Egypt and Singapore

Available for over a year

Humphrey Hawksley travels Alexandria to meet a grieving father. Mr. Badr Houssana's son was tragically killed in violent clashes in the coastal city earlier this month. Mr Houssana tells Hawksley that his son had been watching an Islamist protest supporting the deposed Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, when he was chased onto the roof of an apartment block and then pushed from a ledge of the building. Mr Houssana shows Hawksley a disturbing grainy YouTube video of his son falling, head down, arms splayed. And, Sarah Toms goes to a Saturday school for parents swotting up on their mathematics, in order to help her young daughter who is trying to keep up with the highly competitive, pressurised Singaporean state school system. She finds that parents here set exceedingly high goals for their children. The word for it in Singapore is 'kiasu' which means 'fear of losing' but in reality translates to 'winning is everything'.