Haze-ardous!

What's going on in KL? The whole city is covered with a thick fog smelling just like a charcoal barbecue before you drop the meat on the grill... What's that? Oh, I know: the haze is back in KL :'-( Cough, cough!! What is the haze? It's easy as a pie: farmers in Indonesia (especially on the neighboring island of Sumatra) burn the forest in order to clear off fields for cultivation. This generates huge amount of smoke. Depending on the wind, those clouds of smoke make their journey over the Melacca sea and end up reaching Malaysia West coast.

See "before" and "after" pictures of KL:

Sometimes, when the smoke is too thick, schools are closed, as well as some industry manufactures and offices. This is bad for productivity. And needless to mention the health hazard... But to me the most surprising thing about it is the Malaysians reaction: obviously some of them are very concerned about the above mentioned troubles. But others are pretty happy about it because during haze attack the sun can't reach KL and the temperature drops from a few degrees!!

Malaysian government urged Indonesia for collaboration in chasing those illegal forest fires. Indonesia sent some officers in Sumatra jungle. They caught several fire criminals and deported them towards Malaysia... because they were Malays!! Yes, some Malay people setup business among the pyromaniacs... An excellent way for Indonesia to tell Malaysia: "See, the criminals are from your country, all this is your fault so now stop boring us with this smoke story and let our farmers burn forest if they want to"...

I bet you, we are not gonna see blue sky in KL before pigs fly.