Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

“I’m sorry, Mr Ang Luck Kee, but no amount of dentistry will restore your masticatory function. Be prepared to eat porridge and tofu for the rest of your life.”

How would Mr Ang Luck Kee feel? Fortunately, I’ve never needed to tell anyone that. Most of the time, patients can be helped as long as there are no serious health or financial issues. Even if the patient is somehow really beyond help, I would try my best to sound optimistic and reassuring. Telling the patient that he/she must accept his/her misfortune is demoralising. Hope keeps us going.

Flooding is not something new to Orchard Road. It happens every year. It’s just that such incidents never made the news because they were not serious enough to make shopkeepers cry. Finally, things got serious last month. Goods were destroyed. Shops were damaged. Shopkeepers cried. Singapore was shocked.

Orchard Road is the last place in Singapore that should be flooded. In a land of glitzy malls, 2 integrated resorts and extravagant, state of the art NDP displays, submerged cars in a prime shopping district is an utter embarrassment. Still, we were told that we had to accept it. Just once. Never mind.

When flooding hit the basement of Lucky Plaza again last Saturday, I didn’t hear anyone cursing or swearing. Many of the victims must have thought that aggressive action would soon be taken. It may not be worthwhile to improve the drainage system if flooding at Orchard Road happens only when the rainfall is extraordinary. But what if the extraordinary happens several times over these couple of months?

The last word is out. Everyone’s heart sank. We were told that no amount of engineering will stop some places in Singapore (that includes Orchard Road) from flooding and when there’s an extraordinary amount of rain, we’ve got to be prepared.

Prepared for what? Prepared with what? Prepared for a cheap sale of soaked goods? Prepared to cry? Prepared to flee from creditors? Prepared with sandbags issued by the army? Prepared to build our own dykes? Prepared to dig our own drains? We can’t even plant a tree without permission from the relevant authorities. If the relevant authorities are not doing anything about the flooding problem even when Orchard Road (not Pulau Ubin) is affected, what does it mean for the average, powerless Singaporean?

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.

What’s the message here? That someone who has done some good in the past is licenced to be difficult and unreasonable? What’s wrong with our MCYS these days? Instead of portraying our elders in a positive light, deserving our care and respect, they choose to tell us that no matter how difficult and unreasonable they are, we must still care for them because we would not be here without them.

A friend once commended me for being a caring father. I casually said: “Which parent wouldn’t be.”

Then, I remembered something about this friend. Her parents were separated when she was born. She had no idea who her biological father was. When she was in primary school, her mother decided to give her away. She lived with her adoptive parents, “married” to their son.

She hated her mother from that moment. Her adoptive parents treated her well, but the pain of abandonment by one’s own mother must have been devastating. Her bitterness is not difficult to understand. But what if her mother had once rushed her to the hospital when it was pouring? Would this pain and hatred have been unjustifiable? Would the mother then have the licence to be demanding, unreasonable and willfully destructive?

Times have changed. The cane wielding teachers of yester-years are now extinct. The barking drill sergeants of yester-years who made recruits do push ups on the hot parade square are now smiling security guards at your neighbourhood mall. Shouldn’t authoritarian parents take a cue from these folks? Shouldn’t they also bear some consequences if they refuse to change?

Once again, what is MCYS’ message? That our government will not be responsible for any selfish, misbehaving, irresponsible elderly citizen who has earned his/her children’s disrespect? Good or bad, contributing or destructive, they are still the children’s responsibility? Whatever costs and emotional burden there is

I don’t believe it! Don’t tell me how much they paid the songwriter and director for this piece of crap. I could have written better lyrics in 5 minutes when I was in P6.

Here’s the faster, cheaper, better version.