When I Was Young

On the other hand...
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Posted: 20 July 2011

Some things that you'd wish you have when going 50 and beyond.

I'm just thinking, will you wish for memory enhancer, and you are given pills to take, but you forget your medication altogether?

Oh well... as one shirt says, "enjoy getting old - not too many people get the privilege."
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By Eveline Gan, TODAY
Posted: 01 February 2011

'Senile delinquents' roam HK's streets, all sharp elbows and killer shopping carts

Tabitha Wang

voices@mediacorp.com.sg

IT ONLY took a few seconds. I had chosen my stuff at a Salvation Army charity shop and placed it on the counter to pay.

In the time it took to open my purse and take out the money, someone had swiped a choice buy, a branded sweater selling at HK$20 ($3.65). I chased after the "thief".

It turned out to be an old woman, looking as fluffy as a kitten but with claws like a tiger. She refused to relinquish her ill-gotten gain even after I asked the shop assistant for help. "How dare you young people gang up on a helpless old lady," was the gist of her lament.

Except this was no helpless old lady. She was a member of the Hong Kong Ah Pak and Ah Por club. You know, the kind who leap tall buildings in a single bound and chew sheet metal for breakfast.

The Hong Kong elderly are a deadly species. They may look like the next typhoon would blow them away but don't be fooled.

That one-foot-in-the-grave image is all an act. These are no shrinking violets. They make their own rules - because they believe they are above the law of the land.

There's no stopping these "senile delinquents". Jaywalking, queue jumping, a bit of petty "thieving" ... when they're caught, they just invoke the Confucian "respect thy elderly" tenet and confidently wait to be let off.

When buses come, they insinuate themselves into a queue of people who have been waiting for hours and expect entry. Woe betide you if you get in their way - they have elbows of steel.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been jabbed in the stomach trying to board a bus with Ah Paks who look like they were about to collapse from lung cancer.

It's not just bus or train queues - they expect people to give them way everywhere. My friend went to a recent consumer fair hoping to get some bargains.

She came home empty-handed but with bruised toes. The old folk were bulldozing their way to all the good buys by running their heavily-laden shopping-bags-on-wheels over everyone's feet.

Another friend had a run-in with an Ah Por at a supermarket. He had selected some tomatoes and put them in his trolley, which he left at the end of the aisle to pick up something else.

He returned to find an old woman happily putting his tomatoes into her trolley. He tried to stop her by pointing out the pile that was on sale behind them.

Instead of apologising, she glared and said: "But these are so much nicer than the ones over there." And left with his tomatoes.

A Singapore friend says there are just as many senile delinquents back home. "It's the whole Confucian thing. They think they can get away with murder because they're old and we must respect their age."

Tsk, tsk, old people these days. Whatever happened to the nice old ladies that I had known when I was younger? They were always so patient and lovable ... and never stole branded sweaters from under your nose.

English poet Jenny Joseph's Warning, When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple probably best sums up their attitude.

Voted the United Kingdom's most popular post-war poem in a 1996 poll conducted by the BBC, it spoke of how the poet planned to misbehave when she grows old and included the lines:

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

Well, hopefully what goes around comes around. Maybe I should start working on those elbows of steel now.

Tabitha Wang is going to booby trap her tomatoes the next time she goes shopping, so senile delinquents beware.

From TODAY, Voices – Thursday, 24-Sep-2009

Image via Wikipedia

This is really something that will tell ‘when I was young’… Patricia Mok had an experience of being sexually harassed when she was a teenager.

Read that news article here.

Bilingual, that is; it's so hard getting the simplest things done in a foreign land

Tabitha Wang in Hong Kong

voices@mediacorp.com.sg

AS A non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese living in Hong Kong, I get lots of snide remarks from the locals. The occasional "banana" (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) insult gets flung at me but my peel is so thick now it hardly registers any more.

But what is irritating about not speaking the language is that the simplest task becomes almost as complicated as flying a space probe to the moon.

I don't take mini-buses because I can't tell the driver where to stop.

It's worse over the phone. When my Internet broadband service is down, it takes three calls before I can get someone to understand what the problem is.

I had to fill in my health insurance form four times because the agent could not explain what she wanted. All she could say was: "Account number wrong. You check with bank, okay?"

It's become so bad that I refuse to do phone banking or indeed conduct anything over the phone, preferring to do everything face-to-face. This becomes tedious because it means dragging myself from one customer service centre to another.

