Recent news reports tend to contrast the growing divide between Singapore and Hong Kong over their Covid-19 health measures, usually at the expense of the city. On paper, Hong Kong’s policy is zero Covid , in line with mainland China and therefore more draconian. Singapore, though, is taking steps to open up and allow quarantine-free travel to more and more countries. But on the ground, things may be different, with Hong Kong still being more relaxed. A reader kindly shares the experience of a banker friend who has recently relocated to Singapore with his wife and two children. In the city state, each table at a restaurant can have only two people. There are undercover “Covid ambassadors” reporting on businesses and customers who breach public health rules. The couple and their two children went to lunch at a restaurant and took up two tables next to each other. That quickly became a cause for dispute with the staff. The reader related: “Somehow a restaurant staff starts an argument with this family sitting at two tables next to – but of course legally distanced from – each other asking them for the confirmation (written or what?) that they all four actually reside at the same address in Singapore. If not, they would be enjoying an illegal lunch subject to a minimum penalty.” A lengthy and heated argument followed. The reader asked: “How can you without being prepared and without legal doubt prove that all four family members actually reside at one and the same address in Singapore?” After a time, the restaurant staff finally relented. You may ask whether the restaurant was just being overzealous while the health regulations are more than justified. That may indeed be the case. But such a tough approach with customers is actually encouraged. After the dispute was settled, a female “customer” was seen approaching the restaurant staff and praising them “for their very aggressive inquisition of the family”, the reader wrote. She turned out to be “an official Singapore government Covid ambassador working undercover”. The wife from Hong Kong has also been reported for jaywalking as she complained to the reader that “Singaporeans are reporting on each other” and “there is a hotline for such reporting”. Of course, Hong Kong has its own police hotline to rat on others for alleged threats to national security. We may not be so far behind after all.