If you are getting the feeling that the trains are getting more packed, it’s not an issue of personal perception, it’s real! Just take a look at the chart below.

All you need to do is take a look at the figure ‘Growth in car kilometers operated (%)’ figure, and you will noticed that it has only increased 2%. But compared that to ‘Growth in passenger-trip numbers (%)’ and ‘Growth in weekday passengers (%)’ and you will notice that there’s an increase of 5.1% and 5.5% respectively.

The figures would suggest that SMRT has not adjusted their train frequencies according to the rise in demand. Apparently, the lessons of SARS have been forgotten and that means, if you get a flu, you can logically blame SMRT because they the chances of more sick people in the same cabin on the same train has increased.

Anyway, I would also suggest you buy some SMRT shares when the price is right. Then at least you can earn some money back from all that fare increments and misery you and your fellow commuters are suffering from SMRT’s lack of concern for the people they claimed to serve.

In simpler terms, if you can’t beat them, join them. Above which, you can also turn up at the AGM and ask some tough questions… make sure their CEO don’t laugh all the way to the bank thinking that her job is done because it doesn’t matter what the commuters think as long as ‘shareholders are happy’ .

According to an article on Asiaone, the Transport Mini$ter Raymond Lemon Lim said:

By the most conservative calculation based on metered fare alone, fares have gone up by 8.3%. (That figure is derived by the old metered fare of 20cts every 420m then compared to only 385m now. i.e. 35/420, which is approximately 8.3%.)

However, the cabbie has only earned $11 more, netting them $318 now which means they used to earn about $307 formerly. That translates into just 3.6% increase in income. Not even a 50% increase of the 8.3% fare increase!

And that isn’t the best part yet. The cabbie needs to make about 16 trips of $20 to make that amount a day. $11 over 16 trips means each cabbie is making about 69cts a trip.

Now compared that to our PM’s pay which increased 22.5% (from $3.1 million to $3.8 million) and clearly, the fare increments are * gasp * NOT enough!

They should do more to help cabbies… increase the fares even more! And along with that perhaps now we don’t even need to wait more than a minute for a cab compared to the impressive average of 6 minutes that Lemon Lim is boasting about.

Addendum

The last cabbie I chat with told me… a Toyota Crown’s rental is about $92 a day and I heard the new Sonatas are more than $100. For an income of $318, 1/3 of that goes to pay the company renting them the cab. Now, if I am not wrong, COE prices has come down quite a bit compared to several years ago… do we see a comparative drop in rental to assist the cabbies?

So much for having done all they could to help cabbies.

The flu bug keeps me up and I can’t sleep even though I am having a splitting headache. So while I should be resting and hope I get better, here I am reading blogs and I saw Bobo’s reply to Nuffnang’s comment on her blog. The following excerpts of Nuffnang’s comment was taken from Bobo’s post.

Several hundred cheques going on any single day! I’ll want to find out if the expense management people in my office issue that many cheques a day too… for all that payments and what not. Since there are two of them handling cheques so there must be a lot more to handle a day. If not, the two nice ladies will have to start worrying about how long they can keep their jobs!

Excerpt 2

As to the allocation of advertisements, i have to say Nuffnang plays no part in deciding which advertisements go onto which blogs. The final decision lies with the advertiser’s choice. We can recommend but if they do not want to, we can’t do anything about it. Also, bear in mind, not all blogs are suitable for all advertisements, Nike may be suitable for blogs that touches on sports and others like Starbucks may be suitable for food blogs.

That sounds like an explanation to the question on why people aren’t getting ads though I remain skeptical as I am not quite convinced that an advertiser would actually participate so actively in the decision making.

It would be nice if Nuffnang back up their assertion by showing some statistics to those who have signed up for their services just how often their blogs were recommended and on what grounds they are rejected by an advertiser. (I am not asking for these to be made public and I don’t want to know. But at least the bloggers who signed up have a right to know.)

Anyway, as to why I remain skeptical… I had wondered just how many bloggers who signed up, blog specifically on certain matters? I am not saying that topic-specific blogs do not exists, but simply saying, just how many of theare out there? And I must ask, if I am reading a food blog now, who can say I am actually not interested in looking for an air-ticket, or thinking about a new pair of track shoes? Above which, if these blogs are so popular, why should an advertiser go through Nuffnang at all? Why not just sponsor the blog directly like some have did with Xiasuay? Wouldn’t that be a more effective way to spend their money?

Furthermore, I am really wondering which advertisers have committed manpower to actively make the decision on which blogs their ads go to when they advertises with Nuffnang. In fact, if you are an advertiser, would you tend to limit your audience to only a specific group of people? With such a difficult – or unwieldy – business model, I am actually quite impressed that Nuffnang has gone as far as becoming the ‘No. 1 blog advertising firm in South East Asia’ … or something to that effect.

Wow. So is Nuffnang accusing the others of not being honest now? Is Nuffnang suggesting that its competitors are not being honest? In fact, it appears that not just its competitors are now accused of dishonesty, all advertising companies are implicated. Does Nuffnang know something we don’t? If Nuffnang has evidence why doesn’t it produce them for the good of bloggers and blogosphere, and in fact, also for the general public?

Is Nuffnang suggesting that those with negative comments about them are from people with the specific agenda to see them destroyed? But what’s the point of saying so unless they have evidence? Nuffnang should really just simply fix their own public image and leave no room for the negative comments to ferment.

Addendum

According to Bobo’s post here, she had a call from Timothy Tiah and he explained to her that this post was not written by anyone under the employment or associated with Nuffnang.

Whoever did this… shame on you!!

On the heels of Advertlets’ recent boo-boo, Nuffnang introduced Nuffnang Gliterati – allegedly an exclusive program to reward ‘Nuffnangers’ for their loyalty.

Well, if you are a ‘Nuffnangers’ of the Inner Circle, this is definitely the thing for you. If you are a blogger looking into earning some money from your blog traffic or one that has not gotten an ad from Nuffnang ever since you put it up on your blog, then I suggest you take a look at this before making your decision.

Anyway, as I read about this new Nuffnang drive, an analogy came to mind: ‘It’s like someone proposing to a girl to marry him, and in return the girl will have to give up meeting all those other prospective guys. But the problem is, there is already some talk as to how this guy is treating his existing girlfriends to begin with and it’s not all positive.’

A even better one would be this, ‘it’s like those young Manchu girls in Qing China. They are make to believe that to enter the palace and serve the Emperor alone, would fulfil their dreams to a good luxurious life. But they just didn’t realise that few gained the chance to enter his chambers, not to mention the rumors in the palace that the Emperor only graces the chambers of a few of his favorite concubines.’

I couldn’t help but laugh when I thought of them. And so I am putting them down in words as I think that about sums it all.

And if you want to understand what my analogy is all about, just visit a dozen or so blogs at random (not those of Xiasuay, Kenny Seah and those on Innit, of course), and look out for the ‘I serve Nuffnang ads’, and then just see how many of them are actually serving ads at all.

More postings at: AMP on the Red Dot; arzhou.com; dhope

Word of the Day

oligarchy –noun, plural -chies.

1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

2. a state or organization so ruled.

3. the persons or class so ruling.