But so far, I have been spared the harrowing experience of one Singaporean woman here. Last week, Sinead Yeo was stuck in a lift so she asked her friend to call the hotline for the lift maintenance company - in English. The operator, unable to understand, hung up on her friend 17 times in half an hour. Eventually, he had to call 999 before Miss Yeo could be rescued.

Imagine if all non-Cantonese speakers had to call emergency services for something as simple as a lift problem. Already, the police in Hong Kong are claiming they are overworked and underpaid - how much more overworked they would be if they had to come to the rescue of every expat stuck in a lift.

Ah, silly woman, you say. If you move to another country, should you expect them to speak your language? If you go to Mongolia, you wouldn't expect everyone there to speak English, would you?

True. In my defence, I am learning Cantonese so I can at least buy vegetables at Graham Street Market and order iced lemon tea at a coffeeshop. And I know enough now to be able to exchange simple pleasantries with my neighbours.

But it isn't as if I am expecting Hong Kong residents to speak Malay or even Hokkien. I am talking about English, the international lingua franca of business, diplomacy, air traffic control, rock '*' roll ...

And I'm not looking at some tiny country with hardly any contact with foreigners, am I? I am talking about Hong Kong, which bills itself as Asia's top financial centre and has an estimated expat population of about 100,000. Why should they not speak English?

"We do," said my Hong Kong friend. "But most don't speak it well so they are embarrassed to try."

I find that the younger generation, brought up under the Cantonese-only medium of instruction in schools, are the worst. Most people over 40 that I've met are bilingual, switching from Cantonese to English with ease.

My English-speaking Malaysian colleague, who married a local, complains that his sons' English is the pits. He speaks English to them but they answer in Cantonese. "I worry that they're limiting their choices to only local universities when the time comes," he laments.

Even scarier is the fact that many of the young ones can't even speak Mandarin. They can read but not speak it. So they have effectively imprisoned themselves in a monolingual world.

This is where I believe Singapore has an edge over Hong Kong in attracting big multi-national companies.

I was speaking to a British expat who is moving to Singapore. After five years in Hong Kong, he is looking forward to going somewhere where "it's so easy to be understood". He wouldn't need to mime (or "chicken dance" as he calls it) every time he wants to do anything from business negotiations to getting from Point A to Point B in a taxi.

As I heard him wax lyrical about the many things he can do, I began to realise how something as basic as being understood can make a difference between feeling isolated and fitting right in.

I wonder what's Cantonese for "I'm stuck in a lift"...

Tabitha Wang finds that though useful phrases still come slowly to her in Cantonese, she has already picked up a lot of swear words.

From TODAY, Comment – Friday, 03-Jul-2009

Veronica Zaragovia, TIME.com

Posted: 12 June 2009 1124 hrs

Police officers stand guard near a box covering a bottle of acid where two bottles of acid were thrown at Hong Kong's shopping district Mongkok

Something is amiss on the streets of Mongkok. Ordinarily, the bustling 4.4 square mile patch of shops and food stalls is packed with some of the highest rates of pedestrian traffic in the world. In Hong Kong, Mongkok has become synonymous with the city's best bargains and slowest-moving sidewalks, but its over-saturation has always been part of its charm. Until this week. "The atmosphere has changed — I'll tell you that," says Daniel Clermont, a tourist from Toronto who visits Hong Kong frequently. "Usually it's filled wall-to-wall with people here."

There's a good reason for the thin crowds. On the rainy night of June 8, an unidentified person hurled an acid-filled bottle from a Mongkok building onto pedestrians below. It was the third acid attack in the neighborhood in six months, and it left 24 passers-by — including a four-year-old girl — with skin burns to their faces, shoulders, limbs and feet. Sammy Chan, a salesman at a shoe store across the street from the crime scene, said one family from the Philippines ran into his shop to throw water on their wounds. Five of them went to the hospital.

It's a bizarre serial crime by any city's standards, but especially for one with a relatively low crime rate on paper. While drug offenses have been up this year, Hong Kong police say the majority of all other reported crimes dropped several percentage points. In last year's Global Peace Index, a yearly listing of nations' peacefulness by Vision of Humanity, Hong Kong ranked a serene 23 out of 140. Yet when violent crimes occur, they can be exceedingly gruesome. This month, for instance, a mentally ill man was convicted of randomly butchering a three-year-old boy to death. In March, a man beheaded his former girlfriend for ending their relationship. "Any person with a sane mind would not do things like that," says Regional Crime Prevention Officer Peggy Yip.

