In the last few days, I thought I’m in Raccoon City instead of Singapore.
People have gone to supermarket in droves and wiped out daily essentials. Some even left trolleys of items on the floor after realising that the queues were too long. If I’m someone who doesn’t go to the Internet, I’d have thought that World War III has begun, or aliens have finally landed in Yishun.
And so, here’s the bad news that you’d be ashamed to tell your future grandchildren: when a crisis occurs in Singapore, some people here would be infected with the Kiasu virus fastly.
But here’s the goody news: as a nanny state, our authorities would come down hard to contain the Kiasu virus.
Reader Bao: Did Mr Lee Kuan Yew jump out from his grave and kick all those hoarders out?
Not, he didn’t, though I won’t be surprised if he did.
Instead, the authorities and supermarkets implemented measures fastly to prevent stop more people from creating minimarts out from their mini-HDB.
And it works.
“Sense of Normalcy” is Back
For a start, NTUC FairPrice has doubled their deliveries and tripled their orders for daily essentials, and it’s not to feed the hoarders but to ensure that there are still products on their shelves.
The chain has also imposed purchase limits for customers: every customer can now only buy a maximum of 4 paper products, 2 bags of rice, 4 packs of instant noodles and $50 of vegetables.
It’s shocking that we’ve to come to this, but hey: whatever works, works.
A colleague who stayed in the west said that while there are still queues (the outlet he goes to always have queues), there are no more empty shelves.
And according to several ministers, that’s what was observed, too.
A number of ministers were at a community walkabout at Jurong West 505 Market and Food Centre to gather feedback from patrons and stallholders on the panic buying situation, though I suspect they’re there for the food as well because anyone who lives in the west would know that Jurong West 500+ market has the best-est food in the Milky Way.
According to Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing, the longest queues over at Jurong West weren’t the supermarkets but the popular hawker stalls (see see I told you I told you!) and Singapore Pools.
Panic buying over there is over, and there’s a “sense of normalcy”.
The MP in the area, Desmond Lee, agrees, and residents have told him that they’re carrying on with lives as usual.
In other words, the Kiasu virus is now contained.
I can finally go buy my potato chips and enjoy my Netflix—
Ministers: OEI, HELLO, Kiasu virus contained but war against diabetes still on leh! You got exercise before buying potato chips or not?
Ah, damn it.
