Haze Hits Penang

My worst fears came true when the haze finally hit Penang. I woke up to clear blue skies and thanked my lucky stars for not having to go through what my fellow Malaysians in the central region are experiencing. Unfortunately, at around 2pm my nose detected the smell of haze. Yeah, I have that 'ability'. :P Slowly but surely, the surroundings outside became more and more whitish. My clear blue skies were no more. Hills were disappearing under the choking smog. My eyes started to get irritated and watery. My nose was starting to get stuffy. My throat was getting very parched. The bloody haze was getting to me again! However, by around 5pm, the haze started to disappear and the situation was getting better. My symptoms were clearing. Probably with the help of the wind, we were spared the worst effects of the haze. I was however very shocked and angry to see that the Air Polutant Index (API) for Penang was still so low at the 5pm reading although it was so plain obvious that we were already hit quite badly by the haze! What are these people doing? Why release the API if they will not be updated or contain accurate information? We don't need to have the API to know that the air is bad. We have our eyes and noses to come to that conclusion. We don't need you to fool us with those inaccurate values. If you want to tell us the index, let it be accurate....let it be real. If not, you can just keep the index to yourself and save us from all that BS. It's night time now and the haze is getting bad again. Probably because of the lack of wind at night and the air being more moist and densed (correct me if I'm wrong). Please spare us from this agony!!! Punish those idiots that cause this suffering!