On June 23, Singapore’s elections department announced the country’s next general election will be held on July 10. Six days later, the department revealed that preregistered overseas voters can vote at 10 polling stations in Beijing, Canberra, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York City, San Francisco, Shanghai, Tokyo and Washington DC. 

While a significant number of Singaporean citizens overseas reside in these cities, those cities, states or even countries away from the nearest polling station feel sidelined in this election. 

In many parts of the world, overseas Singaporeans like Faizah are unable to cast their vote. Many have to brave the pandemic, travel to a different state, or even country, serve a 28-day quarantine to make their ballot count. And for those who are working, their overseas employers would never give a 28-day leave. 

Said is an international relocation specialist residing in Dallas  and the nearest polling station for her is San Francisco, at least a three  hour flight and 28 days of quarantine away. Apart from the time and inconvenience that comes with voting, exposure to Covid is also stopping Said from voting. 

“Right now, America is almost the epicenter of the pandemic,” he said, As much as I am patriotic and I want to do my part as a Singaporean citizen, to vote, do I want to expose myself to the virus? And come back to Dallas to expose my wife to the virus?” 

Singaporean postgraduate student Heidi Gay who lives in Toronto, also shared similar concerns about traveling to the polling station in New York.

 “I can and will happily spend the money to travel to vote, but this already speaks to the degree of financial accessibility overseas voting involves,” Gay said. “With the pandemic I believe it is extremely unwise to be getting on a plane to the US, given how the situation has been handled there to this point.” 

But both Said and Gay believe in the importance of their vote. Said had wished to vote for more diversity to represent minority voices in parliament. The 44 year-old identifies as a transman and Malay Muslim and to him, neither of his community is well represented by the current government. 

“I’m not saying that my one vote can immediately say, hey, Singapore’s legalizing gay marriage now,” he said. “But I’m saying my one vote can make a difference. It might be the vote that sways things to the right direction.” 

Said served 10 years as a police office in Singapore. 

 “Yet I have to leave my beloved country to find happiness in another country,” he said which has added even more desire to cast his vote.

Said had expected an election since last year. Under Singapore’s Parliamentary Elections Act, the prime minister calls a general election before the five-year parliamentary term ends in January 2021. Unlike presidential elections in the US, the polling day of Singapore’s most important election is only announced when the prime minister dissolves parliament. 

Since 1972, election periods, only during which parties can campaign, go up to 11 days. While there is no polling day irregularities, the Freedom House notes that “numerous structural factors impede the development of viable electoral competition.” 

Gay was set to vote in one of the only two constituencies previously held by an opposition party. 

“It goes without saying that I take this responsibility very seriously and this ( the decision to forgo her vote) was not an easy decision to make,” Gay said. 

Without the options of online and mail-in voting, Said now finds his only opportunity for equal representation thwarted. 

“It’s almost akin to the president here, Donald Trump, saying that there’s no mail-in voting because it might be rigged,” he said. 

Inability to vote due to their location and the pandemic is not the only obstacle for overseas Singaporeans to practice their voting rights. A technical “glitch”, according to the immigrations and customs authority’s statement on July 4, failed to process 101 voter registrations overseas. Under the Parliamentary Elections Act, changes can no longer be made after the voter lists are certified. 

The Authority said in the statement, that it is making efforts to contact these 101 overseas voters. But some members of a private Facebook group started by overseas voters fear an undercount of affected voters and an impact on election results in key constituencies. 

Along with these overseas voters, another 350 eligible voters in Singapore, Covid-19 patients and those issued a legal quarantine order, usually a close contact of a Covid patient, will not be able to vote. Whereas overseas returnees quarantined in hotels can vote with polling agents bringing ballot boxes from door to door. 

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“The current regime tries to politicize the virus to stay in power and form common enemies,” said a journalist based in Caracas  who did not want to be identified for safety reasons. “Moreover, this is the perfect excuse to mask the gasoline shortage. If we are under quarantine, people don’t really use cars that often.” 

Venezuela’s government, historically responsible for jailing journalists, concentrating power, rejecting human rights scrutiny, was already struggling economically even before President Nicolas Maduro took power. Basic needs, like access to food and health resources became scarce and led millions of Venezuelans to flee from their homes.

The president imposed a nationwide quarantine on March 17 after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the country. But because of the extreme poverty, Venezuelans continue to leave their houses to search for food and water. 

According to the World Food Program, 9.3 million Venezuelans,  nearly a third of the country’s population, are considered food insecure and 1 in 3 are not getting enough to eat. The same study found that 74%of families have adopted coping strategies to deal with the lack of food, such as reducing quality and variety of what they eat. 

