Singaporean gets 6 weeks in jail for defying stay-at-home order to get soup with girlfriend

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Alan Tham is in hot water.

The Singaporean man was sentenced Thursday to six weeks in jail for breaking a coronavirus-related mandatory stay-at-home order to have pork rib soup.

Senior Judge Ong Hian Sun called Tham's actions "socially reprehensible."

Tham is the first person to be convicted of exposing others to the novel coronavirus.

Five others have been charged and their cases are still pending.

The 34-year-old runs an online business and arrived in Singapore from Myanmar on March 23. He was given a notice to sign, in which said he acknowledged he was supposed to stay in isolation because he was returning from abroad.

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Tham had other plans. Instead of heading home, he met up with his girlfriend and the pair went to eat at the Changi Airport food court.

The fun didn't stop there. After eating, his 36-year-old girlfriend hired a car for them and they went to his house. Two hours later, they boarded a public bus heading for a restaurant that served bak kut teh, or pork rib soup. Tham liked it so much that he took several pictures of his meal and posted them on his social media accounts. After the soup, he and his girlfriend went to a grocery store and finally came back home around 10 p.m.

Two days later, officers from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority visited Tham as part of a routine check. When asked, he told them he didn't go straight home from the airport as he was instructed to do by authorities but instead took several detours.

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He was arrested and charged.

Tham's lawyers asked if he could skip jail and pay the $10,000 fine.

The judge said no.