When the old Chinese man came up to the dustbin in front of the bus-stop, I thought he would, like many other old folk I had previously seen do, stretch his hands into it to look for used aluminium cans so that he could exchange them later for hard cash.

But, this man picked up a used bubble tea cup which he placed on the top of the dustbin. Then, he reached into the bin again and, this time, I saw in his hands a plastic bag - the kind used for storing take-away drinks. He proceeded to sip the remnants of the black liquid from the plastic bag after which he threw the bag back into the bin. The man continued on his way after picking up the bubble tea cup which still had some tea left. As he walked along the pavement outside Hougang Plaza, he sipped the tea, oblivious to the curious looks of those at the bus-stop.

That happened last Saturday. I recall witnessing a similar incident long ago as a 10-year-old boy in North Bridge Road where I spent my childhood. Then, I had seen an old Chinese man picking up leftover pig trotters from a swill bin and eating them there and then. But, that happened in the late 1960’s - more than 30 years ago.

I told myself it couldn’t be happening in Singapore now. But, I wasn’t seeing things last weekend. There were several other people waiting for the bus too. They saw what happened. The old man outside Hougang Plaza didn’t look like a vagabond. He was dressed just like any other grandfather one would meet in the streets. And he wasn’t untidy.

Perhaps, this man was senile. But, he didn’t look it. Today, as I read The Straits Times, my attention focussed on an article on parental maintenance. Among other things, it said that 105 cases were heard in the parental maintenance tribunal in 2004, up from 88 in 20031.

Apparently, siblings were quarrelling over financial maintenance of their parents. Ms Penny Tham, spokesman for the Tribunal for the Maintenance of Parents, was quoted in the article as saying, “Long-standing bitterness between siblings spawn such cases.”
I cannot say for certain that the old man I saw drinking from the used bubble tea cup is a victim of similar circumstances. But, in my estate alone, I often see old people going around picking up used aluminium cans, and then flattening them with their feet before placing them in a bag they carried with them. They are a common sight nowadays in Singapore. Perhaps their children are not giving them any allowances. Perhaps, they need to feed a smoking habit for which their pocket money was insufficient. Whatever the reasons, I don’t think it’s fair for their children to be calculating towards them or neglect them in their old age.

I despair to think of my old age. If I get to live to a ripe old age, will my compulsory CPF savings be enough to last me through my twilight years. Will my children - that is, if I can persuade my wife to have children - be kind enough to support my wife and me when we are no longer productive and have to depend on them for maintenance.

I see many youngsters engaged in animated conversation over who has the latest mobile phone and I think, at this age, they have yet to earn money and they are already bowing to peer pressure and thinking of spending more than pocket change. When they come into the mainstream of society, will they wise up and live prudently or will their parents still have to support them then?

Yesterday, I was having lunch with my wife in a foodcourt in Hougang Mall. Seated at another table next to us was a family of four - father, mother, and two pre-teen boys. Forgive me for being nosey, but, I couldn’t help noticing that both parents shared a bowl of Yong Tau Hoo while the two boys each had a western meal, complete with can drinks. It wasn’t the first time I had witnessed such things happening.

My point is this - as parents we do our part, but can we count on our children to do theirs and take care of us when we grow old? I despair to think of the answer.
I need to find good reasons to give my wife to convince her to have children. Providing descendants to carry on my family name isn’t a good enough reason for her.

1 The Straits Times 28 Mar 2005 (H3)

By October this year, more public places will be declared non-smoking zones. The ban will then cover bus shelters, bus interchanges and public toilets. That’s also the time when the ban on smoking in public swimming complexes, open air stadia and community clubs - currently enforced as a house rule - becomes official.

It seems that the number of public places in which a smoker can take a puff is slowly but surely dwindling in Singapore. As a non-smoker, I cannot appreciate the toll that the ban on smoking is taking on smokers. All I know is that there will be more public places where I do not have to force myself to breathe in air that is polluted by second-hand smoke. 
Already, although the smoking ban is in place in many public places, I suffer the threat of second-hand smoke as I traverse such areas. Some smokers openly flout the law by partaking in their habit, oblivious to the inconvenience they are causing to non-smokers like me.

