Blogger Nuseir Yassin, popularly known as Nas, shows that his love affair with Singapore has stayed strong and steady. In one of his most recent videos, he waxes enthusiastically about the smoking ban on Orchard Road, one of the country’s most popular shopping districts.
Smoking will be banned in most areas of Orchard Road starting January 1, 2019.
Nas has made several highly complimentary videos about the country, calling Singapore “The Almost Perfect Country,” praising how Singaporeans deal with rubbish, explaining why he loves Changi Airport, and even complimenting the parking system (he’s crazy about how citizens reverse park to save space, just out of sheer politeness). In one video, he is even seen with Lee Hsien Loong, the country’s Prime Minister.
This has led others to wonder if he is getting paid by the government for painting Singapore in such a good light, an allegation that he has denied vehemently.
However, in October, a partnership between Nas and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) was revealed, with the IMDA inviting the blogger to speak at the Singapore Media Festival.
A few months after his last videos in Singapore, Nas is back and apparently thrilled that Orchard Road has become a No Smoking zone. In another one-minute video, he gleefully exclaimed that smoking is now forbidden in Orchard Road. He narrates, “In this entire three-kilometer district, smoking is no longer allowed. NO smoking in the street, no smoking in the sidewalk, no smoking around people, no smoking anywhere in this entire, gigantic, busy shopping area.
You can only light up cigarettes in tiny, tiny boxes that are clearly marked. This is amazing because smoking not only hurts you, it also hurts everyone around you.”
The video, which was released on December 2, has been seen more than 4 million times, shared more than 40,000 times and has received more than 4,000 comments.
One of the shares was from Singapore’s very own Ministry of Environment and Water Resources (MEWR).
However, some Singaporeans did not seem too thrilled at seeing yet another enthusiastic video about their country on the Nas Daily vlog. Perhaps some degree of Nas fatigue has set in.
