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In the past, one of the rituals that a new recruit of a secret society had to go through was drinking a bowl of water mixed with drops of blood of the other members. That was how the brotherhood was formed. No betrayal, absolute loyalty. Our Singapore society these days must be the biggest brotherhood in the world and we actually drank the by-product of one another's human waste. Extract water from human waste, the people embrace it. No wonder the absolute loyalty, regardless of the rights or wrongs.
Extract oil from the gutter, we cried a storm. I think it is about trust. We place absolute trust in our supreme leaders such that we believe our the process of drinking water extracted from everyone's waste cannot go wrong once we get it right the first time. We do not trust shady PRCs oil vendors to do the same thing. Their gutter oil cannot be good, or anything close to the World Class standards that our GLCs can live up to. Perhaps one day a budding young lady will set up an interesting company in Singapore, named Oilflux or something, that recycles smooth good reusable cooking oil from waste. Soon enough, you can be sure GIC will dump our CPF money into it to hold a stake and before long, Oilflux will be publicly listed like SMRT. After Mediacorp pushes out a video clip showing PM Lee cooking with NewOil on one National Day Rally everyone will get to enjoy NewOil to fortify the brotherhood.
I couldn't help but laugh when I saw how carefully the "Alternative media" phrased their articles on this topic, which had been going around for days at least. Ok, no one wanted to be hauled up by the police for "causing alarm to public." I could understand that. There were some members of the brotherhood who insisted that these random PRCs were PUB maintenance contractors. That reminded me of the multiple "Wong Fei Hong" movies starring Jet Li that I watched as a youth. Members of the White Lotus Clan cried like babies when they finally realised their steadfast beliefs in their religion had been completely misplaced. Ignorant is bliss, I guess. So safe haven is the place we live in and we should continue to believe it.
To an ex-employee of the government, he knew something was amiss the second he saw the picture. PUB contractors? Ha! No fucking way. What's missing? Standard protocols such as PPE, work demarcation cones and warning signs or even a uniform. If you truly believe that we get contractors to push around unwashed drums and dodgy third-world equipment in a trolley, isn't your faith placed in the government a contradiction? So if they were not contractors, what in your most optimistic view they were doing? When even the Straits Times couldn't come up with a bullshit story, you knew things were pretty bad.
So it was confirmed. Gutter oil. That wasn't the worst part. It was gutter oil made from somebody else other than our government. The horrors!
You know, puking aside, I really admire these PRCs folks. I feel that there is something I must learn from them. My bet is on that couple didn't get caught on camera on their debut extraction. You can choose to be optimistic about it. I believe it they have been doing it multiple, if not countless times. The first thing that came to my mind when I read about this was that, "Where is the demand coming from?" That was where I took my hats off them. As new migrants who knew little about their new environment and had little contacts, they managed to get their little dirty business going. The evils aside, that was remarkable. I mean.. I don't even know how to start up a thriving home-made cookies business in Perth. How do these PRCs even get their intermediaries going? You don't expect them to go cold calling asking every food vendor, “老大， 要经济油吗？国产货。” But I'm pretty sure somehow they did though I cannot fathom which food operator will risk their painfully started up FnB business by going gutter. However, no demand, no supply. We do not know who and where but it's we are definitely further strengthening our brotherhood here.
Their own people will use it. There're countless food stalls set up by PRC people, popping up faster than zits can on my face, especially around Chinatown. If they can recycle the broth & chilli oil from the mala steamboat, there's no reason for them not to use the gutter oil. Eww...
ReplyDeleteHorrible. Double whammy with expensive medical treatments.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete1) The government just announced studying the use of (under)groundwater below our little island for use in drought.
ReplyDeleteA presitgious (local) award was given recently for such research done.
2) I have read in National Geographic years ago that in Western Australia, after too much groundwater was pumped out of the ground for farming, seawater seeped in below to replace the loss.
Farmers literally awoke overnight to find salt emerged in their fields, permanently ruining them.
I'm sure our very smart technocrats have thought of this and everything else (nuclear power too, from earlier on).
3) Gutter oil: another industry to use it in might be pasar malam, the night markets.
I have spent precious $2 notes on my favourite battered fish meat (think budget McDonald's Filet-O-Fish patty on a stick), only to discover they were good-looking but re-fried and overnight, no longer crispy.