Blowin' in the wind; and KPI issued to pandas' keepers...

Smog gets in your ire...

Without all that smog (yes, that's what it is, not haze!), the Marina Bay area should look like this in the day-time...

And in the night-time...

Where's all that smog coming from? Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan regions! And why does Jakarta seem to play NATO (no action, talk only) while its neighbours Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei fret about all that smog? Take a look at this graphic:

Let me put it this way... ask someone living in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, about the so-called "haze", and the breezy reply will be: "Huh, apa haze? Tak ada!" (To be fair, the regional governments themselves are less thick-skinned about it, ie, they are more malu, but there's only so much they can do).

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Meanwhile, the panda-mic fever has not abated. Here's a cartoon from ST:

And here below, in spite of our being bombarded these past few days by the words Jia Jia and Kai Kai in print, on screen and on air, there is this silliest of quiz questions:

One minister (he's in one of the pics I used yesterday) decided to induct JJ and KK into our national baby-making drive. As quoted in ST (Aug 7), he -- let's call him LL -- said that a key performance indicator would be the ability to successfully get the pandas to breed.

Presumably, the pressure is on the folks at the River Safari, where the lovey-doveys are now housed, to "make it happen". That reminds me of what is claimed to have been an actual newspaper headline:

Zoo's pandas fail to mate;
veterinarians take over

With that headline in mind, here's what seems like a suitable picture, below (one of the "pandas" is a human suitably dressed up)...

But don't let your imagination get the better of you! The Chinese zoo worker in the pic is simply togged up in a panda suit so as not to frighten the real panda while helping the little critter to go have some quality play-time in the snow.