Horrific Effects Of Haze

The haze hit its horrific highest level when I was in Singapore on Friday June 20 2013 hoping for a sunny summer, with swimming, photographs, shopping, or simple sitting on the balcony sipping a cocktail and admiring the view and breathing the fresh air. All that ended. It didn't matter where you were, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Singapore, in the city centre or out in the tree-lined suburbs.
 The haze affected everyone.  First I cancelled my daily early morning swim. The sky was overcast, grey as if about to rain, uninviting. Instead of going shopping in outdoor markets and from shop to shop in Chinatown I stayed home. The shopkeepers were having a bad day without me and the other shoppers.
What about breakfast? I went into the kitchen and the haze hit me. Singapore kitchens are designed to let the smells of spicy food out of the window. Some kitchens even in places (like our first flat in newly built Euro_Asia Court near central Orchard Road in the 1990s) have no windows, just grilles. Now my Singapore kitchen had a glass venetian blind which tilts but the mechanism was jammed and you could not completely close the window.  
I could not order in food. Companies relying on motorcyclists to deliver had cancelled deliveries. Anybody relying on a bicycle or motorbike to get to work was in trouble.
On Saturday I had planned to go to a Toastmasters Speakers Club in the evening at a university. The friend who was taking me there was Area Governor. She texted me to say that the college had cancelled all meetings. Why? As a precaution to prevent inconveniencing people with last minute cancellations? So I didn't see the group and didn't see her.
Schools in Malaysia closed. Singapore schools were on holiday.
On my last day I met the building's cleaner coming up in the lift. Her English was limited, and so was my knowledge of other languages. I tried to say something jolly along the lines of, 'It's good the haze is improving, isn't it? Did you find it troublesome?'
She looked extremely glum. Suddenly I realised that for cleaners and maintenance workers the effects are dire. They are out all day in the grounds of hotels, clubs and apartment buildings, cleaning open decks and open air corridors.
The rich who are unemployed or can work anywhere can take off briefly. After Friday two of my friends booked flights out. One went to Australia. Another went to Thailand.
I was very glad to take a flight to London. But how long can you stay away? A long weekend? All summer? Forever?
As you get older you become more vulnerable and so do your parents.
I wake at night, still with a slight cough, clearing my throat, feeling a chest pain, worrying about the long-term effects. But one good result is that I am happier with simpler things. Never before have I been happy just to be able to get up and breathe the air.