 Maduro recently declared that the mandatory use of masks and quarantine measures are working. On May 30 Venezuela had 1,370 confirmed cases with 14 deaths. But these numbers were called “absurd” by the Human Rights Watch and John Hopkins University.

Dr. Kathleen Page, an associate medicine professor at John Hopkins told France 24 that Venezuela is “a country where doctors don’t have water to even wash their hands” and end up using water coming from the air conditioner to do it, and where “the health system is totally collapsing.”

She believes the true number of COVID-19 deaths is closer to 30,000. 

The Caracas journalist said that Venezuela suffered from serious consequences of the precarious public health even before the arrival of the coronavirus. 

“It is certainly difficult to believe that the numbers are that good,” the journalist said. “There is no transparency on the numbers coming from the government. Hospitals had already collapsed before the pandemic started and this is a risk for hospital staff too.” 

The first COVID-19 case was registered on  March 14, according to ABC News. 

A report from the Associated Press showed that despite the coronavirus threats, Venezuela’s elite still partied in Los Roques, a Venezuelan archipelago. On March 20, Maduro said on state television that, “practically everyone at the party is testing positive.”

“The first cases are believed to be imported by Spanish prostitutes after a party in Los Roques,” the journalist said

As a result , Colombian president, Iván Duque, closed the country’s border with Venezuela to stop the spread in Colombia. But Colombians could still enter Venezuela.

Just like in China, where xenophobia is on the rise,  Maduro is also blaming refugees that are coming back from Colombia for bringing the virus into Venezuela because he knows that people who fled are not his supporters, the journalist said.

Federico Sor,   a historian of modern Latin America, said Venezuela and China are allies. 

“The difference is that China had the resources, it built hospitals and tested the people, Maduro, however does not have the resources to do the same,” Sor said. “In Venezuela, just like in China, people who were contesting the numbers or threatening to expose it were being arrested.” 

In China, Li Wenliang, a doctor who sent the message to fellow doctors in Wuhan about the spread of a new virus was silenced by the police and later on investigated. The same has happened to journalists and doctors in Venezuela who claimed that health facilities were not ready to receive patients with COVID-19. Melquiades Avila is one of them. Now in hiding, he was accused of being a “criminal” by Lizeta Hernandez, a member of the ruling Socialist party. 

The economic situation is specifically critical now that oil prices are collapsing. Sor said the crisis is so big that he believes that it precedes the sanctions imposed by countries, such as the US. 

“Any country that relies on imports particularly suffers more,” he said. “The oil prices are low and the economy is contracting almost by half. Therefore, the options to stay in the country are not the best offer for most of the people who have left.”

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Within minutes of matching, 19-year-old Bordeaux got a message from Metin. It was a GIF of a tiny white dog with the word “hi” in black letters in the right corner.

“Hey!” replied Bordeaux.

Bordeaux has been matching with people from all over the globe since Tinder made its Passport feature free last month to help singles combat loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic.

The feature allows users to connect with anyone anywhere in the world instead of limiting matches to people in their vicinity.

“Our hope is that you use the Passport feature to virtually transport yourself out of self-quarantine to anywhere in the world,” Tinder said in a statement. “You can check in on folks in their hometown, college town, or sister city, and find those across the world who are going through the same things. If nothing else, you can learn how to say “hey” in another language.”

But Bordeaux never learned how to say “hey” in Turkish.

“My experience was — well, he was sort of clingy,” said Bordeaux, who ultimately ended up blocking her potential beau.

With the stay-at-home mandates all over the world,, some dating apps have seen serious spikes in activity.

The volume of direct messages on Tinder has increased by 10 to 15 percent each day, according to Mother Jones. The dating app  also reported that conversations tend to carry on longer than they did before the lockdown.

“It’s nice conversation but it’s different to how it was before because everything before was like you know we talk for a bit and then I’d see the person within two weeks,” said Chelsea du Toit, 20, who lives in  Cape Town, South Africa.

Du Toit had not activated the Passport feature — but she figured others were using it when she started seeing people from the US, Germany and the UK show up in her profile.

“It kind of irritated me at first,” she said. “I guess, this will make me sound ridiculous, I didn’t really want to talk to people or match with people if I won’t potentially meet them in real life. That just kind of feels like a waste of time.”

She started using Tinder when quarantine first went into effect, and had expected to meet up with her matches fairly soon — but that changed once it became clear the lockdown would last much longer.

“Initially South Africa had a lockdown that was only meant to last three weeks,” said Du Toit. “So a lot of the conversations were with the idea that we’re possibly seeing each other within like a month.”

