Tay Yek Keak, Straits Times 25 May 08;
I read about the price of oil shooting past US$135 (S$183) a barrel and I decided to find out what that mark-up means exactly.
It means that I shouldn't be leaving the air con on 24/7 in these hot, stir-fried days because it uses up too much electricity and in my consumerist way, I'm aiding and abetting the cost of oil to hit US$200 a barrel.
Apparently, the way things are going, that figure is considered by some experts to be a real possibility.
I think it'll coincide with our Great Singapore Blackout.
You don't know it yet but in future that could be the one day allocated every month for all the electrical lights at Orchard Road to be shut down - like North Korea's lights-out curfew - to save power.
Don't worry.
The Great Singapore Blackout runs concurrently with the Great Singapore Sale.
You can still shop till you drop by candlelight.
Oil, as you know, is the black gold that comes out of the ground, from the seabed, and everywhere the United States has enemies.
One of mankind's greatest jokes is that some of the most oil-rich countries in the world are also the ones which give the most trouble to Mickey Mouse's America, our planet's perceived good guys, although fewer and fewer are subscribing to that notion these days.
For verification, I wiki-ed those places and ascertained that, out of the Top 10 nations with proven oil assets, five - Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia and Libya - are iffy, may-turn-off-the-tap countries which won't dance the old Texas two-step with vigour at the United States Oil-Comers Jamboree.
The astonishing thing for me to discover is that, after the No. 1 oil gusher, Saudi Arabia, where oil flows out faster than poop from a camel, the country with the second highest reserves of oil anywhere is Canada.
I had no idea because I always thought it was another Arab country where people play Monopoly with oil rigs on the board instead of hotels.
So if you're thinking of moving over to Canada, here's another incentive - they're so booze-drunk in oil, one tank in the car may be cheaper than one can of beer.
Now, I know that talking about oil can be a snoozer because nobody cares about how a car moves, how a fridge works or how a country is bombed unless he's an oilman, leader, economist, businessman, the pizza delivery man or Dick Cheney.
But the price of oil to me is more serious than even the price of rice.
Without rice, you can still eat bananas.
But without oil, we can't eat banana split because, even in the darkest of days, you still need a generator to power up the blender, and something has got to make that generator work and it sure isn't water.
So, to folks out there who don't know how unwell the oil well is or how it's going to clean out our POSB account eventually, let me use classic reverse-psychology shock therapy.
Imagine this - three calamitous consequences of our life without oil (and catastrophically no wind, solar, hydro, nuclear or 10,000-donkeys energy too in a post-apocalyptical, back-to-basics, me-Tarzan-you-Jane, 10,000 BC kind of way):
1. Eating
Forget about the food court. We'll all be going futuristic alfresco, or what used to be known in the old days as 'sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya'. Because we won't be having any streetlight, spotlight, torchlight or mobile-phone light. We'll be eating under the moonlight, which actually is romantic in a bum-sleeping-at-the-bus stop way. Only problem is that in an oil-less, air con-less, comfort-less world, that airy bus stop is going to be fully packed at three in the morning.
2. Working
I don't know if there's still work going around without oil. What is there to work for? How do we go from our home to the office without becoming a marathon runner or an Olympic cyclist? How do we communicate? Maybe carrier pigeon-owners will be the Bill Gates of the Oil-less Age after the demise of e-mail, SMS and hand signals. Being kiasu, I better build my pigeon cage right now.
3. Having a great time
Is this still possible when oil has run out? Can we still chill, can we still thrill, can we still party? Will the clubs stay open with cavemen at Clarke Quay twirling fire torches? Man, don't look at me. I don't know. And I don't play. I'm the guy feeding the pigeons.
