During dinner and the coffee session with a friend 2 nights (and also during the lunch with an ex-colleague yesterday), we touched on the topic of melamine, fake eggs, and even human trafficking.

On Melamine

A lot of us denounced China when some arse even dared mentioned that melamine has always been added to milk and it began in the United States.

Whoever brought this up is a moron because the matter is not whether this has been done elsewhere and how many other people are doing it. After all, it is my considered opinion that to justify one’s own stupidity / fault simply because it happens elsewhere is almost as good as saying consumption of shit is acceptable because a dog eats its own shit. (That incidentally, is also how I viewed the corruption allegations Chen Shui-bian made against anyone else. Is he trying to justify what he did as right if 100 workers out there stole money while on their jobs? Or because these people went unpunished thus he shouldn’t be punished as well? The Taiwanese courts should make an example of him by punishing him severely, so that it serves as a deterrence to future offenders.)

Anyway, mentioning that the addition of melamine was done elsewhere raise new questions. For e.g. Who taught these farmers to add melamine to their milk? And do these farmers even know what melamine is? I don’t even bother to ask if they were even told of the potential hazards of this ‘ingredient’. It appears that they might even have been told that it is good for the milk as some of us may have read that melamine is added again and again to a batch of milk until it is accepted by a buyer. We may also read about how this ‘extra ingredient’ is routinely added, not only so that the milk passes the protein checks, but to dilute the milk further so that even more dairy products can be made.

Clearly, even if the idea did come from overseas, some people must have had taught these farmers to add it, and also introduced, and perhaps even promote, it to the milk and diary products producers for use. Whoever these people are, they had the opportunity to go overseas to study how milk factories are run. They could even possibly be members of the Communist Party itself, and some of those which were chosen as a ‘pilot’ batch of ‘entrepreneurs’ under Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, which proposed allowing certain elements within China to become rich first.

Thus, when Sanlu [三鹿], one of the main culprits of melamine-tainted milk hastily declared bankruptcy, and when the provincial courts of Hubei throws out the court case against Sanlu, I can’t help but wonder if there are some forces behind wanting a quick closure to the matter to prevent a more lengthy and detailed investigation so as to protect some of these people.

On Fake Eggs

There have been reports of fake eggs sold in China, and even making their way into Hong Kong. Fortunately the reports are fake. But during the chat we looked at the matter in detail and it doesn’t need a genius to figure out that these reports are fake.

First of all, faking an egg is definitely a complicated process – you have to first make the shell, then put in the chemicals resembling the egg white and york into the fake shell before sealing it without anything to give it away on close examination.

If produced manually, it is going to be labour intensive and there is no reason whatsoever to even manufacture a fake one unless prices of real eggs are really high enough to justify their production. Even so, there isn’t much money to be made unless a large quantity is being produced.

But beyond that, the eggs of birds are themselves an interesting and odd object in nature. Consider this: most things melt or vaporise when heated, while some might simply ignite and burn. However, the egg white and york solidify when heated, and the translucent, liquid egg white even turns white after solidification. On top of which, the egg york itself turns yellow.

I must ask, offhand, do you know of anything that behave the same way when heated? Even if the news of fake eggs is true, some effort in ‘research and development’ would have been put into this to discover the chemical compound with similar properties, so that your egg won’t give you away when cooked. Most importantly, if such a chemical compound even exists, it must be cheap and readily available or else the cost of making fake eggs would be too high!

Of course one can just ignore the part about it behaving the same way as a real egg when cooked, if one only intend to pull a fast one. Either way, the complicated process behind making even one fake egg, is clearly not something any simple chicken farmer could have imagined on his own.

On Human Trafficking

I once wrote to the Straits Stooge Times Forum regarding the matter of controlling the ‘proliferation’ of streetwalkers in Geylang.

In the letter I pointed out that these girls definitely didn’t wake up one day and decided to come to Singapore to be a streetwalker. Obviously someone coerced or enticed them into coming. I further pointed out that the problem itself has 2 heads – one here in Singapore, and the other in the originating country. On this end, the people would assist in getting social visit pass extensions or student visas, provide lodging and also link them up with the pimps in Geylang. On the other end someone would be assisting them in making arrangements to depart their host nation.

The Stooge Times published my letter then (I can’t find it online – unfortunately) and there was even a reply from the Singapore Police Force, which assured me that there is no human trafficking problems in Singapore.

I suspect their definition of human trafficking was either different from mine or that they don’t think the number of females repeatedly caught soliciting in Geylang indicates a concerted and organised effort to bring them into Singapore. It is not just a handful of of them finding their way here, but easily a hundred of streetwalkers present in Geylang every night. You can check out the videos posted by this guy on Youtube to see just how bad the problem really is.

Whatever the case is, my basis in defining it as human trafficking is as follow:

Now, regardless of whether these girls are just playing up to our sympathy of their plight or not, it is pretty common to hear some of these girls talk about being offered legitimate employment here in the first place – for e.g. as dish washers and waitresses etc. Most of them discover upon arrival that they can’t find work here on social visit pass or on student visas. By then they are already in debt, having paid thousands of dollars to ‘intermediaries’ who ‘assisted’ them to travel out of their homeland – way above and in excess of what they had to pay for had they knew how to do so on their own. Many of these end up working in sleazy night clubs or as streetwalkers to repay their debt when they discovered it is impossible to obtain any kind of employment permits from the Ministry of Manpower.

The money they earn will not only go to pay their debt, but will also pay for their lodgings here. On top of which, according to friends who have frequented streetwalkers in Geylang, I was told that when the girls arrive at their usual ‘station’ in Geylang, the look-outs are paid a certain fee. These look-outs are supposed to protect them, provide time-keeping when they serve a customer and also to give them early warning of police raids. In fact, for their time-keeping services, these look-outs receive a ‘commission’ for every customer the girls served while they serve as ‘condom dispensers’, selling cheap condoms for a profit to the customers.

Also, if these girls are on social visit passes, they are charged for arrangements to get theirs extended – normally by arranging them to travel out of Singapore and then back. These ‘charges’ drive the girls further into debt so to keep them in the trade. It is a hole that only gets deeper as time goes on, and the girls will never be able to get themselves out.

I do not deny that some of these girls might be here on their own freewill and work as streetwalkers for their own materialistic pursuits. But if any of the above is happening, then it all fits the description of human trafficking and some serious efforts should be made to deal with this issue.

On top of which, I have friends in China – especially female – who claims they experienced difficulty in getting visas to come to Singapore again. It seems like this serves as some kind of measure to deal with the ‘Geylang problem’. Apart from that, two people I knew, who married Vietnamese ladies, were unable to obtain long stay visas for them originally even when they are legally married at the Registrar of Marriages.

In short, this problem is now affecting even people living outside Geylang, and legitimate tourists. I wondered when, will the police take some real action about this problem instead of sticking their head int the ground and continue to behave as it there is no problem at all.

Comics:

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