By day, he has to deal with the haze, floods and other acts of God, but by night, Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan is a self-confessed techie who fixes his own gadgets.

As a boy, he began by hacking computer games.

“As far as games were concerned, I wasn’t very good at them,” he said with a laugh.

“I learnt to program in order to hack the games,” said Dr Balakrishnan, 53.