance was a welcome distraction. It was a good feeling to have something to look forward to every Monday that was not related to what was going on in the ‘real’ world.

The world the series inhabited couldn’t be further apart from today – the 1990s vs. the 2020s – and the nostalgia of looking at images from my childhood was jarring, to say the least. I can’t think of anyone nowadays who can unite people across cultures the way Michael Jordan did in his heyday (maybe Tom Hanks?).

These days the world seems to be breaking apart at the seams, with no redemption arc in sight.

Photo by Howard Chai on Unsplash

Think critically dear readers,

* Strange as it may be, I’ve only ever consumed TV series once all the episodes are out. Game of Thrones, WestWorld, The Wire – you name it, I only watched when the season was done. Not a good strategy if you want to avoid spoilers though.

Small Things

| pinaymama@sg
Safe measures at the nearby McDonald’s. No temp check, no entry

Singapore moved to Phase Two of its three-phase reopening strategy yesterday.

It’s Re-Opening Day!

This meant the government has determined that community infection rates remain stable, there are no new large clusters, and the cases in worker dormitories – which blew up Singapore’s infection rates to the tens of thousands* – have declined.

The country has been on a partial lockdown since April 7, a.k.a. a “circuit breaker” period. While groceries and pharmacies remained open throughout, almost everything else was shut. The public buses, on those rare days I had to go to office, were nearly empty. Singapore’s famous hawker food centres and kopi stalls were left to rely on takeaways and deliveries. Even the nation’s beloved bubble tea shops were told to close, triggering a mad rush for a boba fix the evening before the circuit breaker kicked in.

Everyone (my family included) is much more excited about this phase than the last. Phase One, which started earlier this month, focused mainly on getting the schools safely open (with extensive Covid-19 testing of all teachers and school staff beforehand) and resuming a few basic services.

Phase Two, on the other hand, has physical stores, parks, playgrounds, and public pools open. We can now dine out at restaurants again! They’ve allowed groups of up to five outside – albeit with multiple caveats in place, such as mandatory temperature screens, check-in by mobile app and QR code to all the places we visit, a requirement to mask on at all times. (This being Singapore, there is the threat of a fine or worse, for non-compliance.) In the wider scheme of things, I think these are small inconveniences.

We went outside for a short walk last night. It was the first time we’d gone out as a family together in nearly three months. My kid was thrilled. I even heard him say “I love walking!” at one point.

Walking freely. Holding hands. Small inconveniences I’ll happily trade for these small joys.

Think critically dear readers,

* Deaths, meanwhile, have remained low – 26 as of today or 0.06% of total cases.

The Great Singapore Bake-off, Pinoy-style

| pinaymama@sg
Self-raising flour clearly wasn’t popular…

There was a story on the Straits Times yesterday about the Great Singapore Bake-off, the three-ish months most of us in Singapore turned to the “comfort in combining flour, sugar, eggs and milk to make something delicious”. It was a way to deal with the all the shit going on right now in the world, Covid-19 included. We were called “circuit bakers”, named after Singapore’s so-called circuit breaker period (a.k.a. don’t-call-it-a-lockdown).

I could tell everybody was planning to stress bake just like me – bags of plain flour, pancake mix and vanilla extract were sold out in the shops. I waited weeks to buy instant yeast at RedMart (a popular online grocer) and the nearby NTUC FairPrice, without success.

In the absence of yeast, we turned to Betty Crocker boxed cakes. All we needed were fresh milk and eggs. My kid loved to sprinkle chocolate chips in the batter (and sneak snacking on a handful or two of chips).

We turned to fridge cakes. I had a few trays of fresh blueberries bought on sale and we made them into a sauce for a cheesecake, which I made using Nigella’s Cherry Cheesecake recipe (my go-to recipe for an easy cheesecake). If I had access to sweet ripe mangoes I would have, without a doubt, made a Filipino mango float. Alas, the quality of mangoes in the shop was hit-or-miss.

Then, awesome Ate C reminded us of Filipino kakanin, local sweets usually made from glutinous rice flour and coconut milk. With no yeast required, we set off on a roll. We made biko (glutinous rice cake) with a dark brown sticky sugar topping, cheesy puto (steamed rice cake) from a mix which turned out surprisingly well, purple sapin-sapin with leftover jackfruit liberally applied so you got a lot with each bite, yema or custard balls from condensed milk and rich egg yolks.

The yeast eventually arrived. I still managed to squeeze in some gooey chocolate chip cookies – the secret is a tiny pinch of salt over the top of each cookie before baking – and misshapen cinnamon rolls, à la Cinnabon. But by then our sweet tooths had been fully satisfied. We didn’t need the yeast after all.

Think critically dear readers,