I haven’t really been following the news on the food poisoning cases which have been raging for the past week or so, even when have been 154 casualties, 48 hospitalized, 2 deaths, 1 miscarriage and over 100 rats caught. The main reason being my pre-conceived notion that Singaporeans (myself included) really just have stomachs which are ‘too weak’ as a result of being ‘too clean’, and thus the violent reaction to even the most minuscule increase of bacteria in the stomach.

In fact, I only start paying attention to the news on the Geylang Serai case because some friends were discussing the alleged attempts of those assumed responsible in distancing themselves from the blame, and also the failure of due diligence in some areas: for e.g. regular spring cleanings.

Thanks to Plurker Lynette Low who provided me the article which I extracted the following excerpt:

On further digging on Google, I found this:

Hmm… so there maybe some truth to all those comments going around Cyberspace after all. But what is (or who are) the Geylang Serai Temporary Market Management Committee?

I tried digging up information about this committee by searching with the parameters ‘Geylang Serai Temporary Market Management Committee’. I gave up after looking up 5 pages (containing 10 results each; 374 results in total) as the entries contained too much irrelevance, usually blog posts containing the same old news articles. (This reminds me once gain why I hated shitheads who reproduces complete news articles from the media on their blogs: the freaking shits clogged up the search engines and knocked relevant and important articles so far down it make searching the Internet time consuming, futile and meaningless.)

Personally, I wondered whether the astounding number of rats kill and the affirmative actions taken by the committee, such as pushing forward the spring cleaning, have so impressed our ‘responsible and credible media’ that they see no need to follow up on with this committee why there haven’t been a spring cleaning for years. While some may consider that I am nitpicking here, don’t the public has a right to know why they did not consider cleanliness a priority? Other than that, the committee should be allowed to explain (and defend) itself as it is being portrayed as failing to perform its duties here.

Next, it also amazes me that the media apparently also didn’t consider the persistent rat problem (which was already there since the old Geylang Serai market days) would be an issue. Should the reporters find out whether there is a rat infestation in other markets so those which have it can ‘pull up their socks’ as well? In fact, our media didn’t even do the minimum, such as checking the NEA on what existing plans or preventive measures are already in place to deal with rats in all our markets. Alas, our much acclaimed media is apparently only good at reporting matters. It sorely demonstrates the dismal state of journalism in this country for they failed to even do what the media would have done in other countries and no one is even asking them to serve as agent provocateurs or to agitate the people against our *erhem* ‘good and caring’ government gahmen! Certainly, they can do less in reporting events like the outburst of the likes of Patricia Mok regarding the so-called ‘Star Awards’ or couples french kissing in the swimming pools of private condominiums.

Fortunately, whatever the problem with our media, it’s not all doom and gloom because I’ve managed to learn something new from them! I could now blame one particular bacteria as the cause of diarrhea whenever I go for a steamboat buffet – Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

What has Vibrio parahaemolyticus got to do with that? Simple, we pick up cooked food from the steamboat and put into our bowls. While the food is still too hot to eat, we leave it to cool and use the same pair of chopsticks to pick up raw seafood and put into the steamboat. After that is done, we start eating the food in our bowls with the now contaminated chopsticks.

In short, this is my theory: It is not the steamboat that is unclean or the food is unhygienic. It is in the thoughtless way we use our chopsticks. The solution is simple: Use one extra pair of chopstick for the raw seafood. It makes your steamboat sessions far more enjoyable and spares you from the agony of the stomach.

Incidentally, that’s what I suspect happened at the Geylang steamboat place too… and of course I am quite sure cleanliness of a place will go up if the Prime Minister visits more often.

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