Current Affairs – Ministerial Pay Revision

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The hottest news in the past few days has to be the ministerial pay revision. I had personally expected a cut between 10% ~ 25% which means that the cuts proposed are above my expectations. If anyone were to ask whether I am pleased or happy, it would be the wrong question to ask. I will only talk about what I think about it.

First of all, the ministers will still be the highest paid in the world compared to their foreign peers based on the figures alone. The fanatically and rabidly anti-People’s Action Party [anti-PAP] netizens were quick to point out that PM Lee still earns S$2.2 million (approximately US$1.7 million at current exchange rate) compared to President Obama’s US$400,000.

That said, when President Obama and his family went on vacation to Hawaii recently, it cost the US taxpayers almost US$4 million dollars. So while Obama nominally earns less, he certainly has a lot more perks. I wondered whether the government paid for Prime Minister Lee’s recent vacation (which was cut short as a result of the MRT breakdowns) or did he pay for it out of his own pocket. If our country only paid for the expenses of the PM’s security detail while he paid for the rest of his own expenses from his salary, then how is the comparison with President Obama’s salary fair? Wouldn’t our political leaders actually not be getting much more than the other leaders because the perks are not considered a part of their salaries?

Many would be outraged with what I have just written. I imagined there would be screams of anger and outrage at my words and I shivered. Regardless, I simply had to voice this out because I am ignorant about the matter itself! I want to be absolutely sure when I still lash out at them over the matter of their exorbitant pay, no one could try and argue their way out of it.

Next, the Ministerial Pay Review Committee has almost wiped out the pay increments of 2007 because I estimated that ministerial pay is now almost back to pre-2007 levels. I had originally wanted to show figures but I am confident with my estimations. Here’s the math – If I earn $2000 in 2007 and I get a pay increment of 60%, my new pay would be $3200. And if I get a pay cut of 35% at 2011, my new pay would be $2080. That’s not much of a change from what I was getting before the increment and I have to say it’s quite a substantial cut. (It doesn’t matter whether that pay is $2000 or $1.5 million. The results will give the same conclusions.)

On top of that they are doing away with the pension scheme and from May 21, 2011 onwards, the previous pension scheme is abolished. Even the method of calculating their bonus has been changed. Given that the method would not be tied solely to the economic performance, I wouldn’t really comment on it until they announce their bonus based on this new scheme. What exactly is the point of speculating on how they will make use of this variable to pay themselves handsomely when they haven’t already done it? While it is too late by then… I prefer to stick with what has been done or already occurred.

So that pretty much summarises what I think of the committee’s proposal. I have glanced through some of the political parties’ reaction but I have yet to see the one from the Workers’ Party [WP]. It reminds me why I have liked WP since 2006. This is a party that doesn’t jump the gun and shoot from the hip. They tend to think it over and say the things that makes the most sense. WP appears to be the only party which seems to understand that it is the swing voters and not the rabidly anti-PAP that needs convincing. Consider this, a lot of PAP mistakes aren’t apparent until many years after the decisions are made – from the 2-child policy to opening the floodgates to foreigners. But can anyone actually expect the sentiments in 2016 to be the same as 8 months ago? When a political party is always saying the same things as those who have completely rejected the PAP and disregard whatever the PAP is saying / doing, fat hope in winning a seat in Parliament! They are simply gambling that the PAP will continue to falter and not do anything. Granted, the PAP has become arrogant, elitist and even out of touch. But from 75.2% in 2001 to 60.1% in 2011, does anyone really think the PAP hasn’t felt the danger of losing power already?

