https://www.scmp.com/rss/505465/feed Tan Tarn How is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the National University of Singapore and a Singapore playwright and arts activist. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Every lockdown looks roughly the same from afar – the images of empty streets, grocery queues, ventilated patients and hazmat-suited health care workers have become familiar to all. But the actual experience of confinement is probably very different depending on which city and country we are in. Here in Singapore, the increasingly severe lockdown feels strange in many ways, as if we are in a dream: surreal. First is the term “circuit breaker” used for the lockdown introduced by the Singapore... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3081538/surreal-life-singapore-covid-19-circuit-breaker-and-migrant?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3081538/surreal-life-singapore-covid-19-circuit-breaker-and-migrant?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Apr 2020 02:00:19 +0000 The coronavirus story was not supposed to unfold like this. While China has clawed itself out of its self-made pit, most of Europe and the United States remain mired in an escalating crisis, with the prospect of relief not yet in sight. This unexpected reversal of fortune had happened because the Western world should have learned from China and other countries in East and Southeast Asia – but dithered until it was too late. How did the West end up being the epicentre of the global pandemic? The... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3078618/why-wests-coronavirus-response-shows-it-isnt-better-rest-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3078618/why-wests-coronavirus-response-shows-it-isnt-better-rest-us?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Apr 2020 10:00:08 +0000