In a city where a lot of people share a very little space, violent crimes leave a lasting impression on the population — and the police. After Mongkok's last acid attack, which occurred May 16, police installed eight CCTV surveillance cameras on two buildings in the area to try to catch the culprit the next time he or she struck. But after spending about $220,000 on the equipment, none of the cameras' footage caught this week's attack. Senior Superintendent Edward Leung Ka-ming of the Kowloon West regional crime unit said the collected footage needed to be "enhanced" because of its poor resolution to prove useful. While the district council decides what step to take next with the cameras, the police hope pedestrians might have some tips of their own. A large police van parked near the latest crime scene has posters in Cantonese and English offering a reward of over $37,000 for information.

In the meantime, dozens of policemen now roam Mongkok's normally chaotic streets — ubiquitous reminders that the neighborhood remains on alert. Circle Lo, an employee at a clothing store next to the attack spot, says she has noticed the drop in foot traffic and hopes business will return to normal within a week. But not everybody seems concerned. A LensCrafters employee, identifying himself as "Jacky Chan," works a only a few feet from where the bottle fell. "Some of the people who got hurt sat down," he said, "but it was like nothing happened." Perhaps, but judging by the pedestrians still looking up for a lurking villain two days after the attack, the mood in Mongkok is definitely down.

This article originally appeared on TIME.com

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Wednesday, June 10 01:25 pm

© Sky News 2009

A controversial transgender man has given birth to his second child, a year after his daughter was born.

'Pregnant Man' Gives Birth To Another Baby

Thomas Beatie delivered a healthy baby boy early on Tuesday morning, according to ABC News.

His wife Nancy will breast-feed their son, as she did with their daughter Susan Juliette, who was born in Oregon in June last year.

During his first pregnancy, Mr Beatie released a photograph of himself showing his pregnant belly and bearded face.

He became known around the world as the "pregnant man" and was sent death threats and hate messages by people who disagreed with what he was doing.

The 35-year-old said at the time: "I think that people will be shocked because no-one's ever heard of a man giving birth before.

"I guess it's a shocking concept, but in this day and age that's possible. And it's happening now."

Mr Beatie, who was born as Tracy Lagondino, underwent gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment to become a man.

He chose to keep his female reproductive organs but is legally recognised as a male.

The couple decided he would bear their children because Mrs Beatie, 46, had already had a hysterectomy and was unable to conceive.

After stopping his male hormone treatment, he became pregnant with donor sperm bought on the internet.

From Yahoo! News; see the source article here.

Third attack in six months, Hong Kong believes culprit could be the same person

05:55 AM Jun 10, 2009

Victims of the acid attack receiving treatment by the roadside. AP

HONG KONG - Residents ventured out unafraid yesterday as police searched for suspects behind a third acid attack that injured 24 people in one of the city's most densely-populated shopping districts.

The latest attack on Monday night dominated headlines in Hong Kong, with several newspapers showing photos of victims washing off the acid on the roadside.

Police said a bottle filled with a corrosive liquid was hurled into a crowd in the busy Mongkok district, injuring 24 people. None of the victims, aged four to 49, were seriously burned.

It is the third such attack in six months in the neighbourhood, and 100 people have since been hurt.

On the same street last month, 30 people suffered burns when two plastic bottles filled with acid were thrown down into a crowd. Another 46 were injured in a similar attack in the same neighbourhood in December.

There were no signs the attacks had sparked widespread panic in the city of 7 million, as locals mostly went about their business.

But in Mongkok - a shopping hotspot that attracts thousands of people daily - some shoppers were staying away.

Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang condemned the attack, saying it was "cold blooded and evil" and that the assailant was "scum of the society".

Police superintendent Edward Leung was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post yesterday that it was possible the same person had carried out all three attacks.

He added in a radio interview that officers were reviewing surveillance footage taken by cameras recently installed to monitor the area of the attacks.

Investigators have also posted a HK$900,000 ($170,000) reward for information leading to an arrest. - AP

From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 10-Jun-2009

Posted: 09 June 2009 1336 hrs

Shoppers walk in the busy district of Mongkok in Hong Kong.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong police were Tuesday scouring CCTV footage for clues as to who tossed a bottle of acid from a building onto one of the city's busiest shopping streets, the third such attack in six months.