Anyway, on the matter of arrogance and elitism (as a result of Grace Fu’s so-called misunderstood comments), I had a discussion with some friends on Whatsapp and one of my friends said this (I paraphrase):

” No one disagrees in paying the ministers an appropriate wage to do the job. The question is, how much is appropriate pay? “

We subsequently agreed that appropriate pay is simply a sum of money which leaves enough to save up for old age (so we have money when we can’t work as hard and earn as much), and also to cover our liabilities (housing loans for e.g.) and expenses (food & utilities etc). Based on that, if Grace Fu still expect the people to believe that even S$1 million is not an appropriate pay, and that it will not be enough to attract talents, then she ought to tell us why. Justifying that they can earn more working elsewhere isn’t going to work for us when we are really earning peanuts and are constantly told to curb our expectation for better wages. In fact, another friend had pointed out that he doubt any of those former navy Rear Admirals or army Generals had commanded a higher pay before becoming a minister. Though certain Permanent Secretaries might actually earn more than the minister himself which makes it hard for the PAP to bring them into politics, that in itself still cannot justify that a minister would earn more outside the government. After all, the PAP has so far very little to show in terms of talents from the private sector.

So, what exactly is the point I am trying to make here then while I seem to conditionally accept the pay they are getting, and yet say their justification of that pay to attract talents is bollocks? The point is that I choose the middle ground – i.e. while I won’t accept the PAP’s argument for the pay level, I also do not think the cuts are too little. I also want to point out that there are those who really don’t want to get involve in this argument but simply expect the ministers to get the job done and deal with those matters which most of us considered to be problems. In particular, those of housing, transport, the influx of foreigners, the widening incoming gap, the rise of elitism, health care costs etc. Most of us simply don’t want to listen to bullshit like “once in 50 years occurrences”, or “stealing from the reserves”.

On top of which, I must say that appearing to be doing something is also not enough. One of my ex-supervisors once said this: “You can be doing a lot of things related to an issue and is even very efficient in doing them, but are all those things you do… effective?” I believe everyone knows what (or who) I am driving at and I do not need to draw the innards in stick figures.

Simply put, pay revision (or reduction) is simply cosmetic. What Singaporeans really want is effective measures and not quick fixes (such as raising the ground level at the Orchard / Patterson Road Junction in reaction to the flash floods) which are not entirely effective. Perhaps having the ministers take responsibility for screw ups would be too much to ask for, but at the very least we expect accountability. In Ling How Doong’s words – Don’t Talk Cock, especially when everyone is already pointing out what the problem is.

Before I end, I would like to share a joke. “Now that the annual salary of the Minister of Transportation is lower than Saw Phiak Hwa’s, it may pose some problems when he discuss policies with her as she earn millions of dollars because she need not listen to the minister’s ideas and proposals. Perhaps he would need to tell her to go to maintain a bit of dignity.”

Oh, I know the person who said something similarly stupid has apologised for it. But he doesn’t need to be upset over this. After all, he can still retain his dignity when he compares his pay with mine.

Current Affairs – Short Takes

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The Ministry of Education [MOE] has drafted a revised Sexuality Education Programme [SEP] to boost emphasis on abstinence over contraception, reported The New Paper [TNP].

Emphasizing on abstinence is placing too much faith in a person’s self control, and self control is one thing that we humans rarely possess. Human beings in general are irresponsible, as evident by the multitude of legislations in place to ensure compliance and acceptable behavior from most members of society.

Sex education, in the secular point of view, is not so much about morality but more about the biological / physical aspect (which deals with procreation and a physical need), and the health aspect (taking care of one’s health and body). I don’t really give a damn if a guy wants to be a “breeding pig” or if a girl wants to be “every men’s convenient store”. However, I am quite sure it is necessary to let teenagers know that everyone has only one body and the failure to take care of it and ruining one’s own life in the process – such as a body harming abortion, an unwanted pregnancy, or sexually transmitted infections – are consequences that only they alone will bear.

Contraceptives such as condoms is thus a “necessary evil” when the craving of one’s crotch overwrites the brain’s higher functions and throws abstinence to the four winds. They maybe the only thing that prevent to a large extent the nasties that might come with a rash decision even though it is not absolute in its protection.

In my opinion, sex education should emphasise on the health aspect – i.e. all of us cannot just discard our body and move on to another when it fails. Knowing all the avenues to prevent harm to our health in a moment of passion is of utmost importance, even if that offends certain fundamentalists who believes that too much emphasis is placed on contraceptives.

