Bath or bao makes or breaks one's day

Doctors are more superstitious than they realise, a study shows

Tan Hui Leng

THE next time you see an abundance of unsold bao at a hospital food court, put it down to a superstitious medical staff.

They are probably avoiding the steamed dumplings as it bodes for a bao ka liao (Hokkien for "have the lion's share of") situation while on duty.

In a survey of 68 medical staff members, a National University Hospital (NUH) team has found that medical personnel are more superstitious than they themselves realise. The respondents comprise 54 doctors, nine medical students and five nurses.

The paper, written in a tongue-in-cheek fashion under the title, Take a Bao if You Are Not Superstitious, was published in the March edition of the Academy of Medicine's Annals journal, which every year at this time brings out a humorous edition. The study was carried out by neurologist Dr Lim Chuen Hian Erle and three colleagues late last year.

"Rare is the fledgling Singaporean medic or nurse who has not been initiated into this cult of superstitious practices," the authors wrote in a section called "Cum Grano Salis", Latin for "with a pinch of salt".

"We are told not to mention how good one's night duty is, never to eat steamed dumplings, called bao, on the same day, lest we bao ka liao all the cases, or worse, have to bao (Mandarin for wrap) corpses in their shrouds later that night.

"Those with bad luck are told to 'bathe in the seven flowers' (a traditional Chinese ritual for cleansing), though which flowers to use in the concoction are never elucidated.

"Presumably, it is the fragrance which engenders good fortune, thus explaining the propensity for some doctors to bathe before every call."

Indeed, although 83.8 per cent of the respondents disclaimed having a superstitious nature, about half avoided having items purported to confer bad luck during a call and 24 of them admitted to acting on their superstitions.

Although only six believed in the powers of the "bath of the seven flowers", 14 made it a habit to bathe prior to a call — in the belief that this protected them against a bad one.

Also, eating mee siam, a Malay noodle dish, is purported to siam (that is, chase away) bad luck, while soon kuay — a type of Chinese dumpling — sounds like "shun" (or smooth in Mandarin), suggesting a smooth-sailing night.

Superstitions in medical institutions are not unique to Singapore.

In 2002, a survey of British doctors revealed the observance of several superstitious beliefs and practices, among which were the inadvisability of stating that a call was quiet (lest the word be taken as an invocation to the fates to supply work) and rituals to ensure a good call, such as laying out one's clothes for the next day prior to turning in for the night.

A junior doctor at a public hospital here told Today that the superstitions, particularly that surrounding bao, should not be taken lightly.

"I ate a small bao before a night call a few weeks ago, despite having been warned years ago by my seniors," the doctor said. "I ended up attending to 40 patients in one night! That was a really bad call, I've never had a similar bad call after a non-bao diet." The doctor declined to be named.

"There was another doctor on call that night and I was the one who jinxed it by eating a bao, so I haven't told anyone about it!" the doctor added with a nervous laugh.

It is not just newbies who stay clear of tempting fate.

A neurosurgeon in the NUH study reported that he avoided eating beef on the day of his call, because beef, or niu rou in Mandarin, sounds like "neuro", which would jinx a neurology or neurosurgical call.

Another respondent, an oncologist, reported his belief that eating bread, or mian bao, protected one from the danger of a bao ka liao situation, since mian is Hokkien for "no need".

The results, the study concluded, demonstrate that "superstitions are not the province of the uneducated or the foolish", and that "we are more superstitious than we care to admit".

Although seemingly lighthearted, the NUH study makes for an interesting sociological study of hospital personnel.

Future studies suggested by the team include a randomised study examining the disparity between a doctor's perception of what went on during a call and the actual workload — measured by the number of admissions and the number of bleeps received by a pager, for instance — after eating bao, mee siam or soon kuay.

Another charity scandal brewing: $3.9m missing from home's coffers

JUST a day after one chapter was brought to a close in the National Kidney Foundation scandal, another multi-million-dollar bombshell rocked the charity scene.

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The Commissioner of Charities on Friday launched an inquiry into the disappearance of some $3.88 million from the coffers of the St John's Home for Elderly Persons, apparently drawn without authorisation by a staff member.

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The loss was discovered on June 8 when two of the home's cheques to its vendors bounced.

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The home checked with the bank and found that a fixed deposit account, from which the cheques were to have been paid, had been emptied out.

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The next day, a check with another bank revealed that all the home's fixed deposits with it had also been withdrawn, according to a joint press release issued by the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) and the home on Friday.

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A report was filed with the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and the police last Monday.

