THERE is something strangely frustrating about looking outside and knowing that, for once, staying home is probably the better option.
The past few days in Sarawak have been grey – not the comforting kind that comes before a heavy afternoon downpour, but the dull, smoky grey that tells us the haze is back.
For Sarawakians, haze is hardly something new.
In fact, whenever the haze returns, there will inevitably be someone who brings up 1997.
If you lived through the Great Haze of 1997, you would probably tell the rest of us that what we are experiencing now is nothing compared with then and they would be right.
The 1997 haze remains the benchmark against which almost every haze episode in Sarawak seems to be measured.
Those who remember it speak of frighteningly poor visibility, the smell of smoke everywhere, and days when the world outside seemed to disappear behind a thick wall of grey.
So yes, we have seen worse, but “we have seen worse” does not make the air outside any cleaner today.
This time around, I find myself noticing how quickly the haze changes the rhythm of ordinary life.
You wake up, look outside and instead of wondering whether it is going to rain, you check the Air Pollutant Index (API).
Should we open the windows? Probably not. Should we spend much time outside today? Maybe not. And so, indoors we remain.
The doors stay closed, the windows remain shut, and the air-conditioning seems to work overtime.
There is a difference between choosing to spend a lazy day at home and knowing you probably should not be outside because the air is unhealthy. After a while, it gets frustrating.
Perhaps the only good thing about this relentlessly hot and dry weather is the laundry – I will happily give the weather that.
Laundry has been an absolute breeze. Hang something outside and it feels as though you have barely finished putting the last piece on the line before the first one is already dry.
Bedsheets? No problem. Towels? Done. A full load of clothes? Give the Sarawak sun a few hours.
After all those rainy days when we complain about clothes taking forever to dry, this should be the perfect laundry weather.
Unfortunately, you cannot quite enjoy the sunshine when you are being encouraged to avoid spending too much time in it.
And then there is something else that has been bothering me – open burning.
Despite everything we are seeing and hearing about the haze, there are still people in residential areas burning leaves, branches and rubbish.
I have seen it happening around my own neighbourhood.
You look outside and see another plume of smoke rising from someone’s backyard and cannot help but think: Seriously? Now?
Of all the days to decide that something absolutely must be burned, surely these are not the days.
We are quick – and often rightly so – to talk about transboundary haze and hotspots across the border when the air quality deteriorates in Sarawak.
But surely that also means taking responsibility for what happens in our own backyard.
We cannot complain about smoke travelling hundreds of kilometres towards us and then contribute our own little cloud of it next door.
If the air is already unhealthy, the very least we can do is not make it worse.
What worries me more, however, are the children.
Schools in areas where API readings entered the very unhealthy range have already been ordered to close, and that is reassuring.
But it inevitably makes you think about children who are still attending school in areas where the readings have not reached the closure threshold, but where the air is nevertheless classified as unhealthy.
There has to be a guideline, of course. Schools cannot close every time the API moves slightly upwards.
Still, as a parent, there is an uncomfortable space between “unhealthy” and “bad enough to close schools”.
Children are still travelling to school in the morning, walking through school compounds and going about their day while parents keep checking the readings and hoping conditions do not worsen.
It is difficult not to worry, particularly about younger children and those who may be more sensitive to poor air quality.
There is another reason the haze makes me slightly more anxious these days too.
My husband flies for a living.
The other day, he came home and told me just how poor the visibility had become while approaching Kuching.
Kuching air traffic control had instructed his aircraft to operate under Instrument Meteorological Conditions, or IMC.
IMC refers to conditions that require pilots to rely on their instruments rather than being able to navigate purely by visual reference outside the aircraft.
During his approach, the tower asked whether the runway was visual when they were at around 2,000 feet. His answer was no.
It was only when they descended to around 1,200 feet, near the NorthBank area, that the runway finally became visible to him.
When he told me that, I remember thinking: That is low.
I see the haze from the ground and think it looks bad because the mountains have disappeared or because everything beyond a certain distance looks washed out and grey.
But hearing that he could be approaching Kuching International Airport, already descending towards home, and still not have the runway in sight at around 2,000 feet gave me an entirely different perspective of just how poor the visibility had become.
Of course, he explained that pilots are trained to operate in such conditions.
There are procedures, instruments and prescribed minima that determine whether an approach can safely continue.
IMC itself is not an emergency and is something pilots routinely train for.
That mostly reassured me but the wife in me still hears: “I couldn’t see the runway at 2,000 feet.”
He has also explained that flying in hazy conditions can be more challenging because of the reduced visibility, while smoke and airborne particles are among the things that have to be considered when operating in degraded atmospheric conditions.
So when haze season comes around and he puts on his uniform and leaves for work, I admit I worry a little more than usual.
Perhaps that is simply what happens when someone you love is sitting in the cockpit.
For the rest of us, haze means closed windows, cancelled walks and constantly checking the API.
For people like him, that same grey blanket is something they have to fly through.
And now, whenever I look up at that hazy sky and hear an aircraft somewhere above it, I think about what it must look like from the other side.
I suppose that is what the haze does. It creeps into parts of everyday life that we normally never think about.
Most days, we never think twice about the air around us.
We open the door and step outside, we send our children to school, people go to work, plane take off and land, laundry dries on the line.
Life carries on without anyone stopping to think about the simple act of breathing.
Then the haze comes, and suddenly we notice the air.
Perhaps that is also why 1997 remains so deeply embedded in Sarawak’s collective memory.
Those who lived through it remember just how bad things can become when the sky disappears behind smoke.
I certainly hope we never experience anything close to that again.
For now, there is only so much most of us can do.
We can stay indoors a little more, keep the windows closed, reduce unnecessary outdoor activities, keep an eye on the API, and make sure our children are protected as much as possible.
Most importantly, we can stop burning things in our backyards.
Meanwhile, I will take advantage of the one small consolation this weather has given me and clear the laundry basket.
But at this point, I would happily sacrifice a few loads of perfectly dry clothes for one of those heavy Sarawak downpours that ruins every outdoor plan for the afternoon.
Let it rain and let laundry wait because I would much rather look outside and see a wet Kuching than a hazy one.