In many toilets of shopping centres, people indulge in this habit, albeit in the locked cubicles. Of course, one could argue that since they have enclosed themselves in the cubicles, they are actually being considerate to others frequenting the toilet. But, I become frustrated every time I enter a cubicle and have to suffer the second-hand smoke for the minutes that I spend in that enclosed space. It’s worse than having someone smoke near me in the open area of a shopping centre.

I know of one shopping centre in Selegie Road where, on more than one occasion recently, I have seen groups of men smoking as they converse with one another in the wash area of the toilet. In the same shopping centre, on a different occasion, I even saw some youngsters openly flouting the smoking ban by smoking outside a lan-gaming shop in the air-conditioned basement shopping area, just next to a fast-food restaurant.

Should I have asserted my rights as a member of the public and approached them to remind them they were violating the law? No way! I would have risked a broken nose in the process. Just last month, in a small shopping centre in Hougang, I saw someone approaching a teenager who was puffing away in the air-conditioned lobby of the place, just outside a lan-gaming shop. When he told the young man not to smoke there, the boy retorted, “I like it, leh!”

Making it an offence to smoke in certain public places is one thing, but policing the ban effectively is quite another. As the number of non-smoking public places increases, the job of policing becomes more difficult. There are only so many public health inspectors around. They certainly cannot watch every single toilet or shopping centre on the island.
We can only count on our public health inspectors catching a few culprits every now and then and making an example of them. But, will this deter the bulk of the smokers? I think those who have not been caught before will continue to play a cat-and-mouse game with the public health inspectors.
The price of a stick of cigarette has gone up from S$0.20 in the mid 1980’s to S$0.50 today. This, together with other governmental efforts at stubbing the problem, has led to a reduction of the number of smokers here, from 18%1 of the population in 1992 to 14% presently. The decrease is particularly significant for males aged 18-69 whose proportion has decreased from 33% to 24%.

But, there will always be teenagers willing to pick up the habit to boost their image in the presence of friends. To these teenagers, being able to smoke is akin to reaching adulthood, even though many of them are just entering adolescence. Then, there are those who succumb to peer pressure to become smokers.

Add to these, the boys who have entered national service and need to puff away their problems. Also, add to these, the growing proportion of female smokers aged 18-24, which almost tripled from 2.8% to 8.2%1, in contrast to a reduction from 29% to 24% for males in the same age group.

So, it’s welcome news that the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources is considering imposing a smoking ban on youngsters’ popular hangouts such as pubs, bars, discos, nightclubs and KTV lounges.

Even as I am preparing this column in my bedroom at 6am, second-hand smoke is wafting in from the flat just below mine. You see, my neighbour likes to puff away at his bedroom window. Every morning I have to close the bedroom window as soon as I get a whiff of the smoke. What can I say? That the Ministry of Health should also extend the smoking ban to cover HDB flats as well?

There are some areas where we should practise the ‘live and let live’ principle.

1 Smoking ban to cover more public places from 1 Oct 2005

I was flabbergasted last Friday when I read1about the student volunteer who collected the donation tin and, instead of going around asking for donations, went home, put some coins into the tin and then took it with him when he lunched with his parents. At the appointed time, he returned the tin to the collection point.
 
That act of his satisfied the minimum six hours of the community involvement programme (CIP) that pre-university students had to do each year for points needed to enter university.

In putting in place the compulsory CIP activity, the Ministry of Education (MOE) had a greater goal in mind - that of imbuing in students sound values and developing in them strength of character. But, calculative students managed to circumvent the good intentions of the programme and the CIP ended up a victim of some students’ self-serving motives.

In the end, MOE had to put to rest the idea of making CIP compulsory for all pre-university students. Now, junior colleges and centralised institutes have autonomy in integrating CIP into their curriculum to best meet and respond to the needs and interests of their students. But CIP will remain an integral component of the JC curriculum.