“Now it’s very much like, we’re getting to know each other and speaking to each other but we don’t know when we’re going to see each other,” she added. .

As quarantine begins to lift in some places, some wonder if they will finally get to meet their matches — and if the flirtatious banter that grew stale online will be better in person. .

“I’m planning to meet up with [one of my matches] after the crisis,” said Du Toit. “When everyone gets a better idea [of when] we’re going to be able to see each other, conversations will probably pick up again.”

Bordeaux said she also plans to meet one of her matches after the quarantine.

“There’s one person who I’ve stayed in contact with. Possibly two,” she  said.

“I’m a little nervous to [meet up] cause all of our relationship and our talking has been texting and I’ve also never met up with someone from Tinder before,” said Bordeaux. “But I would like to meet up with him.”

Yaroslava Bondar is an NYU undergraduate journalism student.

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I grew up always trying to lose ten pounds.  Now, when I look back on old photos of myself from high school, I have that sickening and sad feeling, knowing how anxious I felt about my size, at my pesky weight of 120 lbs.  Wow, if she could only see me now.

If she could, she’d probably be astounded to see that even though I didn’t develop the flat stomach or carve out the thigh-gap, I still had graduated from high school and college, gotten a job, had relationships, made new friends, bought new clothes, went to parties, moved to New York City, and essentially didn’t live out her greatest fear that not losing the weight would mean the end of the world and an unfulfilling life.  And yet, as I type those words, there’s a small demon voice in my head that says, “But if you were smaller, it would be better.”

That voice belongs to Diet Culture.  It comes out in the form of every weight loss pill commercial, every Weight Watchers knock-off brand (I’m looking at you, Noom), and every mother who ever pinched your love handle as you walked by (thankfully not mine).  Diet Culture is the ever present, loud and yet also soft and unsuspecting, voice that tells you that nothing you do matters unless you are thin while you’re doing it.  And it’s a lie.

In a simple Google search for “diet culture,” the following commonly searched questions were suggested to me.  As I read them, I felt like I was reading my own search history from 2008.

What time should I stop eating to lose weight?

Which fruits burn calories?

What is the best breakfast for weight loss?

What should I each for lunch on a diet?

What sweets can I eat on a diet?

Is it OK to have dessert on a diet?

And my personal favorite: Can I eat pudding on a diet?

To the last two questions, the answer is YES.

The Netflix mini-series Explained best summarized the difficulty with losing weight: the diet industry is pushing you to eat less, while the food industry is pushing you to eat more.  Why is either industry in charge of how we feed ourselves?

The diet and weight-loss industry, according to businesswire.com, is currently worth $72 Million.  That’s made up of weight loss cookbooks, fitness apps, “detox” teas, “meal replacement” shakes, snack packages labeled “guilt-free,” gym memberships, Spanx, juice cleanses, appetite suppressants, and bathroom scales.  The list could fill the rest of this article.  Basically, anything you’ve ever paid money for with a vision of yourself in your head at some future date, where you look thinner and happier.  There are two questions that invalidate the entire industry: Have you ever successfully become the person in that vision?  And what would happen to the industry, if in one moment, we all became okay with how we looked right now?

I’m willing to bet the answer to the first question is no, and the answer to the second is that it would all come to a crashing halt.  That’s the point.  The diet industry, and subsequently diet culture as a whole, isn’t here to see you become your best, “healthiest” self.  It’s here for you to constantly be chasing an image of yourself that is unrealistic, fail to reach it, and then continue to pour money right back into all the same products to try again.

Lately, I’ve seen a new wave of diet culture infiltrate us as we all stay home to wait out the coronavirus as best as we can: the weight gain that could happen while in quarantine.  Author and Body Positivity activist Meghan Crabbe published an Instagram post recently that read, “It’s okay to gain weight while social distancing. It’s okay if your body changes because your routine has. You do not need to use this time to lose weight. You do not need to make up for your isolation snacks.”

There are people dying, losing their loved ones, or who are on the front lines of the virus just trying to get it under control.  I have never been given perspective about my body image faster, than realizing how lucky I am to have a strong immune system and lungs that continue to give me the air I need every day.  There may be companies gearing up to sell us products to lose the “quarantine weight gain.”  Let’s not give them the power this time.  Let’s be thankful for what our bodies give us, no matter the size, shape, or numeric relationship with gravity.

Particularly during quarantine, when all other distractions of life are stripped away and you are left sitting at home with only yourself, the TV, and all the emotional baggage you have yet to work through, you might need, more than ever, to say yes to the pudding.

Sami Roberts is a graduate student in  NYU’s Magazine and Digital Storytelling program.

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