OF LATE, I cannot help looking down whenever I head outdoors.

It’s hard not to, after doing weeks of research on Singapore’s landscape industry and learning about unscrupulous contractors who try to cheat on their soil mixture by mixing in wood chips instead of proper compost.

The rotting wood chips eventually damage the plants and cause millipedes to multiply.

But such pollution is hard to spot, as the questionable material is often covered by a layer of the good stuff.

So I have been turning my attention to mulch instead.

WHAT IS MULCH?

Mulch is the layer of organic material spread on top of soil beneath a sapling so that it would stand a fighting chance against marauding weeds.

It also helps retain moisture in the soil.

In Singapore, wood chips made from ground horticulture waste like branches and leaves is commonly used as mulch.

According to standards set by the National Parks Board’s Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology, mulch is “any friable organic product such as wood chips, oil palm shells, composts etc (excluding polymers that do degrade, such as plastics, rubber and coatings) that is suitable for placing on soil surfaces”.

But there are allegations that industrial wood like that used for furniture or pallets, is now making its way into the mixture to save costs.

If true, it could have deleterious effects on the environment because of the chemicals present in the wood.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the allegations - which seemed rather far-fetched - until I stumbled onto a questionable pile one day on the grounds of some recently upgraded public housing blocks.

The thick, black piles of wood chips at the base of newly planted saplings looked normal, until I walked closer and noticed thumb-sized specks of white distributed evenly in the mix.

Intrigued, I reached in and pulled one out. It turned out to be a splint of painted wood.

I turned to the landscaper beside me. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, it could have come from the lorry we used to transport the mulch,” he said. “Or maybe the workers who were upgrading the blocks threw the paint here.”

QUESTIONABLE

I tried to give him the benefit of doubt, until a tip-off led me to another questionable mulch sighting.

This time, they were located on a planting bed next to a newly widened section of the Central Expressway. The mulch contained not only painted wood, but shredded paper and even sweet wrappers.

It was reason enough to check with the National Parks Board, which looks after streetside greenery.

After its own inspection, NParks said: “We found flecks of old paint splattered on the mulch. There was also some construction debris near our tree beds.”

It surmised that “this may have been from painting work nearby at the CTE”.

But it added: “We have instructed our contractors to replace the mulch, and informed the CTE construction workers to exercise more care. We will also carry out regular inspections until turfing is carried out at the site.”

In other words, the mulch was bad enough for NParks to have it removed.

But the question remains as to whether the painted wood was intentionally added to the mulch by contractors hoping to save money.

Or was it a result of littering?

I don’t know for sure, but I know I will continue looking closely at planting beds.

In fact, I invite you to do the same and contact me - or NParks at 1800-471 7300 - if you spot something suspicious.

Grass and soil may not seem like a big deal, but it doesn’t make sense to talk about saving the environment when we don’t even know what is going on beneath our feet.

tanhy@sph.com.sg

You know the ritual. You start to acquire something akin to a cocaine-induced hypersensitivity to your surroundings the minute you sign on the dotted line.

The state of the stock market becomes important. That affects how much someone is willing to pay for your home.

You don’t look too kindly upon that smoker. His cigarette ash might devalue your neighbourhood.

And God forbid people let their toddlers out to play lest they smear their snot in the lobby and send cash-rich househunters scurrying away.
You’re not quite sure how you became like this. Wasn’t it not too long ago that you were footloose and fancy-free, laughing at the people queueing outside condominium showrooms? (Then again, maybe your mother might have put you in the queue in your stroller.)

Maybe it’s because, over the years, you just got used to the idea that property values will always rise. The Government assured that by upgrading public housing estates islandwide, much to the chagrin of people who did not want really amphitheatres in their precincts.

Maybe you just got greedy because all your friends and colleagues were talking about it too.

Or maybe you are just scared of losing your job in this take-no-prisoners New Age economy and think that property is the only insurance you can buy.

