Nature Regardless

Which big cat’s pee smells like buttered popcorn?... Friday after lunch coming from beneath the trees in the little park opposite smacked between the eyes. Having the said cat leap out from behind there onto the footpath could not have unbalanced any more. Panda Magazine was it? Another further curly question too followed below. Inuka the resident polar bear here had passed away some months back, at an advanced age. It may have been a world record for a polar bear in captivity, and certainly one in the Tropics. Steamy Singapore athwart the equator, the aircon off the dial all those bear years, icy-poles by the bucket load laid on. The naming had followed a contest run by one of the newspapers, or the department of conservation and environment it might have been. “Inuka” in a tight race. Much sadness at the passing, missed by the author who had been in Yogyakarta at the time, where the Jak Post had carried the news. Was there another, a replacement in the pipeline currently? No doubt there had been much expertise attained over the journey. The curious teaser at a Bras Basah bus stop, imprinted over a Chinese panda on its back luxuriating in leafy hollow couldn’t be happier. From memory there were reports of some kind of medical intervention, injections or the like administered in order to maintain the colour shade around the eyes of the pandas here. Bleaching in the sun you could understand, despite the best laid plans, the fans and aircon. Large billboard, WWF tag. None of the other commuters seemed to be giving a second look. It was hot after so many days of this brilliant unseasonable cool. (Mid-year was ordinarily peak heat and humidity.) On a less exotic, more mundane level, the local politico PR department here was likely ticking-off the PM’s wife after a recent soc. media like posted by the woman. A report of Rosmah Mansor’s feisty behaviour outside the court where her husband, the former Malaysian  PM MO1 (carrying the moniker Man of Steal) was being arraigned, had caught the notice of the First Lady here. The two wives were good friends it seems, just like their two hubbie princelings who went way back to childhood and beyond. There had been closest co-operation a great many years. A not inconsiderable amount of the loot stolen up in KL had been funneled through the neighbouring isle’s banks. Following the revelations of The Sarawak Report and WSJ the local regulators suddenly onto the case. Admiration for Rosmah’s standing by her man will need to be kept close to the chest, under the hat, well outta sight and hearing. Impolitic. Circumspection Madam Ho, please. 

NB. The local lady happens also to be the Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings, the Sing’ State wealth fund. Some consternation at that appointment at the time—the PM’s wife the person best qualified? &etc.