– * –

Temasek Junior College student Kwek Jian Qiang is in the spotlight for making a controversial comment on the disparity in expenditure of campus facilities between Junior Colleges [JC] and the Institute of Technical Education [ITE]. In a letter to TODAY he wrote that “there are significant disparities in the quality of learning environments”, and that “our brightest students should get the best facilities in order to excel and grow”.

Singapore’s emphasis in this so-called “meritocracy” has clearly breed nothing more than self important elitists. Should we really blame Kwek Jian Qiang for being an elitist little prick when the system promotes such snobbishness?

From what he has written, I must say Kwek clearly didn’t look too bright and if he thinks the facilities in his JC was bad, he certainly got what he deserved (according to his own measure). If he was any brighter he would have realised that the examples he gave were actually self defeating. He might have a point if the facilities at Anderson or Victoria JC were the result of deteriorating academic capabilities of the students there. Unfortunately, nothing of that sort ever happened and it may even be true that many of students in those JCs actually rank higher than Kwek himself. Regardless of what Kwek thinks, it is the duty of the nation to provide the necessary facilities it can afford to all students regardless of their academic performance, and not only to the best or bourgeois bloatpigs like Kwek. That said, it doesn’t mean that everyone will get equal use of those facilities since they will be limited. Not to mention there will always be disparity in the quality of learning environment depending on the age of the facilities, unless someone could advise MOE on how to keep all education facilities in Singapore up to date at the same time.

Either way, just because a person is damned good and scoring in tests and examinations does not mean he is very bright. Even less so when he thinks lesser of someone simply because that person isn’t in JC!

– * –

While the total recorded rainfall at Orchard Road was 152.8mm, the Public Utilities Board [PUB] said “there was no flooding at Orchard Road”. “However, water ponded at the open area of Liat Towers, the underpass between Lucky Plaza and Ngee Ann City, and the basement of Lucky Plaza due to the sustained heavy downpour,” it added.

Euphemism is not going to change the facts, PUB. Whether a person has died or passed away doesn’t make a damned difference to the fact. Similarly, whether it was flooding or ponding does not change the fact that the water should not even have been there in the first place. At least for many years this didn’t happen so why did the water now not drain away effectively? How bad is 152.8mm compared to the other two times which has also resulted in flooding? Has Orchard Road not experienced similar rainfall previously? And if it has, why didn’t the rainfall back then cause similar flooding? Keeping the public in the dark about these facts merely gives me the impression that this is deliberately not revealed to us to hide failure or incompetence. Using euphemism makes that even worse. This might be the way to work back in ancient China where officials are the Emperor’s representative to rule the people but there hasn’t been an Emperor over all of China for 100 years. Frankly, not even a person in China would take such shit lying down these days when I look at some of the news coming out of some parts of the Guangdong province recently. That’s not forgetting that this is Singapore and not the People’s Republic of China.

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It took SMRT three train breakdowns and four days to create a social media account on Twitter.

I hope there is no PR company or self-claimed “social media guru” advising SMRT on this. That is because the way SMRT is using Twitter is an utter total fail(ure). SMRT might as well not have done this in the first place as it is no better than having an announcement page on its official website. If SMRT really intend to keep up with the times and wants its Twitter account to succeed, it needs to do better in providing prompt information and in interacting with those it hopes to reach. Otherwise it should just consider this a failed experiment and delete its Twitter account immediately.

Prompt information would mean that the information coming from SMRT’s twitter account would be almost as prompt as those from other Twitter users. While I do not expect SMRT to beat my friends in updating everyone about a breakdown, posting about a breakdown which happened around 6:50pm at 8:10pm is ridiculous. How much time does SMRT need to confirm that a train has stalled long enough to warrant an announcement to the public? The details on why it has broken down can come later but informing the commuters within 10 minutes of the incident would have made known to them that the next few trains will be more crowded than usual once service resumes. They can also make a decision using that information, and even re-tweet it so other commuters who do not follow SMRT’s Twitter account can benefit. It is the quick propagation of information on social media platforms such as Twitter that makes it an effective tool of communication.