Whatever the reasons, deep down, you know one thing: You are really tired of thinking of nothing but four walls. Your eyes glaze over when confronted with pamphlets from housing agents promising the best price for your home.

You want out.

What you really need, my friend, is a good dose of selective amnesia. You need to forget the wads of cash that your home represents.
And remember the good old days when homes were just homes.

To read this week’s Saturday Special Report on what the anti-speculation measures mean for the Singapore Dream, please click here

I never thought I would have to deal with teen issues, or come across them again, until a lunchtime discussion with a colleague earlier this year turned up a rather intriguing question: What do teenagers think about sexuality education?

You see, up until then, the whole debate on the topic was centred around adults.

Last year (2009), a group of women from the same church tried to take over feminist group Association of Women for Action and Research, saying that the sexuality education it was providing in schools was objectionable.
Some parents argued otherwise; many others disagreed; academics weighed in; and the Ministry of Education reiterated that sexuality education in schools must be aligned with the values of Singapore’s “mainstream society”.

Few, if any, bothered to ask for the opinion of the central characters of this whole matter: The very teenagers whom sexuality education was supposed to benefit.

If sexuality education were a product, it would seem that society had forgotten to ask its clients what they really wanted or needed.
So this was what I set out to do. Together with my colleague Eisen Teo and the team at The Straits Times’ student publication IN, we polled 300 students aged 13 to 18 and also conducted in-depth interviews with selected teenagers.

We were not sure what we were going to get: Awkward silences? Incongruous babble? Or detailed theses?

In the end, those who agreed to talk gave thoughtful albeit halting responses.

But one sunny afternoon outside a McDonald’s restaurant, a 14-year-old girl changed the game completely by uttering one of the most profound statements I had ever heard about sexuality education.

Rebekah Tay, a secondary two student from a northern Singapore school, was analysing the sexuality education video she watched both in primary school and secondary school. (Yes, she watched the same video twice.)

She said: “The video just says, oh the boy has affection for the girl, the girl has affection for the boy, and then they have a boy-girl relationship (BGR).”

It didn’t, she added, address the complicated problems that teenagers face.
“Usually teenagers enter into a BGR because they face stress in studies, stress at home and they want to unwind.”

In her own words, Rebekah had unleashed an insight of great sociological and psychological value: Sex and romantic relationships, in her world, were not so much the product of mutual attraction but more of a salve in the pressure cooker environment of the Singapore school system.

Yet, many parents continue to vex over the possibility of their children falling into the wrong company and having a child out of wedlock without looking at the larger environment their charges are struggling in.

Is the problem the Singapore school system, rather than the sexuality education regime itself? Or is parental pressure the real issue?

I don’t have the answers. But I know we could listen more closely to young people like Rebekah.

Read the Saturday Special report here

She pokes around art pieces in a museum, and finally meets her doppelganger wearing an equally large hairpiece while travelling down a long escalator.

Singaporean viewers get enough clues in the video to figure out that this is showcasing their home country. Foreigners have to wait till the end of the two-minute clip to learn that the images are from Singapore, “where worlds meet”.

It’s a sweet and simple clip, screened to participants during last year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting held in Singapore last year. But there’s a shiny, scrubbed and almost anaesthetic feel about the images that make Singapore fade into anonymity. There are no other people in the clip, apart from the faceless office crowd at Raffles Place and a fleeting glimpse of children at the National Day Parade.

There is no nation pulse to tap. Singapore is, as it says, is a meeting place for the world.

As the Republic adopts a new branding strategy to keep ahead of competition, it’s time to take stock of what it actually wants to tell the world. If Singapore’s National Marketing Action Committee wants the country to be known for daring to dream, for its collaborative and nurturing attitude, and ultimately its transformative quality, it could do no better than let people tell their stories.

