have been hearing about the dengue epidemic in singapore from my father. 0ver 100 cases a day! he told me that serological studies show that singaporeans were at higher risk than our neighbours. for instance, over 70% of young people in thailand have developped antibodies to dengue fever, whereas less than 10% of singaporean children have. my pa says this is what comes of not running around in kampungs: young people today, brought up in nice sterile flats, weak lah, susceptible to diseases lah, etc etc etc. (this reminds me a little of su-lin's student who wrote in an essay that young people today are moral weaklings. heh.) my pa is diligently going around the house checking the drains and flower pots. hougang ave 3 seems to be one of the dengue hotspots. but he is confident that his lenient attitude towards lizards in the house and all the trapped lizards he has ever let go in the garden means he has reservoirs of good lizard-karma to draw on. lizards would naturally keep the mosquito population down. incidentally why don't lizards get sick from eating aedes mosquitoes? i mean, if a vulture fed on the carrion of a rabid dog surely some ill-effects would be felt. or don't birds that eat insects that have swallowed lots of ddt get poisoned themselves? a bit like that italian folktale of menichino and the blackbird killed by a poisoned pizza slice meant for the boy, which bird, when baked in a pie, in turned poisoned four men. (but they were bandits and would have killed the boy, so you're not supposed to feel sorry for them.)