Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

I would be crying now if my clinic had been on the basement of Lucky Plaza. The flood 2 weeks ago would have devasted my dental unit and $50,000 xray machine. Yes, there was a devastating flood at Orchard Road that day. I arrived in the afternoon, but several broken down vehicles were still stranded on the road, waiting to be towed away. At the basement of Lucky Plaza, was a familiar sight. Water was ankle deep (I was told it went up to knee deep earlier) and shopkeepers were frantically blocking off their shops with planks and shovelling water away from their goods with everything they had. Just next door at Tong Building (the Rolex building), the basement carpark was full of submerged cars. Boy was I glad to be on Level 5.

Later in the afternoon, after most of the flood waters on the main road have subsided, I was walking on muddy ground outside Takashimaya. The basement carpark at Tong Building continued to hold its submerged cars while roaring trucks I’ve never seen before siphoned desperately. The underpass between Takashimaya and Lucky Plaza remained closed and many people were forced to run across the road.

Yes, it was a devastating flood. My heart goes out to the shopkeepers and the owners of the submerged cars. Apparently, this flood (which is not the first in Orchard Road which I’ve seen) was caused by a large monsoon drain being choked by the carcass of an animal called a scapegoat.

Wait a minute. There’s no scapegoat here and I’m surprised. Not only was there no scapegoat, we were told that ensuring zero floods would mean building some very expensive huge monsoon drains which would be empty most of the time. Sounds a bit like parade squares in army camps.

OK, National Day is next month. I’d leave NDP to the youngsters. For me, I’ll probably take a short trip to Indonesia and climb a volcano. In line with promoting environmental friendliness, I heard that a couple of local designers have been engaged to design stylish totes with the NDP theme. The design below sums it all up.

Shows what kind of boring, unimaginative and restricted dreams we can have in Singapore. So much for a flood of creativity.

It was a sad moment when I sent what might be my last denture case to SJ.

Some background info. SJ stands for Simon and Joseph. The two were formally dental technicians with the SAF. After the left the army, they decided to put their skills to good use and started a dental laboratory at Defu Lane, churning out highly economical dentures of acceptable quality. For the past 17 years at Hougang, I’ve been sending my denture cases to SJ. They have never disappointed me. Every morning without fail, the SJ delivery man (never got his name) would ride down to the clinic on his little scooter to send or collect cases.

After the move to Orchard, I still sent my denture cases to them. It was a bit inconvenient for me as I had to bring the cases down to Hougang for them to be collected and then bring the completed cases back from Hougang to Orchard. But with Hougang closed down, there is no more delivery and collection there.

One evening, I paid a visit to SJ and spoke to Joseph about collecting cases from Orchard. There is still a demand for cheap temporary dentures at Orchard. Joseph said that he was sad to lose an old customer. But his biggest problem is that to enter the city to collect cases, whatever little profit he makes from the denture will be wiped out by parking and ERP charges.

How ridiculously obvious to some yet not to others. So what to do? I’ll have to send my denture cases to new labs which do collect from Orchard. But many of these technicians are not familiar with my style like Simon and Joseph. What’s more, they charge a lot more. Maybe that’s to cover their ERP and parking costs. Apart from numerous phone calls from unfamiliar technicians who need clarification for my instructions, denture costs have also gone up tremendously. I can no longer afford to charge Hougang rates for my old regulars from Hougang.

We’ve been told by a wise leader to eat fish if chicken gets too expensive. Must be talking about ikan bilis as fish is always more expensive than chicken. What about dentures? If ERP charges are going to stop the cheap dental labs from coming down to Orchard, perhaps they could take the MRT? Let’s see how these wise leaders carry a few dozen stone casts and dentures down Orchard Road every day. Fish is cheap and stone casts have no weight. Which world are we living in?