1. The air wreeks of incense. It’s like a month long “aromo therapy” designed to bring people with sinusitis, asthma and other chronic breathing-related illnesses to their knees.
2. The smoke generated from the burning of “money” and incense can become extreme enough to irritate eyes causing soreness and inflamation.
3. The dust load in homes increase, demanding more from home-makers and their assistants in terms of having to put more effort to maintain the cleanliness.
4. More litter around as stray cats, dogs, rats ants etc, will pick on the food that has been left on the ground as offerings making it more of a hassle for public cleaners.
5. People do not clear the many candles and burnt joss-sticks that they have put up and expect the public cleaners to do it. Are they afraid that the spirits will haunt them if they do? If that is the case, I will be praying for all public cleaners since they will have legions of spirits following them around.
6. There is so much hype about spooks during the month that walking along an empty HDB corridor at 8pm feels more scary than watching Psycho.
7. The older generation continually insist on burning incense and offerings fearing that not doing so will incur the wrath of the spirits and bring misfortune to their family.
8. Retail activity dips due to people going home earlier
9. Productivity dips due to people knocking off earlier
10. The ozone layer gets thinner by 0.00001 mm this time of of the year. We should stop killing ourselves.
