This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Financial Daily on April 27, 2020

These are crazy times and in the last few weeks, I have sometimes felt like I’m living out a tale spun by Enid Blyton, that much-loved storybook writer for children.

Remember The Faraway Tree series? The one where three countryside kids discover said tree in an enchanted forest? They would try as often as possible to climb the tree, where each time at the top, a different wondrous land would await. Together with magical friends like The Saucepan Man, Moon-face and Silky the Fairy that they pick up along the climb, they would discover the Land of Treats, Land of Do-As-You-Please, Land of Topsy-Turvy, Land of Spells and so on.

As a child, I would often dream about what it would be like to visit spellbinding lands like these. Well, I no longer have to wonder. We have been transported to many of those lands recently despite our stay-at-home order.

For example, recent reports about a minister going on about how all members of parliament who currently do not hold positions in government would be made heads of government-linked companies seemed too strange to be true. I felt sure that we were in the Land of Take-What-You-Want — how else could one explain such entitlement? Whatever happened to appointing GLC heads — or any head of government bodies, for that matter — on the basis that they are capable, qualified and clean? On second thought, perhaps it was The Rocking Land, where one cannot take a step forward without taking 10 steps back.

Not long after that came news that a deputy minister had allegedly breached the Movement Control Order and social-distancing rules by attending a lunch event at a religious school. He seems to have got away with just an apology, while mere mortals are getting summoned or taken in by the police for doing the same. This must have been the Land of Do-As-You-Please.

Things are no better across the oceans. Despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that the coronavirus is under the control in the world’s biggest economy, his comments such as “Now, it may get bigger, it may get a little bigger, it may not get bigger at all” are hardly reassuring. He also thinks the virus is only “a little bit different” from the flu, but “in some ways, it’s easier and in some ways, it’s a little tougher” to deal with. I mean, what? If that is the kind of rhetoric coming out of the world’s most powerful leader, then this has to be the Land of Dreams we are in because reality is scarier to handle.

We had a brief glimpse of the Land of Tempers as the US and China argued over which party is spreading misinformation about how the virus came to be.

Then, last week, it was definitely the Land of Quarrels when a US state, Missouri, decided to sue the Chinese government over the pandemic, alleging that Beijing suppressed information, arrested whistle-blowers and denied the contagious nature of the virus that led to deaths and job losses in the state. Mississippi later did the same. China hit back, with a spokesperson saying the Missouri lawsuit “has no factual or legal basis” and “only invites ridicule”. Ouch.

It hasn’t all been bad, though. The Land of Marvels was amazing as we saw corporates and individuals come together to provide funds and support for frontliners, especially from the healthcare industry. There have been many heart-warming tales of selfless doctors, nurses, lab assistants and the like working tirelessly to help save lives. The Land of Magic Medicines cannot come soon enough.

Personally, I just feel like I’m in the Land of Topsy-Turvy. Life as we know it has been thrown upside down and this weeks-long isolation is starting to take a toll. Wake me up when the Land of the New Normal comes, please.

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