Singapore has weathered the pandemic exceptionally well, but has done so through its customary fastidiousness with regard to any kind of rule.
The three domestic banks’ logistics teams had to navigate some complex restrictions to make the in-person briefing happen.
Mostly this was straightforward enough, if occasionally quirky. UOB and DBS opted to give every journalist an individual sanitized microphone; OCBC spread us out across a cavernous top-floor hall to keep social distancing intact, and we were allowed coffee provided we didn’t attempt to move.
Everyone wore masks throughout, leading to some muffled questions about non-performing asset formation.
The oddest situation was around OCBC’s CEO-elect Helen Wong, who had just returned from a business trip to Hong Kong, in one of the rare examples of regional travel permitted for high-rolling executives without requiring them to do full quarantine.
Instead, Wong is simply restricted in the number of people she can be around for a couple of weeks, which led to her being livestreamed into a press conference she was actually present at, just behind a wall.
Behind CEO Samuel Tsien and his team, Wong smiled on a big screen as if being beamed from London or New York, rather than a room 10 feet away.
The sense of normality was welcome and the efforts appreciated, but they paled in comparison with Grab’s devotion to organizing its annual Chinese New Year media lo hei noodle toss.
The lo hei – which means scoop up – is a particularly Singaporean and Malaysian custom around Chinese New Year, in which a range of noodles, condiments, shredded vegetables and strips of raw fish are combined and then tossed into the air by diners with chopsticks, while shouting various hopes for prosperity and wealth.
Regular readers might recall UBS Wealth Management Asia CEO Edmund Koh hitting the ceiling of his One Raffles Quay headquarters with his noodles after a particularly vigorous toss.
This is all problematic in a socially distanced world, so Grab arranged some javelin-like super-long chopsticks and asked participants to keep a mask on and not shout while they tossed.
But what of the prosperity exhortations? Fortunately, Grab Financial head Reuben Lai had arranged an app to shout on our behalf, which seemed a very fintech way of fixing the problem.