The attack in the Mongkok district of the city on Monday evening injured 24 people, including a four-year-old girl, who all suffered from burns to their limbs and faces.

"We are still investigating the incident and do not rule out the possibility that the same person or people were behind the three attacks," a police spokesman told AFP.

In December, 46 people were injured when two bottles of corrosive liquid were tossed down from a building onto the street. Another similar attack occurred near the same spot in May, injuring 30 pedestrians.

No one has so far been arrested over the attacks.

The latest incident came just hours after a new surveillance system was installed in the district, one of the most densely-populated parts of the world. The system was brought in as a result of the previous attacks.

The police are offering a reward of 900,000 Hong Kong dollars (115,000 US) for information leading to the arrest of those involved.

Hong Kong's chief executive Donald Tsang on Tuesday condemned the attacks.

"This was a cold-blooded and evil act. These people are the dregs of society," Tsang said.

He pledged that the police would do all they could to catch the culprits as soon as possible.

- AFP/il

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Anything for drugs? And crooks operating on crooks. In the noise and confusion of the ongoing arrest, someone stole the pig?

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06/06/2009 | 10:18 PM

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – It was a simpler sort of drug trade.

Syracuse police say a 45-year-old man offered a slaughtered pig as partial payment for a bag of crack cocaine.

They say two men were spotted making the deal on a street corner just before 8 p.m. Thursday.

Angelo Colon of Fulton was arrested on a misdemeanor drug possession charge and 42-year-old Omar Veliz faces a felony drug sale charge.

Police say Colon paid half a pig and $10 for a $50 bag of crack. Veliz told police the pig was for a celebration for a relative being released from jail.

While officers were arresting the suspects, someone took the pig.

Police don't know if the men have lawyers. - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

Time is GMT + 8 hours

Posted: 2-Jun-2009 14:09 hrs

A toddy tapper climbs a palm tree. Twenty five people including four foreigners have died from drinking methanol-laced palm wine on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, police said

Twenty five people including four foreigners have died from drinking methanol-laced palm wine on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, police said.

American Rose Johnson, 48, Briton Alan Cole, 57, and Irish and Dutch citizens whose families requested anonymity were among the people killed over the past two weeks, hospital staff said.

A local man has been arrested for allegedly making the lethal concoction with methanol -- a toxic chemical compound often used as an antifreeze or solvent -- instead of ethanol found in alcoholic drinks, police said.

"He is suspected of producing and selling alcohol containing methanol ... which can cause death. We are investigating whether he did it on purpose," police spokesman Gede Sugianyar said. — AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

MEDICAL MATTERS

JAKARTA — Diabetes is spiralling in Asia but — unlike the West — those affected are relatively young and less likely to be struggling with obesity, a new study shows.

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association yesterday said the disease has turned into a global problem, with the number of victims expected to grow from 240 million in 2007 to 380 million in 2025.

More than 60 per cent of those will be in Asia, the world's fastest growing region, with low- and middle-income countries hardest hit.

India will see its numbers grow from 40 million to nearly 70 million; China 39 million to 59 million; and Bangladesh 3.8 million to 7.4 million. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and others will also see their figures skyrocket.

Mr Frank Hu, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, noted that Asia's escalating epidemic could "erase economic gains made in recent decades".

But the most startling findings related to body mass and age.

Obesity has long been seen as a major factor leading to Type 2 diabetes in Europe and North America.

But while Asians still weigh less than their Western counterparts, they have become fatter around the waist — seen as particularly detrimental with respect to diabetes.

The study also showed that while the disease most often affects people between the ages of 60 and 79 in North America and Europe, the age in Asia tends to be disproportionately lower, ranging between 20 years to 59.

This appears to be the result of both low birth weights, which are common in developing countries, and over-nutrition in later life.

Asian women are also two- to three-times as likely to have gestational diabetes as their Western counterparts. AP

From TODAYOnline.com, World News – Thursday, 28-May-2009; see the source article here.

This person has a point. Whether it is the pedestrian or the driver at fault, could it be that Singapore, in its 'safe-as-a-vault' environment, has made the people lax and relax, with lowered guards every time, and to raise their voice to summon the higher authorities' help when in distress? I could be generalizing, but I am also making my point here. This is my opinion, based on my observation…

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More analysis needed to the root cause of pedestrian deaths on roads.

Letter from Chen Khin Wee

I refer to "7 in 10 killed on roads were jaywalkers" (May 13). I find this baffling.