Real stories, like that of the nine Singapore residents captured in video clips screened at the Singapore Pavilion at this year’s World Expo in Shanghai. They featured residents like pint-sized drumming prodigy Ethan Ong, who started busking in Orchard Road at the age of five and pipped other junior drummers to the top spot in China last year. He doesn’t mean to be loud, he tells the camera sheepishly. His dream is “to be the best drummer I can be”.

And Ms Alejandra Grobet, a single mother of two from Mexico who lives in a Housing Board flat and sends her children to neighbourhood schools. The Spanish teacher revels in Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. “The university of life is travel,” she says.

And then there is Mrs Santha Bhaskar, the Kerala-born Cultural Medallion award winner who helms Bhaskar’s Academy of Dance with her husband K. P. Bhaskar. She migrated to Singapore in 1955 when she married Mr Bhaskar. She didn’t miss home then, she says, as people in Singapore were warm.

It’s hard not to find the nine videos endearing, compared to the clean, smart and almost too perfect Apec clip. Yet the nine individuals told the same story of Singapore - of worlds meeting - through their own life stories.

In this digital age, where fakes can be flagged in a heartbeat, there’s an easier way to the convince audiences of the heart they can find in this country.

Simply find the right person, and let him speak. Then watch the magic unfold.

Read Tan Hui Yee's Saturday Special Report on 'Brand New Singapore' here.

She had just enjoyed a meal made with ingredients like organic free-range chicken, which cost $33 each, and organic free-range pork, which cost a jaw-dropping $49 per kg. This was part of a food tasting session arranged for this Saturday Special Report on ethical eating.

The animals were bred in the United States and New Zealand on organic feed and had access to pastures instead of being cooped up in pens at conventional farms.

Sure, the meat was exquisite, but she and a couple of other colleagues at the tasting felt the cost was just too high for everyday consumption.

That’s fair enough, but it is a stretch to conclude that ethical eating is too expensive as the practice is as much about what you avoid eating as it is about what you eat.

Someone who adopts a vegetarian diet to reduce animal suffering could end up spending less than a conventional diner as meat dishes always cost more at food outlets.

And meat lovers can always eating less steak, chicken and so on, which would mean - again - lower food bills.

Detractors love to thumb their noses at organic food on the basis of its relatively higher cost. Going organic, they say, is just too impractical for the average person.

But organic can be used as a benchmark for sustainable agriculture rather than some standard for ethical eating. In other words, it’s okay not to choose organic produce, as long as you demand your food producer grow your vegetables in a manner that is safe for you as well as the environment.

Internationally certified organic standards can be hard to meet, especially for small farmers who have no means of knowing if chemicals had been used on their soil by previous occupants. A farmer who tries his darndest to reduce pollution and support wildlife on his land deserves support – organic or not.

In fact, part of the process of ethical eating is communicating your choices to those who matter.

Have you ever wondered if those prawns at your fishmonger’s were farmed or wild-caught? (Prawn farming has been blamed for the destruction of the region’s mangroves.) Have you bothered to ask him about it?

If enough people did, he might just think twice about stocking that product in the future.

Simply put, there are no gold standards to ethical eating, no checklists to follow. It is a simple act of exercising conscious choice over what you put in your mouth.

Those who choose to walk this path do what they can, and don’t beat themselves up over the stuff that they miss.

It’s okay to slip up, they say.

Redemption is just a meal away.

But look closer and you will see that both are connected. Both, in fact, are major components of Gunungsitoli General Hospital in Nias, an earthquake-prone island off the western coast of Sumatra.

The original facility was wrecked by the 8.7 magnitude quake that hit the island four years ago. The new one was the unique result of a multinational effort by Malaysia, China, Japan and Singapore.

Each country funded one wing of the 160-bed facility; the hospital opened in stages from 2007.

Intriguingly, Singapore’s flashy blue-and-white wing sticks out from the functional greys and whites of the rest.

Hospital director Yulianus Mendrofa, 48, declares it his favourite. “It looks like a ship!” he says.

