Work | Ban Shisha ?

I’ve been posted to Servlink Technological Resources (STR) located at Alexandra Technopark Block A , Alexandra road which is a 5 min bus ride down the main road beside my gorgeous estate. Work is kinda normal . I mean , its not bad , its not good. Its not bad because i like what i’m doing . Its not good because the working hours are long and by the time i finish work, im fuckin tired and its too late to hangout and all .What i do at work is basically work as a computer engineer.Oh, STR and HP are business partners where STR work for HP. So i repair all the HP laptops you send in for repair. Changing of anything ; motherboards , LCD screen , keyboard , touchpad whatever . Yeah i learnt it all in less than a day . I’m kinda happy with my job . But then again , when i have no laptop to fix and play around with , it gets really fuckin’ boring . I mean , seriously boring . Its easy to fall asleep in there cos its kinda freezing with so many air-cons around and the whole building air conditioned . Its kinda like a free n easy job just that you must be punctual and you cannot go home earlier . I work from 9 am to fuckin’ 645 pm with 1 hour lunch break which i barely make use of . So coming to say  , all my weekdays are sacrificed for work . Well , i do hangout abit sometimes but just half alive .  I did telecoms just now . Called up alot of customers to update them about their laptop. Some were fucked up. Some were nice. yeah of course i have to tolerate that bullshit unless they really get on my nerves. Ha. I usually play games on the laptops after i fixed finish. Or browse through to hit ‘jackpot’ . ‘ Jackpot ‘ in my terms can be of different type depending on which way you look at it OR how dirty your mind is. Ha. I was meaning the dirtier way obviously .  I mean , out of curiousity lah huh . But of course , i hit some jackpot just now. I found GTA and HALO 3 . Played like fuck . Well , thats about all about my work life. Its just been 3 days since i started work . And the remaining 5 weeks and 4 days feels like hell somehow . Gah.
Went out with VeraP(: last sunday ! Met her at LJS , Plaza sing and we walked around for awhile . We just met for dinner luh . After that we chatted for quite sometime and then sent her back .

Monday was my first day at work. I met my friend at 8am at harbourfront MRT cos he didn’t know the way . And then we went to work early so as to not leave a bad impression on the very first day. And then work started . My supervisor is awesome .He’s so carefree and all. Although a really fuckin’ busy man . I like the people at my workplace . They’re all so friendly . After work went to meet dillon and vineeth with the rest at Haji lane where  i had dinner with Alex while they were shisha-ing . Took pictures here and there abit and i rushed home . How sad if the proposal for banning shisha goes through .

WILL ARAB STREET BE LEFT WITH NO SMOKE?

THE shisha smoke which wafts along Arab Street on all nights of the week could be a smell of the past, if a proposal to ban the Middle Eastern water pipe goes through.

But owners of the clutch of eateries there – which serve no alcohol, but offer the shisha – want their restaurants and bars to be exempt from any ban.

Mr John Goh, 31, who owns the year-old Nasrin Restaurant, said: ‘What is Arab Street without shisha? If it is taken away, the place would lose its colour.’

Other owners said that Arab Street is a tourist attraction, and the ban would take away the novelty and character of the place.

Introduced in 2001, shisha pipe smoking – which uses fruit tobacco – is now available at about 60 restaurants and bars all over Singapore.

It costs between $12 and $25 to share a pipe with friends, in a session which could last a couple of hours.

Retailers in Arab Street declined to reveal the portion of their income that comes from the pipe. Mr Hassan Saad, 43, owner of Egyptian restaurant Altazzag, said he could have as many as 25 shisha customers a day, or as few as five.

Most patrons of the Arab Street bars were predictably indignant. ‘I wouldn’t know where to go should shisha be banned,’ lamented national serviceman Rusydi Miswan, 23, who said he goes to Arab Street ‘every day’.

There is far less scientific data on shisha-smoking than cigarettes, which have been researched for decades, according to Associate Professor Philip Eng, a respiratory specialist.

But the studies which have been done have found it to be no less harmful.

One, by Laboratoire National d’Essais of France, found that smoking a shisha in one session gives off as much carbon monoxide as 15 to 52 cigarettes and as much tar as 27 to 102 cigarettes.

Like Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand are reviewing their laws to ban shisha-smoking.

It is one of a range of measures being studied by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) to further discourage smoking, especially among younger people.

The stiffer penalties and other amendments proposed would bring Singapore in line with international practices, said HPB.

One proposal calls for retailers caught selling tobacco to underaged customers – even for the first time – to lose their tobacco licences immediately. Canada and the United States have similar laws.

More than 65 retailers here were caught selling to customers under 18 last year, up from the 57 the previous year.

An average of 6,200 underaged smokers have been nabbed each year in the last five years. Repeat offenders will face bigger fines with the proposed changes.

While the overall smoking rate in Singapore fell from 20 per cent in 1984 to 12.6 per cent in 2004, it has gone up in the last three years to 13.6 per cent.

The HPB said this was broadly due to more young people smoking and the emergence of new tobacco trends.

The current proposed changes are ‘closely aligned’ to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the first treaty negotiated under the World Health Organisation in response to the worldwide tobacco problem.

Doctors and youth counsellors welcome the proposed changes, saying they are long overdue in the battle against smoking.

Prof Eng said: ‘These measures are important since it is easier and cheaper to prevent people from smoking than to try to get them to quit later. The upping of measures against errant retailers is a clear signal that the Health Ministry is determined to clamp down on underaged smoking.’

Calling it ‘a big step forward’, National Cancer Centre director Soo Khee Chee added: ‘Tobacco is an insidious poison that ultimately kills more lives than recreational drugs that we banned in Singapore.’

Advertisement