In less developed countries with relatively few pedestrian crossings and overhead bridges, the act of crossing a road is routinely performed by tens of thousands of people, including school children, with relatively few untoward incidents.

To them, it is a matter of common sense to look left, right and left again, and to cross only when the way is clear.

It would be helpful if the authorities provide details as to who the people getting killed on Singapore's roads are, and the circumstances surrounding the accidents.

Were they children who were not properly trained in road safety?

Were they young people distracted by conversation with their friends or plugged into their music players, rendering them oblivious to their surroundings?

Were they impatient office workers trying to beat the lights at signalled crossings in order to catch a train?

Were they elderly folk with failing eyesight and hearing?

Or perhaps they were those who failed to come to terms with the fact that they were no longer as agile as they used to be, and dodging traffic was not as easy as when they were younger.

We require a more sophisticated analysis to the problem to find an appropriate solution.

Imposing a fine or a blanket ban on jaywalking is an easy way out, but is unhelpful if the problem is to be solved meaningfully and effectively.

From TODAY, Voices – Thursday, 14-May-2009

Budget Tai-tai is one column that I'm looking forward to in TODAY paper... the wit, the veracity, the preciseness, the humor... and although I don't always agree to her points (of view), I would always welcome a view that is coming from another perspective; who knows, I could be wrong, and dead wrong at that. Enjoy reading!
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by Tabitha Wang, news@newstoday.com.sg

05:55 AM May 15, 2009

I WAS passing by Wan Chai on my way to a dinner with friends last Friday when the bus I was in hit a massive traffic jam. Everybody on the top deck craned their necks. "What is happening?" asked an elderly woman.

"They're letting out the people who have been quarantined at Metropark hotel now," the woman next to her replied.

I peered down. Television cameramen were stacked five-deep, some with stepladders a metre high for best vantage view. Policemen had to hold back a crowd. Some excited people were armed with cheery fake flowers.

The doors opened, a group of people walked out and everyone went wild. Flashbulbs went off and a cheer rose through the crowd, so loud that they could be heard inside the air-conditioned bus.

"They're out, they're out," the old woman said, almost in tears.

The scene of delirium was reminiscent of the time hostages were rescued from the Taj Hotel last November. There was the same euphoria and the hotel guests were being treated almost like conquering heroes.

Except that they had done nothing more heroic than spend seven days in a four-star hotel eating, partying, blogging and generally whinging about their lot.

The Hong Kong government's swift action in quarantining some 350 guests after a Mexican guy who had stayed there was found to have the H1N1 virus was called "draconian" by some. The guests had been deprived of their civil liberties, others argued. They were effectively suffering under house arrest.

House arrest? Suffering? While I sympathise with those businessmen who had to cancel million-dollar deals and mothers who were cooped up with restless kids during that period, I think what they had gone through was hardly suffering.

Sure, the food could have been better. After all, these people had come to a Chinese region but woe betide anyone who forces another to eat Chinese food. Even so, after a day or so, some were getting catered meals brought in by their embassies while everyone else was offered free food from restaurants and fast-food chains.

They received so many gifts from well-wishers that they couldn't carry them home at the end of the quarantine. One British couple managed to collect 41 boxes of unused gifts and vouchers, totalling more than HK$33,000 ($6,255) for donation.

Every day, yet another Hong Kong official publicly apologised for keeping them there. "Please don't hold it against us," the officials kept saying. "Come again, we will give you freebies galore to make up for your free board and lodging."

Even so, the government was still taken to task by critics who called the quarantine "overkill". Overkill? Excuse me, this city saw more than 300 people die from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) the last time, so I think it is entitled to be more than a little wary.

The outcry has led the health authorities to declare a no-quarantine rule with regard to the flu now but it looks like we're relaxing our vigilance too soon. The World Health Organization (WHO) still believes a pandemic is imminent and, just two days ago, Hong Kong confirmed its second swine flu case (but as he was caught at the airport, the quarantine point is moot).

Having gone through Sars in Singapore in 2003, which effectively caused the whole country to be quarantined, I don't think the measures were too extreme.

Haven't these critics heard of "better safe than sorry"? I take that back. I'm sure they have because, during the height of Sars, Singaporeans and Hongkongers were apparently either denied entry or given extra-stringent checks at airports overseas. At that time, showing a Singapore or Hong Kong passport has the same effect as covering yourself with sack cloth, ringing a bell, and yelling: "Unclean, unclean."