To exploit this advantage of social media, whoever manning that account must interact with other users on Twitter. While it is almost certain that SMRT will be getting loads of crap from cursing and swearing commuters, that does not mean avoid interaction completely because of these “trolls”. Helping those who are genuinely seeking more information or clarifying their queries will only help to move information along. Not doing so simply allow speculation to fester and even allow false information which is detrimental to SMRT to propagate.

For e.g. a friend posted a photo on her Facebook profile two days ago. Not long after, I directed a query to SMRT on Twitter to find out whether this has anything to do with opening of the remaining 3 Circle Line (CCL) stations. I received no response at all. While few noticed this, the photo could have been passed on in Twitter with negative information which may not be true. Someone may post the same photo with a comment that “CCL is having a problem again” and under the current circumstances, other users might actually believed it and pick that up. All of a suddenly, people will be talking about a problem which does not exists. Those who are not sure might even avoid using the MRT and it won’t to too far fetched to imagine that there will be income loss for SMRT.

Had SMRT replied, at least some of us would be able to help counter any false information or speculation when we see them. Without anything to back us up, we will simply not comment on the other Tweets since everyone is entitled to their own opinion. SMRT obviously didn’t understand enough of this new media platform to make full use of the account it has created.

– * –

The Online Citizen [TOC] started a shit storm with an article titled “MP Seng Han Thong: SMRT’s unpreparedness also due to Malay and Indian staffs English language inefficiency”.

I am not sure if TOC is aware that the title itself is misleading. It gives us the impression that Seng Han Thong made that comment, which isn’t the case when we view the video. For failing to admit that the title is misleading even when it might not be its intention, TOC has shown itself to be no better than the main stream media [MSM] which is often accused to be biased. In fact, the way it reacts to criticism showed that it was hardly any better.

Let me explain. It is hard to assess whether Singapore is matured enough to tackle the issues of racial harmony, but the impression that an MP is “racist” would have been quite a blow to our already fragile racial harmony. The headline made it a matter of racial harmony which should be handled with care. With that title in mind, I was appalled with what was said on my first view of the video, Being biased against the PAP, my initial reaction was: “What a dumb ass PAP man who say things without going through his brains.”

Indeed, I wasn’t even surprised when Halimah Yacob said Seng’s remark was ‘inappropriate and unfair’. I would be surprised if the rest of the non-Chinese PAP MPs remained silent. Seng simply should not have mentioned any race in specific at all. Subsequently, I viewed the same video again several days later when the MSM went full force to present a picture that was some what different from what I understood. I then realized that I had actually ignored what Seng said at the end of those comments: “but I think we accept broken English”. As a result, I have to grudgingly admit Seng was simply pointing out that in that kind of situation (i.e. the MRT breakdown about 2 weeks ago), what really mattered was to communicate information to commuters even if that person does not speak English well. However, I had to disagree that Seng was showing that he strongly disagreed with that comment. To present it that way (as Shammugam did) would be laying it a little thick. It is also meaningless to say that Seng (or the PAP) was trying to deflect the blame to the staff for SMRT’s utterly dismal handling during the breakdown. There is a line to be drawn between speculation or leading the public away from that which has truly transpired.

Anyway, someone must have heard it over the radio when an officer from SMRT said something over the radio which suggested that poor language skills of its drivers were part of the problem in the inadequacy of SMRT’s response. Both the MSM and TOC has not reproduced this in its context for the benefit of the public. Without this piece of evidence it is actually difficult to put this matter to rest. To me, TOC response to Cherian George’s criticism is reminiscent of the petty and childish online squabbles between Xiaxue and Dawn Yang or Steven Lim. Then again, to some celebrity blogger ‘flame wars’ may actually be more entertaining! The saga even reminded me of the fuss made over a packet of food for the YOG volunteers. One photo was all it need to condemn the authorities. No one bothered to check whether all the volunteers were getting equally bad food.