The Education Minister said in Parliament recently that the change “will encourage students to take greater ownership over these activities, follow their passions and build camaraderie, rather than engage for the sake of gaining points for university admission”.

We can take heart that CIP remains compulsory for primary and secondary students. It may be too late to inculcate in pre-university students desired attributes, but, there is hope yet that given time, the younger ones will gel on to the idea of authentic and enriching involvement in the community.

A day after the article appeared, I was having afternoon tea in a fast-food restaurant at Burlington, next to Sim Lim Square, when I saw a score of upper secondary students from Maris Stella High School soliciting for donations for the Children’s Medical Fund.

The boys were stationed at various spots around the area. They caught my attention because they were moving around in the hot afternoon sun although covered walkways were within reach. Yet, they didn’t seem the least bothered by the searing heat, for their minds were single-mindedly focused on the passers-by thronging the area.
 
These boys from Maris Stella were busy running up to the young and the old. You could see the eagerness in their faces as they went about their task. Each approach was energetic, and though some pedestrians did not donate, the boys were not disheartened.

In these boys, I saw the same enthusiasm which gripped me as a secondary student some thirty years ago when I was selling flags for charity. These boys from Maris Stella were certainly not of the same grain as the one who took the donation tin to lunch with his parents.

So, there is hope for the younger set of Singaporeans. We may be able to count on the younger ones to embrace CIP with the right mindset.
 
That schools have to turn to making CIP compulsory in the first place shows up a weakness in the typical Singaporean family unit. Parents have to take responsibility for the way our students turn out. How they are raised at home, their experiences and relationships with their family members will shape their character. Schools cannot do it alone.

1. The Straits Times 11 Mar 2005 (1)

Today, Singapore was shaken by the news of the deaths of a family of four in Tampines Street 44. A 40-year-old Chinese man was found dead at the bottom of a block of HDB flats this morning. Police later found the bodies of a 39-year-old Chinese woman, a 12-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl in a flat on one of the upper floors of the block.

It is not known yet what exactly happened to the family, but a neighbour who was interviewed on television today pointed out that the dead man was a happy-go-lucky sort of chap. Another neighbour said she saw the man screaming as he fell off the window. The television news programme also reported that several handwritten notes, in English, were found in the flat. These hinted at financial problems faced by the family.  

It could be that the father took the lives of his family members before committing suicide. If that is the case, then we have every reason to rebuke the dead man for his selfishness.

Every few years in Singapore, the lives of innocent young children are sacrificed by their parent or parents in the name of protecting these children who would have otherwise grown up in the absence of these parents. Is it a noble act in the part of such parents, causing their young children to die without the chance to grow up, get married, have children, and then grow old?

These children never had a chance to decide for themselves their fate. They died by the hands of their parent or parents. It is sad when children suffer such fates through no fault of theirs. These parents, having sown the seeds for such a situation that demanded they take their own lives, had no justification to sacrifice the God-given rights of their children to a full life the moment they decided to have these children. 

It is a joy to be able to wake up to a brand new day each morning. Alas, the two children will no longer be able to join thousands of young Singaporeans in going to school tomorrow.

It’s already so difficult to have children in Singapore. Those of us still mulling over the idea of having children will find no consolation in hearing today’s grim news. But, let us not allow the selfish acts of a few to mar our efforts at baby-making.

It is times like these that we bystanders get a chance to reflect and say to ourselves: Aren’t we lucky our parents are not like that?

Yes, we are certainly luckier than the two children who died today. But will Singaporeans ever learn the lesson taught by this tragedy? Unfortunately, today’s tragedy may not be the last of its kind here. In the next few years, there may be a repeat of what happened today, just as what happened today bears similarity to other incidents which have taken place here in the past.

Society also has to take responsibility when tragedies like this happen. In Singapore, face-saving is so important that when people face financial problems, they rather take their own lives than live with the shame the money problems bring them. It takes courage to be able to live through financial problems. It takes courage to accept bankruptcy in a conservative society such as ours. In the heat of the moment, it may seem easier to seek a way out through death. But, must we play God with our children?