Saturday, September 26, 2009

Getting Your Fingers Dirty

I've washed my hands something like ten times today, and I'm talking about a proper thorough soaping, not just a quick run under the tap. This is not a sign of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, at least I hope it's not. It's entirely due to the appalling quality of newsprint, or whatever it is, that causes one's fingers to get thoroughly grimy when perusing any edition of The Straits Times or other SPH newspapers.

It's been particularly noticeable today as I've dragged out the reading of the paper, which I normally attempt to get through in one sitting, basically because of this problem, for much of the day as I've been marking exam scripts and regularly take breaks between scripts by picking up the paper to find out what's going on in the world. Whenever I go back to England I'm reminded of just how much a feature of the local press this is as I can merrily read all the papers over there without smudging a single digit and it invariably takes me by surprise since I'm so used to the messiness created by The Straits Times et al.

The other way in which the local paper differs considerably physically from English varieties is in terms of sheer size. English papers are fairly thin affairs (except for the bulky Sunday versions with all their supplements and magazines) compared to the incredibly thick four-part version of The Straits Times that comes out on Saturday, and I'm not counting the Life supplement that accompanies it. However, this is not on account of the Singapore paper containing a lot more news or features. No, essentially it's down to the massive amount of advertising therein which sometimes results in it being difficult to spot any actual news for several pages.

Anyway, having finished my marking for the day I'm off to read the fourth section of today's paper, which features some fairly interesting looking articles about progress in China, it being the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic thereof next Thursday. One good thing about the local press is that, on a good day at least, reasonable interest is taken in what's going on in the rest of the world and that can make dirtying the old fingers reasonably worthwhile.

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