A tour inside the hospital shows it to be more congruous inside. White tiles line the floors, while wide corridors are left empty, to be converted to holding areas should disaster strike again.

Despite the foreign involvement, the Indonesians have been quick to stamp their character on the place.

A little nook under a ramp is converted to a cafe with makeshift tables and chairs.

A table tennis table is the centrepiece in an otherwise empty second floor corridor. Downstairs, another such table takes pride of place near the counter in the pharmacy.

Do the patients play table tennis, I ask Dr Mendrofa.

No, he says, the tables are meant for staff. “They like to play ping pong every day, after their shift.”

Dr Mendrofa has his work cut out for him, as his outfit still does not have enough funding or staff to operate optimally. Many of his staff have undergone training at Singapore’s Alexandra Hospital recently.

When asked what he would like to see change at his hospital after the Singapore stints, and he pinpoints something often overlooked: Bedside manners.

“I want them to handle their patients more professionally, like Singapore doctors and nurses. They speak nicely to their patients. Their patients feel comfortable.”

The little things still count, even if nature wreaks its havoc here now and then.

Read the Saturday Special report here

Read the Saturday Special report here.

There's not much to complain about, as you zip around town in the cool comfort of the passenger seat.

After one year, when you finally get the keys, you realise something is wrong. The brakes are not working, the acceleration is not so smooth.

You head back to the car distributor, but he says: 'Sorry, your warranty period is over.'

Condominium owners are faced with this conundrum when they move into their new home.

-- Photo: CDL

Under the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act, the developer acts as the management council for the estate in its first year of existence. The developer has to run the estate, manage its fund - including paying maintenance fees for any unsold apartments - and keep proper accounts to hand over to the homeowners when that period is up.

The idea is that the homeowners need some time to settle in and get to know each other, before they can take over the running of the estate. They have the option of calling for a general meeting to elect a council earlier if at least 10 per cent of them request for it. Most choose to wait till the 12 months is up.

The problem here is that the developer's guarantee also lasts 12 months. Within this standard defects liability period (DLP), developers are obliged to fix - at their own cost - any defects that arise within the apartments, as well as other parts of the estate.

Any defect identified after that period risks being classified as a case of 'natural wear and tear'. The homeowners would have to dig into their own pockets to get it fixed.

Far East Organization - one of the largest developers in Singapore - states in response to queries from The Straits Times: 'Our legal obligation in respect of defects rectification ends upon the expiry of the DLP. Calls from purchasers after the expiry of the DLP, are reviewed on a goodwill basis.'

Established developers usually hand over to the condos' management corporations a set of warranties from specialist contractors that would last beyond one year. The rooftop waterproofing, for example, usually comes with a 10-year warranty from its contractor.

But getting other defects fixed depends on the owners' luck.

Honest developers own up to latent defects which surface a good two or three years down the road, and either rectify them or compensate the condo owners.

Bean-counting developers will go by the letter of the law and refuse to budge. They know - just as much as the owners - that if any party goes public about these defects, it could lower the reputation of the condo just as much the developers'.

Getting the defects fixed becomes a game of 'who blinks first'.

Which is why estate management professionals like Mr Chan Kok Hong, who runs CKH Strata Management, advocate condo owners take over the running of their estate as soon as possible.

At the very least, they say, homeowners should pay close attention to any kinks in the common areas of their estate in the first year, instead of concentrating solely on what's inside their apartments.

When it comes to owning condos, it is better to take the drivers' seat early - than live the next few years in regret.

Read more about condo maintenance in the Saturday Special Report today.

These 'silver' consumers were perfect clients. They had just withdrawn money from their Central Provident Fund accounts and had time on their hands to spend it.

Then the banks got into the act and started targeting retirees with investment products, some of which seemed on paper to be too good to be true (a suspicion that turned out to be well founded).