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That same day, home superintendent Benjamin Ho, 60 — who had gone on overseas leave in late May — did not return to work as he was scheduled to. He could not be reached despite repeated calls to his home and mobile phone.

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The home, which was set up in 1959 at Macpherson and now has 62 residents — some of whom are destitute and homeless — does not get any government grants and relies wholly on donations from various churches and members of the public.

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When this newspaper dropped in on Friday evening, its Annual General Meeting was under way and the managerial committee had just informed donors and volunteers about the loss. They received the news calmly.

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Speaking for the board, honorary treasurer Mr Andrew Lioe told Today: "We all feel very sad. A lot of this was based on trust and so we are quite stunned. Our trust has been betrayed."

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Chairman Wilfred Anthonisz declined to speculate on Mr Ho's involvement as the matter is under police investigation.

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But the possibility that forgery was involved was raised. According to the home, any withdrawals from the banks required Mr Lioe's signature and that of one of three approved people -- Mr Anthonisz, vice-chairman Mr Woon Wee Yim and honorary secretary Mdm Laureen Tan.

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All four have told police they did not sign off on any withdrawals.

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Meanwhile, Mr Anthonisz gave the assurance that the home had enough funds to carry on. Its total monthly spending is about $40,000. He said: "We want to carry on running it as normally as possible."

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The NCSS is helping to ensure that residents continue to be cared for and, at the home's behest, will take over its financial administration functions in the interim. It will also look at ways to improve the home's financial systems and internal controls.

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According to the home's 2005 financial statements posted online, its total expenditure that year was $583,000, while its total assets amounted to $4.66 million and total funds were $4.62 million. The total receipts – including from donations, grants, members' fees and investments – stood at $613,000.

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This development, so close on the heels of other high-profile lapses among charities – which led to an overhaul of regulatory systems – has shocked observers.

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Said Associate Professor Mak Yuen Teen, who sits on the Charity Council and heads the Corporate Governance and Financial Reporting Centre at the National University of Singapore: "The charity sector certainly does not need another one of these episodes. But the commissioner is doing the right thing by stepping in quickly to announce it to the public and investigate it as speedily as possible."

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The COC will look into how the loss occurred and assess the governance and financial control systems at the home, whose Institution of Public Character status will be reviewed.

How to make money like a pr0n star*

Chua Su Sien

THE book was laden with adult content, including explicit pictures of sex organs. Its title: How to make money like a porn star.
So it shocked visitors to last weekend’s World Book Fair, held at Suntec Singapore, to see the paperback being displayed openly in the children’s section.
Ms Rachel Chan said: "There were women's breasts and men's private parts, very suggestively drawn... It was teaching kids how to make money by producing their own porn."
A check showed that the controversial graphic novel, authored by Rolling Stone contributing editor Neil Strauss and illustrated by Bernard Chang, is available at the Kinokuniya bookstore at Ngee Ann City.
But copies are shrink-wrapped and labelled, and according to the bookstore, customers must approach the staff for help if they are keen on the comics.
Not so at Times Publishing's chain of bookshops, where copies had been placed prominently near the entrance at one outlet and could be browsed by anyone.
In response to queries, Times the Bookshop – which has since removed the books from its shelves – said it had assumed the distributor had cleared the book's content with the relevant authorities in Singapore.
It regretted that the comic book was inadvertently included for sale at the book fair, and added that the title, published by Harper Collins, was picked from a list of best-selling books provided by a local distributor.
Under the regulations, anyone who makes, imports, sells or distributes an obscene publication can face a fine of up to $5,000, or a jail term of up to a year, or both. – Channel NewsAsia

http://www.howtomakemoneylikeapornstar.com/

Two killed by falling trees

Ansley Ng

May 16, 2007

HE WAS a young physical education trainee teacher out camping in Johor. She was a middle- aged clinic assistant on an early-morning walk.In a space of two hours early yesterday, a freak twist of fate saw both Singaporeans killed in eerily similar circumstances, as the rain poured down on both sides of the border.

Madam Ho Siew Lan, 43, died when a huge raintree fell on her at about 7am, minutes after she had left her home forher usual brisk walk at the Bukit Batok Nature Park.Two hours earlier, at Mount Ophir in Malaysia, 27-year-old Mohammad Rohaizam Tumadi was crushed after a tree crashed down on the tent in which he lay sleeping. In both cases, friends who were with them narrowly escaped with their lives.