That was exactly the same effect of TOC’s title on Seng. In my opinion, everyone thought Seng is another Choo Wee Khiang, who made a lousy “joke” about Little India in Parliament. Many would have gotten the impression that Seng is a racist while few would have reviewed the video. Thus, Cherian George was right in his criticisms of TOC. If online media such as the TOC wants to be an alternative source of news for the people, its response to Cherian George shows it has a long way to go. While it maybe true all those who oppose the PAP are already biased, failing to even attempt to act objective will only further alienate those with a moderate view. In my view, the TOC page on Facebook (if not the TOC site itself) is going the way of STOMP or that of Temasek Review. It is a noticeable downward slide ever since the Prime Ministers Office [PMO] gazetted TOC as a political organisation.

Current Affairs – North South Line MRT Breakdown

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Water resources and transport have got to be two of the worst ministerial portfolios in the last few months. The former being a tough job because of the flash floods and the number of dead bodies in the Bedok Reservoir and the latter, because of the increasing number of failures of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT). I personally cannot understand why people can’t use the Bedok Jetty instead of the reservoir for suicide much as I cannot understand how the Circle Line [CCL] – which is in operation for about a year (or maybe less) – suffered more breakdowns this year compared to the older East-West [EWL] and North-South [NSL] Lines (which has operated for some 24 years or so).

I liked the CCL very much. The main reason is I can now head home from Vivocity via Buona Vista to Boon Lay without going to Outram Park, and use it to avoid Raffles Place when I am within 3 stations in either direction of Bishan. Furthermore, if I am travelling from the estates in the north east like Sengkang and Punggol, I can now change to the CCL at Serangoon and then switch to EWL at Paya Lebar which almost certainly guaranteed a seat. Simply put, I now get to travel in better comfort for some distance on the CCL before switching to the always crowded EWL.

But I disliked the CCL trains for its lack of STARiS. Even though the announcements are pretty loud and the name of the next station is displayed in the trains’ LED displays, I find myself checking whether I have over shot my station every now and then. I am also puzzled that the CCL stations are smaller and each train has only 3 cars (compared to the other lines which have 6 cars each). In my opinion, the CCL is more like a crossbreed between the MRT and LRT (Light Rail Transit) and not a full MRT line.

If having just 3 cars a train isn’t bad enough, the CCL is not scalable. If it wasn’t a case where the city planners lacked foresight, it simply reinforced my opinion that everything in our city state is only built with an eye to profitability – which takes precedence over necessity. The lack of scalability of the EWL & NSL – since we can’t lengthen the stations and the trains to deal with the increased load – is a serious flaw. Even the NorthEast Line [NEL] which is built later suffered from the same problem. Had the stations been scalable, the operators could just increase every train by 1 car length and it would have increased capacity by a theoretical 16% per train. Frequency can even be kept constant during off peak hours by running a shorter train. In fact, I suspect the operators don’t even need to crack their heads much or worry about the signal systems since they are technically still running the same number of trains. A friend of mine had joked that the failure to take scalability into consideration for the NSL, EWL and NEL can simply be dismissed as “myopia” [近視眼] (cannot see far), but to build the CCL with even lower capacity is serious “presbyopia” [老花眼] (cannot see clearly).

While I can’t help with the premonition that the CCL will come from behind to beat the Bukit Panjang LRT as SMRT’s biggest fiasco, I do hope things with the CCL will get better while the service at the older lines will not get worse. The recent failures on the venerable NSL which has broken down for almost the entire duration of the evening of 15th Dec, and the morning of 17th Dec until almost 2pm in the afternoon are rather alarming. That’s 2 breakdowns on the same line within 3 days. They happened in such quick succession that it has now impact commuter confidence. If I have to use this line everyday, I would be concerned that there is a possibility I might end up trapped in the tunnels or being late for work.

