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Room with a view, but no window screen. |
This is the view from our bedroom with the window open. When we were apartment hunting we asked our agents, Sean and Li Leng, about getting screens. They both seemed puzzled by the question. "No one has screens in Singapore," Sean said. "There are no bugs in Singapore." As we looked around and thought about it, we hadn't really seen many bugs and it seemed everyone kept their doors and windows open unscreened.
How does Singapore do it? Door-to-door inspections and weekly "foggings" seem to be the winning formula. Here's last week's gassing at our building.
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A simple headache is all it cost me to take this photo. |
We also got a visit last week from the National Environment Agency. The inspectors seemed legit with their clipboards and matching polo shirts bearing the agency's logo, so I let them in. They looked around for signs of mosquitoes, but we were clean.
Turns out there was a spike in dengue cases about a year ago and the country declared war on the blood-suckers with typcial Singaporean thoroughness. According to a news release, during the first six months of this year 1,000 inspectors visited 3,142,332 construction sites, parks, vacant lots, businesses and private residences looking for mosquitoes. At that rate, they've likely seen every puddle, flower pot and pet dish in the country as well as inside our apartment. (If there's ever an outbreak of head lice, I won't be surprised if they inspect every resident's scalp.)
I guess you can't argue with success. The number of dengue cases is dropping and we don't have to invest in window screens. A win-win.
4 comments:
What do they do if they find you've been harboring mosquitoes in your pad? Take you out into the courtyard and give you a good thrashing with their clipboards?
Better living through chemicals, I guess. This is quite a change from living in Seattle, where people dread the environmental impact of putting rock salt on the roads when things get icy.
Singapore is sounding more and more like Logan's Run with every post. Renew!
Hmmm - I wish Georgia would adopt a similar approach to lady bugs. We're overrun with them every fall and spring. I have to dodge them while taking conference calls at my desk. But alas, it is illegal to spray for lady bugs.
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