Mdm Ho's family only realised something was amiss when the mother of two failed to report for work at 9am at the dental clinic, and the dentist called their home.Puzzled, her younger son and her husband headed to the park to look for her. Then, husband Quek Lye Seng got a call on his mobile phone — it was the police, telling the shocked factory supervisor that his wife had died, pinned under a tree.

Hurrying to the scene, son Quek Choon Kiat, 17, a polytechnic student, said: ''I recognised my mum. There was blood on one side of her face. Added Choon Kiat, whose elder brother is in National Service: ''My mum worked hard all her life to care for us. She didn't get to enjoy life at all and now she's gone.''

Said Mr Quek, 54: ''There should be investigations. Many people use the park on weekends.''Two of Mdm Ho's companions were injured in the accident. The women, both in their 40s, suffered cuts and bruises and were discharged from hospital after receiving 30 to 40 stitches each.

When Today visited the scene yesterday, the uprooted tree — measuring at least 40m long — was lying across a jogging path. Two squashed umbrellas, one belonging to Mdm Ho, lay under its branches; there were bloodstains on the grass. At the edge of a slope lay the upturned base of the tree's roots, which measured about 10m across at its widest.

Regular park-goer Gunasana-kare Supramaniam reckoned the soil around the roots could have been loosened by the rain. The National Parks Board, which manages the 36-hectare park, is investigating. Describing the accident as ''very unfortunate'', its operating officer Dr Leong Chee Chiew said in a statement: ''Our priority right now is to extend our assistance to those affected.''

The other victim, Mr Mohd Rohaizam, was a first-year post-graduate diploma student teacher with the National Institute of Education (NIE). He was part of a group of 54 trainees in an Outdoor Experiential Camp being held outside of Singapore for the first time.

At about 5.15am, he was sleeping in a tent with three others when a tree fell on their tent during a downpour. He was rushed downhill to the Tangkak Hospital in Johor, where he was pronounced dead. NIE director Lee Sing Kong said the institute would conduct a review of the incident.

The National Environment Agency has warned that more rain can be expected in the next few weeks. -- with Additional reporting by Daphne Chuah

2 S'poreans killed, 9 hurt in Taiwan military jet crash

Ansley Ng

May 12, 2007

Two Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers were killed in Taiwan on Friday after a Taiwanese fighter jet plunged into a storeroom in an army camp.

The crash, which also claimed the lives of the F-5F Tiger jet's two Taiwanese pilots, caused a fire in the storeroom and injured nine other Singaporean soldiers on the ground, including full-time National Servicemen. Two of the injured Singaporeans, who like the others were in Taiwan in support of the SAF's unilateral training programme, were hospitalised for serious burns.

The two Singaporean servicemen who died have been identified as corporal Isz Sazli Sapari, 19, and private Fan Yao Jin, 23. Their next of kin have been informed, said Singapore's Ministry of Defence (Mindef).

The Taiwanese Defence Ministry has grounded all F-5F jets pending the outcome of an investigation.

The accident happened at 9.25am at the camp in Hukou, Hsinchu Count, 50km south of Taipei, during an exercise.

The jet had taken off 30 minutes earlier from an airbase in Taidong, about 200km away.

A Taiwanese Defence Ministry spokesman told Today that the jet was diving in a mock attack on ground troops when it crashed into a storeroom in the camp, home to the Taiwanese 542nd Armour Brigade.

The jet, which was practising the drill for a five-day ''Han Guang 23'' live firing exercise next week, failed to gain enough speed to pull up, and crashed.

About the injured Singaporeans, Mindef said: ''Two SAF servicemen are injured and are being treated in hospital. Seven others have minor injuries …

''The rest of the SAF personnel in Taiwan are safe and accounted for.''

A team of five SAF doctors left for Taiwan on Friday afternoon. They will be working with the Taiwanese medical authorities to stabilise the two SAF servicemen warded in the intensive care units, said Mindef.

According to Channel NewsAsia, the two injured Singapore soldiers are believed to be ''seriously injured with about 50 to 60 per cent burn injuries on their bodies''.

Mindef said: ''Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean expressed his deep concern for the affected servicemen and their families, and said that Mindef and the SAF will do all they can to look after their well-being.

''He has also been in touch with the Taiwanese authorities, who assured us that they will do their best to provide the necessary assistance to our personnel.'

The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?

New York Times: May 9, 2007

By HAROLD McGEE

A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.

Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include “bologna” and “carpet,” it’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it.

I first heard about the rule from my then-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at snack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun was part of it, but they knew they were playing with “germs.”

