Famous one-minute vlogger Nuseir Yassin, better known as Nas Daily, recently featured Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong in his one-minute videos. He especially loved Singapore, praising it as an “almost perfect country”. Nas Daily covered certain stories and commented on each nation’s idiosyncrasies in his charming and forthcoming manner. In a strange coincidence (or not) of sorts, bad luck has befallen each of the three Southeast Asian countries Nas Daily featured. The correlation is too powerful to ignore.
Online news site Mothership.sg called it the “Nas Daily jinx”.
In the last two months, Nas Daily has visited Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong while on tour, sharing his observations with the world in his now-iconic one-minute videos. On September 17, in Singapore, he pledged his love to Singapore, calling the city-state an “almost perfect country” in episode 890.
The very next day, September 18, Singapore experienced it worst cross-island blackout. Singapore Power (SP Group) said that 146,797 consumers were affected by the loss of power. All SP Group and security hotlines were clogged with calls from thousands of Singaporeans.
Did Nas Daily “jinx” Singapore with his proclamation of it being almost perfect?
Neighboring country Malaysia also got a dose of the “Nas Daily jinx”. On September 4, in episode 877, Nas Daily featured the plight of “homeless, jobless and stateless” Syrian man Hassan al-Kontar who had been stuck in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport for nearly six months.
Nas Daily could not make it into the country himself because he holds an Israeli passport, but he sent his camera crew down to cover the story anyway.
Less than one month later, on October 1, Malaysian authorities arrested and deported al-Kontar after his plight brought negative attention to the country. He was removed for staying what the authorities referred to as a “forbidden zone”, as the boarding area is only for those getting on flights. The situation had becoming embarrassing, and the authorities wanted “closure”.
Nas Daily featured him, and then he was deported. Can that still be called coincidence? Did Nas Daily call it or make it happen?
Superstition surrounding the enigmatic vlogger mounts.
Hong Kong was not exempt to Nas Daily’s strange powers. In episode 904, on September 30, he proclaimed Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) the “world’s best metro” for its amazing efficiency. The MTR is bound by law to pay a fine of HK$1,000,000, which goes to the people, if any trip is more than 30 minutes late.
A little over a month later, on October 16, the mighty (MTR) broke down for the first time ever in a “very unusual, rare and unprecedented” signalling failure that was not even mentioned as a possible scenario on the MTR handbook. For six peak hours on Tuesday morning, all train services were discontinued. Engineers were baffled and hundreds of thousands of people were stranded, angry and tired. Chaos ensued.
After six hours, the MTR was in operation again, but due to severe lags and backlogs getting back on schedule and getting the stranded people home proved a mammoth of a task. Hong Kong has reached out to overseas experts for help in investigating the bizarre, bewildering signal failure.
Superstition mumbo-jumbo aside, those are some creepy coincidences with rather unfortunate outcomes.
Netizens have found the “Nas Daily jinx” correlations hilarious.
Most were cashing in on the joke:
Others noticed the trend, too:
These guys think Nas Daily should change his famous moniker:
This netizen is happy Nas Daily did not make it to Indonesia:
By the way, Nas Daily loved Singapore so much that he has decided that a second visit is in order. He will be back to visit the “almost perfect country” again this December. It is going to be interesting, to say the least.