Singapore's business community has a less than gleaming record when it comes to engaging older consumers. Most companies fail to grasp the value of the silver dollar and lack effective ways to tap into it.

Official efforts to raise awarenesss began with a very unwieldy sounding 'SICEX 2008 Conference' that brought together professionals, business leaders, policymakers and academics to look at ways of turning silver into gold.

That improved somewhat in January this year, when the government-backed Council For Third Age launched the '50+ Singapore Expo' with more varied consumer items to pull in the crowd.

These days, any company which has designs on the silver dollar has to the navigate a verbal minefield with regards to the proper terms of address.

Depending on where you stand - and how ageist you are - the terms 'uncle' and 'auntie' can be construed as either respectful or insulting, equated with dowdy and haggard.

Other words that raise a red flag are 'senior citizen', 'elderly' and simply 'old man'.

'Silver consumers' is out of the running because silver hair has been banished with hair dye.

And even the seemingly innocent term 'older' is frowned upon by some.

Retail consultant Marie-Louise Jacobsen states: "These customers are not older. They just have lived longer. This is exactly the point Singapore companies should get their heads around. The mind-set of a 50-plus is young."

Even, according to retail expert Lynda Wee, '50-plus' is wrong.

"Please don’t call them 50s, uncles, aunties or even silver-haired. No one aspires to be '50s'," she says.

It's a no-win situation. Salesmen are left with a paltry 'Sir' or 'Ma'am', which are almost unbefitting of our colourful, multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan environment.

While some question the use of labels, British marketing expert Dick Stroud contends that it's not just the labels which are the problem, but the type of labels used.

From the marketing perspective, it is useless to categorise someone as an older consumer without knowing about the consumer's habits and lifestyle choices.

Just saying someone is 60 does not tell us anything about what he likes to eat, how often he travels, what car he drives, which sports he plays, or his approach to life.

As the number of older people in the population swells, ageing should become less of a taboo and people will start to realise that the world need not end if others find out how old they are. Older consumers may also become less sensitive to the variety of labels heaped upon them and their lot.

In the meantime, one thing is for sure. An increasing number of people are living longer and are holding the bucks. In a capitalist economy, that is the final measure of power.

To avoid being left behind by the demographic tide, business owners need only shed their blinkers and follow the money. After all, it’s basic economics. Find out what the customer wants and then give it to him.

It can be simple and fuss-free. Just ask the streetwalkers.

That question popped up one day, during the preparation for my Saturday Special Report on ageism, when retiree Lena Lim, 71, talked about how she felt excluded at parties when she no longer dyed her grey hair black.

Suddenly, she was deemed 'old' and no longer interesting.

It turned out later to be an emotive topic among colleagues. Dyeing, they said, was a no-brainer because 'grey hair ages you'. Would you go for a job interview with grey hair, they asked?

What was left unsaid: Would you want to be judged on how old you looked, and, because of the negative associations that being 'old' has, potentially lose out that job you are eyeing?

It is a hard question to answer, when society's ageist attitudes may force you to walk the line irregardless of your personal convictions.

Dr Robyn Stone, the executive director of the Institute for the Future of Ageing Services in the United States, thinks that 'our natural ageing process is really important'.

'Ageing builds character in individuals and societies. When you take that away, you don't have that opportunity in your society.'

Technology has made if possible for someone who is 60 to look 40, but it cannot mitigate the ageism that arises when everybody tries to look young. That lone grey haired women in the corner sticks out like a sore thumb because she suddenly doesn't look natural.

What would that kind of future look like, when everybody looks 'young'? Would the term 'young' still mean anything?

It is a paradox similar to one presented in the common line: Would we know what it is like to be happy if we have never experienced sadness?

Take out the grey, and we lose an important shade of Singapore. But the journey to erasing its stigma can be long and - in the case of Lena – sometimes lonely.

Read Hui Yee's Saturday Special Report on Ageism here.