Personally speaking, I am surprised that SMRT didn’t see this coming with the increasing number of minor disruptions and delays – for e.g. the ever regular train faults that slow trains down to a crawl. I wondered whether anyone is concerned that all of these minor faults may actually be symptoms indicating something more serious maybe on the way. I doubt so because SMRT CEO Saw Phiak Hwa even said she did not see ‘anything significant’ in the number of disruptions and delays just slightly more than 10 days ago. I am sorry I must say (without any offense meant to the affected commuters), this breakdown is a “well-deserved reckoning” for her. In fact, it is one that has been long in coming since a year and a half ago when she said ‘People can board the train – it’s whether they choose to.’ Her callous and uncaring replies suggest a complete lack of understanding of SMRT’s very operations, and reveal her utter disdain of those who used the service. Indeed, it even suggests that she is completely uninterested in her job even though she is the best paid CEO in Singapore (S$1.85 million per annum or S$5,000 per day – 3 times more than Barack Obama). It will be of no surprise if Saw Phiak Hwa is the most hated CEO among Singaporeans who are generally moderate and forgiving in nature. (Then again, she might tie with the CEO of HDB in that.)


MRT window broken for ventilation

For those who might disagree that Singaporeans are moderate and forgiving, get off the Internet and social media feeds and talk to real people. By that, I don’t mean talk with the Twitter or Facebook friends in real life. The reason is that when I brought this matter up at work the day after the first NSL breakdown, 3 of my colleagues (who are not active on social media) unanimously pointed out that SMRT only had a very small window for maintenance – around 1am after the last train moves into depot, and until about 530am before the first train has to leave depot. Some other friends I spoke with are also sympathetic to the station staff caught in the situation and are thankful to those who ensure that the trains will still work while we sleep at night. The matter of the constant fare “adjustments” amidst record profits did not come up at all. Thus, it is logical to say that what we really couldn’t tolerate is simply the uncaring and callous attitude of Saw Phiak Hwa. It is of no wonder why she has become a lightning rod for all the anger and resentment towards SMRT.

While I would still have suggested that she find a katana and use the Padang for her final atonement, I can live with her immediate resignation – when she chooses to do so – because we are Singaporeans and not Japanese. Really, it is high time someone who has a better understanding of train operations be appointed in her place instead. At the very least, appoint someone who is responsive to commuter complaints or feedback, or at least make the effort to appear caring. Even better if the new SMRT CEO would make rides completely free on certain days as a goodwill gesture to commuters when the company make record profits.

This post is getting a lengthy so I’ll round it up soon. First of all, the breakdown pointed out a serious flaw in our transport system. When a major system such as the MRT breaks down, it inevitably causes a strain on the other available modes of transport. Worst of it all, there is no ready alternative available when such an incident occurs. Commuters have to wait for the operators to scramble their feeder buses to deal with the breakdown. That goes to say operators have a fleet of buses on standby for such an eventuality which in effect is a waste of resources since they cannot be deployed for other more profitable purposes. That’s not mentioning the lead time required to get the entire fleet of buses into operation. Yet, it is puzzling that the government often justify the removal of buses running alongside the MRT route because it is a waste of resources. Shouldn’t the priority of the Public Transport Council [PTC] or Land Transport Authority [LTA] be to ensure that commuters arrive at their destination with relative ease at reasonable cost within a reasonable time and not whether transport operators are profitable or not? For the government – which should act in the interest of the people – to argue for operator profitability while government-linked entities (such as Temasek Holdings or the Singapore Labour Foundation [SLF]) are major shareholders in them is a major conflict of interests. More ominously, the people cannot help but felt their interests are sacrificed and left high and dry by those who should represent them!

It would be better to consider a bus service plying the same route as a ready backup in the event of MRT service disruption instead of a waste of resources. In fact, a bus service running alongside the MRT compliments it, since it also served as a built-in mechanism which ‘punishes’ the operator which did not uphold its service standards. It almost ensure that fining an operator for bad service is meaningless since what greater punishment can compare with a competitor benefiting from the breakdown? While I understand the purpose of the law is to ensure that there is a legal framework to punish misbehaving or even rogue operators, its main purpose should be to compensate the aggrieved and aggravated commuters and not into the government’s coffers.

Current Affairs – Taxi Fare “Revision”

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Well, well, well. Taxi fares are “adjusted” again. Just call it what it is – a fare hike – alright?

