Goodness gracious, great balls of fire

SINGAPORE - SingTel has got nothing on me. I caused the greatest fire hazard in history and nearly killed my father.

At a community fireworks display back in the 1980s, I threw what I believed to be a used, dead firework into a huge bonfire - only to discover quickly that it was an unused, very much alive, firework.

My father's backside made that discovery even faster. The firework shot out of the flames like, well, a firework, and raced for my father's groin.

He barely managed to turn around, which was fortunate for my brothers as they remained unborn at the time.

Had he not turned quickly enough, they would've remained no more than a glint in his eye.

But the offending flying object left him with a scorched black ring around his jeans, as it were, suggesting he had spent the evening sitting on a spike dipped in black paint.

I feared for my safety as he prepared to chase me around the bonfire. But the firework left him waddling from side to side in agonising pain, not unlike R2-D2. So there's always a silver lining.

He drank his body weight in beer and forgot all about the firework, until he woke the following morning and noticed he now had a scorched hole in the backside of his jeans.

Rather than tell the humiliating truth, he blamed a spicy curry instead. To my father, this was a more palatable explanation.

As for me, I was never allowed anywhere near a fire again. SingTel must feel much the same way.

Last week's blaze at SingTel's Bukit Panjang Internet exchange building damaged 149 fibre optic cables, which affected all the major telco companies and every human being, animal, plant and mineral in Singapore, JB and Batam (where we point our phones towards the sea in a bid to avoid roaming charges).

As with the usual national calamities that afflict Singapore - MRT trains being delayed for five minutes; long queues at a new doughnut place; some fibre optic cables being burnt - this disaster initially passed me by.

And then, Facebook went nuts.

At first, I was delighted. If I saw one more inane commentary about Miley Cyrus' tongue, I had promised to jab my eye repeatedly with a pencil, just for the change of scenery.

But all talk of twerking and the usual photos of what's for dinner were suddenly replaced with outrage over some burnt cables.

Thankfully, a frantic friend put me in the picture on Tuesday.

"Did you notice I didn't reply to your text messages yesterday?" he asked, clearly panic-stricken.

"Yes, I did. I considered leaving the country and moving to Iskandar."

"Did you really?"

"No, I went back to watching a twerking video on YouTube. What's your point?" "There was a fire at SingTel. Everything went down. I mean, just everything."

And that's the problem right there. We are occasionally guilty of being a little short in the perspective department. Everything didn't go down.

For most people, the SingTel fire wasn't Apocalypse Now. We weren't gathered around with Martin Sheen watching the natives slaughter a cow while The Doors sang this is The End. (That's a cultural reference to a classic Vietnam movie from 1979, chronicling man's descent into madness and the demise of civilised order. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, the last Hello Kitty promotion at McDonald's is close enough.)

In the great fire of London in 1666, many people died, an entire city was destroyed and more than 13,000 homes and almost 100 churches were burnt to the ground, including the original St Paul's Cathedral.

In the great SingTel cable fire of 2013, we couldn't place bets at Singapore Pools.

It was chaos. There are even rumours - I can barely bring myself to type the words - that we couldn't make digital voice calls.

I was appalled. I didn't know what a digital voice call was.

Right about now of course, I will be accused of being facetious. Banking, finance and health services were affected - a third of SingHealth polyclinics reportedly couldn't access their patient records, which is a dreadful failing.

Singapore's network infrastructure must be improved.

But the reality is no one I encountered complained about such lofty matters.

A taxi driver moaned that he couldn't buy 4D.

Friends couldn't pay for the taxi using NETS and - most horrifying of all - someone said their WhatsApp feature wasn't working.

She was distraught. I suggested rebooting. Then I suggested the Samaritans. Then I suggested she get a life. (Of course, I sent all these suggestions to her on WhatsApp, so she probably hasn't got them yet.)

But it is worth wondering how we might fare in a genuine crisis, something beyond 4-D queues and ATMs, something like a firework heading towards our reproductive organs.

I'd like to hope we would follow my father's bravery. We'd think on our feet, stand our ground and rely on a soft cushion and Vaseline for a month afterwards.

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