Actually, the one who should be apologising is that 25-year-old Mexican who came here despite the lockdown in his country. News reports said he already had a fever and sore throat but was travelling - for pleasure presumably as he was with his girlfriend.

He was discharged around the same time as the hotel guests and asked to be whizzed straight to the airport. No interviews to the press, not even a single word of "sorry" to those he had inadvertently inconvenienced.

But then again, given the mood of the average Hongkonger (many of whom are angry that this one incident caused them to fear for their lives and for their city's tourism reputation) maybe he was better off scurrying away before a lynch mob formed.

Maybe he too felt it was better to be safe than sorry.

Tabitha Wang still has 4,683 facemasks leftover from her bulk-buy frenzy on May 1 so you don't have to worry about her.

From TODAY, Comment, Budget Tai-tai – Friday, 15-May-2009

To prepare for a pandemic is to prepare for surprises

05:55 AM May 12, 2009

AS THE Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak backstory seeps out, there are some vitally important lessons that can be learned. Huge investment in pandemic preparedness and contingency plans, improvements in surveillance and response systems and stockpiling of drugs and vaccines have followed recent avian influenza outbreaks. But do we have effective global disease surveillance and control systems that can prevent a disaster?

In the face of a potential pandemic, huge numbers of potential deaths are bandied about, based on highly suspect data and assumptions and resulting in wild speculation and panic. The counter move is to keep quiet, cover up and assure the populace. Neither approach helps, as we don't know what will happen, when and to whom. This acceptance of uncertainty and ignorance in a public debate is tough. But it is also vital. Otherwise, inappropriate public policy arises and misguided signals are given.

Preparing for a pandemic means preparing for surprises - and being ready to respond rapidly and flexibly under conditions of uncertainty requires a new set of skills, bureaucratic routines and incentive systems in the public agencies charged with protecting the world from emerging infectious diseases.

As Emery Roe and Paul Schulman argue in their recent book High Reliability Management, reliability must be a feature of any system operating in a complex, uncertain world. This requires, they argue, high reliability professionals who can track between local understandings of what is happening on the ground and the broader policy situation, liaising between agencies and across scales.

These professionals are currently absent from the international effort - creating a vacuum at the heart of the response - because authoritative knowledge consists of accepted expertise that does not acknowledge uncertainty, ignorance or complexity.

In a potentially global pandemic situation, global assessments are also based on global statistics, but in reality major structural inequalities affect the likely outcomes of rapid disease spread. We don't know why disease virulence and mortalities are high in Mexico, but apparently lower elsewhere. This may have a complex medical, viral cause. But it also may be to do with access to healthcare and effectiveness of response.

The swine flu story is also revealing how poor surveillance and reporting systems mean an outbreak can quickly get out of control - there were big gaps in detection and reporting that date back to February. But local people knew of the disease, and have strong hypotheses about its origins. Anselma Amador from La Gloria, the village where the first known case of swine flu occurred told The Guardian: "We are not doctors, but it is hard for us not to think the pig farms around here don't have something to do with it ... The flu has pig material in it and we are humans, not pigs."

These explanations are dismissed by the health minister and pig farming company, but why are such leads not being followed up? And why are such early-warning approaches, based on local knowledge about disease incidence and its dynamics, not part of the standard surveillance system?

In South-east Asia local understandings of avian flu and its spread have been vitally important. Medical doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, veterinarians and other specialists need to work hand in hand with local people for surveillance to be effective.

Another strong lesson from the avian flu experience is that attention to the changing structure of the livestock industry is essential to understanding how diseases emerge and spread. While it is easy to blame big agribusiness and industrial farming techniques, the situation is more complex.

While the "livestock revolution" is celebrated as a source of economic growth in the developing world, rapid restructuring of the livestock sector has major downsides and implications for how industries are regulated and diseases managed. As the details begin to emerge on the swine flu outbreaks, a more comprehensive assessment of the political economy of agriculture - and the pig industry in particular - in Mexico will be essential in learning lessons for the future.

Right now, of course, the spotlight is focused on the international public health response. Preparing for a pandemic means preparing for surprises - and being ready to respond rapidly and flexibly under conditions of uncertainty. As the experience with avian influenza has shown, this may require more than simply the top-down, "active and aggressive" technocratic responses being urged. The Guardian

From TODAY, Comments – Tuesday, 12-May-2009