- I.M. Weasel! I.R.Baboon -

“open the windows, breathe in the fresh air, and at the same time fight the flies and insects.” Not what you might call a wise Chinese proverb,but what Deng Xiaopeng enthused rings true even today. At least in my room, which has not seen sunlight for a week. Or so.

So Singapore's decided to join the ranks of Paris and London (and Macau and Thailand and Las Vegas) by setting up not one, but two casinos - oops, make that Integrated Resorts. That being that, I took hours to pore over the Press Release statement made by the PM, aided in no small part by my Friends. No, not my housemates, those episodes of the now-defunct TV show which were screaming at me to watch them.

The budding reporter that I am, I decided to perform my National Service by drastically truncating the report into a few more notable sentences.

"The British Government wants to allow Las Vegas style super casinos to be built. It tried to legislate to allow up to 40 super casinos, but because of opposition from MPs and the impending elections it had to compromise and agree to build just one super casino somewhere in Britain.

An IR will be as decent and wholesome as a SAFRA resort or an NTUC Club.

We seriously considered banning Singa­poreans altogether from gambling in the IRs, but decided against it.

Some members of the public think that we had made up our minds right from the beginning, even before this whole process of public discussion. They are quite mistaken. In fact the Cabinet started off mostly against the IRs."