Sunday, September 27, 2015

Clearing haze in the air, haze in thoughts about haze

As a tourist or traveler you need to watch what quality of air you get at the time of travel. This is important if you are young or old, or travelling with, or meeting, others who are. It affects photography and business. Entertainment could be cancelled, such as Formula I. As the haze impacts on everybody'd activities and health, everybody starts to look for solutions.

A aerial map of fires, seen from helicopters or satellites in the sky, reveals the scale of the problem. You are dealing with an island, but not the size of the Isle of Wight or Singapore, more like the size of Australia. It's not one fire, but dozens. You can send in your thousand trained troops (as done in Indonesia) or prisoners (as done in the USA) or regular firemen, to fight a fire on one side of the country. But more fires are the opposite side of the country.

Also I suspect it's like closing down restaurants in London. I read in the papers that a restaurant had been closed down. I went back when it reopened supposedly under new management.

I was greeted by the friendly waiters I remembered well from earlier years. They assured me that I would get the same tasty food and attentive service. A relative who had been in charge was no longer on the title deeds. Another member of the extended family had taken over.

I imagine what was done at a restaurant in London could easily be the case in other situations. A fire is put out. It starts up again a few days later in the same place, associated with different people. The cure is only temporary unless you tackle the motivation or profit. You need both to cure the problem and find the cause and prevent it happening again.

In Singapore at some community centres masks have been distributed. You can also buy masks at pharmacies. And if you have any ideas on preventing or curing the haze, please make your contribution to public forums.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

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