We’re reminded about germs on food whenever there’s an outbreak of E. coli or salmonella, and whenever we read the labels on packages of uncooked meat. But we don’t have much occasion to think about the everyday practice of retrieving and eating dropped pieces of food.

Microbes are everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet kitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops.

As I write this column, on an airplane, I realize that I have removed a chicken sandwich from its protective plastic sleeve and put it down repeatedly on the sleeve’s outer surface, which was meant to protect the sandwich by blocking microbes. What’s on the outer surface? Without the five-second rule on my mind I wouldn’t have thought to wonder.

I learned from the Clemson study that the true pioneer of five-second research was Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois in 2003. Ms. Clarke conducted a survey and found that slightly more than half of the men and 70 percent of the women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it.

She did an experiment by contaminating ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then analyzing the foods. They had become contaminated with bacteria.

For performing this first test of the five-second rule, Ms. Clarke was recognized by the Annals of Improbable Research with the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health.

It’s not surprising that food dropped onto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it collect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make you sick?

Prof. Paul L. Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson have now put some numbers on floor-to-food contamination.

Their bacterium of choice was salmonella; the test surfaces were tile, wood flooring and nylon carpet; and the test foods were slices of bread and bologna.

First the researchers measured how long bacteria could survive on the surfaces. They applied salmonella broth in doses of several million bacteria per square centimeter, a number typical of badly contaminated food.

I had thought that most bacteria were sensitive to drying out, but after 24 hours of exposure to the air, thousands of bacteria per square centimeter had survived on the tile and wood, and tens of thousands on the carpet. Hundreds of salmonella were still alive after 28 days.

Professor Dawson and colleagues then placed test food slices onto salmonella-painted surfaces for varying lengths of time, and counted how many live bacteria were transferred to the food.

On surfaces that had been contaminated eight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood.

What do these numbers tell us about the five-second rule? Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria, but it’s no guarantee of safety. True, Jillian Clarke found that the number of bacteria on the floor at the University of Illinois was so low it couldn’t be measured, and the Clemson researchers resorted to extremely high contamination levels for their tests. But even if a floor — or a countertop, or wrapper — carried only a thousandth the number of bacteria applied by the researchers, the piece of food would be likely to pick up several bacteria.

The infectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for the deadly strain of E. coli.

Of course we can never know for sure how many harmful microbes there are on any surface. But we know enough now to formulate the five-second rule, version 2.0: If you drop a piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that just a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think about where you dropped it and whether or not it’s worth eating.

Fake pills that kill not cure

TODAY Newspaper
1 September 2006

It is a ''pharmaceutical industry'' worth as much as $8 billion, but its products — counterfeit medicines — are more likely to kill you than heal you.

One to 2 per cent of the world's pharmaceuticals are counterfeit, estimates Dr Harvey Bale, the director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, who was in Singapore for a conference last week.

This insidious trade is growing, he said, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

All countries in Asia are affected, both as counterfeit producers and as consumers, with China and India the worst perpetrators, said Dr Bale.

China produces a lot of ''high-class'' counterfeit medicines headed for the European market, such as anti-cholesterol medicines and drugs for erectile dysfunction, while India manufactures ''basic'' counterfeits such as anti-malarial drugs, antibiotics and painkillers.

''These very old, very common, very cheap drugs are still being counterfeited because of the volume,'' he said, and they are prescribed most prevalently in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand and Indonesia — countries that ironically need them most.

At least 53 per cent of anti-malaria drugs in South-east Asia are available without prescription and contain no artesunate, the active ingredient to treat malaria, according to Oxford University researchers. This is an increase from 38 per cent in 1999. The researchers counted at least 12 different fake anti-malarial medicines in circulation.

In Vietnam, said Dr Bale, as much as 40 per cent of anti-malarial drugs are fake. ''If you have malaria and take counterfeit medicine, you will die,'' he said.

Dr Bale, who is also president of the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, said the number of counterfeiting incidents his organisation measured between 2004 and last year rose by about one-third. If not stopped, it could hit $15 billion by 2010.

The World Health Organization is intensifying efforts to stop drug pirates and has set up an enforcement group, with Interpol taking a more active role.

But counterfeiters are notoriously hard to track down. Many operate out of homes, backyards or small-scale factories.

''The Internet trade also contributes,'' said Dr Bale. ''What we need is a more systematic, more concentrated effort and cooperation between the police and private companies.''

He advocates harsher punishment beyond fines and minimal jail time for the counterfeiters. ''Clearly, if many people are dying, it comes to a case of manslaughter or even murder.''