So what if it hasn’t been done for four years since 2007? I hadn’t had a pay increment for almost as long! As if that wasn’t bad enough, all but one of the operators also revised their taxi fares after the shameless National Taxi Association [NTA] urges them to do the same. The lame duck Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) might say otherwise, but in reality this is simply cartel price fixing in any other country. The best part of this revision is that now taxi drivers can take a full 8 hour of rest, because the rest of the 16 hours are all cover with surcharges! Sadly, Singaporeans will just complain, and then demand for taxis goes down for a week or two. It won’t be long before everyone forget about it.

The excuse given by Comfort Delgro (which took the lead in the revision) is that the revision will better meet the increased demand for taxis. Oh really? According to Wikipedia, there are a total of 25,176 taxis in Singapore. That means roughly 1 taxi serving 206 people (according to the population figure of 5,183,700 by the Department of Statistics) on our island. Compare this to Hong Kong (population 7,122,508 according to indexmundi.com) with only 18,183 taxis whereby the ratio is approximately 1 taxi serving 392 people. That’s not mentioning the fact that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [S.A.R. for short] (including Lantau Island, Kowloon and the New Territories), has a larger area than Singapore. While it is unlikely that everyone will demand a taxi, it is simply logical to deduce that we would see a bigger problem with taxi supply in Hong Kong. Instead, we have an “issue” with taxi supply in Singapore while none of us would have experienced the same in Hong Kong. This is where I would like to share several observations I made.

I was on leave one weekday but was awaken rather early by some inconsiderate school bus driver’s incessant honking at the foot of my block. After trying for half an hour and not being able to go back to sleep, I washed up and decided to take in some fresh air at the window. Bad choice, since it is overlooking the road outside and the air would hardly be fresh even though it is not foul smelling. It was about 7:30am and a small congestion has built up along the road leading the Jalan Boon Lay – the main thoroughfare that leads to Jurong Island and the Ayer Rajah Expressway [AYE]. I could see a number of empty taxi with the other cars queuing before the traffic light to make a turn into Jalan Boon Lay, while some lucky ones are picking up passengers along the same road. I also see a number of cabs with ‘On Call’ signs rushing around to pick up the callers and I observed that for a good 20 mins while sipping my coffee. (On the other hand, most cabs will be ‘On Call’ if it is a rainy morning. Few likes to be waiting in the rain for a taxi. On top of which, the call booking lines of the taxi operators will be so busy to the point no one can get through when it is raining heavily.)

When I came back to the window again after 9:30am, traffic on the road is scarce and I noticed a mother carrying her child in her arms trying to flag down the occasional taxi (many of them were already hired). It was a good 10 ~ 15 mins before she managed to flag one down in the hot sun. Poor mother and child. But it also reminded me that there was once where I needed to take a taxi at around 10am because I was late for an appointment at SunTec City. I end up queuing a good 10 mins at the taxi stand at Jurong Point because the normally long queue of taxis was missing. The reason I am at Jurong Point was that I had already waited a good 20 mins at the same road with no luck!

Now, I didn’t make the above observations just once to make a point. The situation described above happens on any weekday morning. The conclusion from these observations is simple: the morning rush hours would ‘suck’ the supply of taxis into the CBD area (or perhaps even the industrial parks) and by 10am there are few remaining taxis in the housing estates. When I am in town, I often find taxis either queuing at taxi stands in the CBD or outside a hotel lobby after the morning rush hours because once people are already in the office, the demand for taxis will drop drastically.

This situation is then reversed in the evening where home going passengers (after shopping or dinner) would ‘suck’ the supply of taxis out of the CBD area into the estates. Many taxi drivers felt that going to the estates at night is not worth their while since it will most likely be a one way trip out to an area where demand is low. So, they “play cheat” by ignoring passengers at taxi stands or those frantically flagging for one by the roadside. The idea is to force passengers to book for a taxi so they can earn a little more from the call charges. Coupled with the CBD surcharges that runs all the way to 11:59pm, the fare will be at least $8.30 ($2.80 flag down + $3 CDB charges + $2.50 call booking) depending on what taxi is booked.

This very attitude indicates a clear and simple fact – that there is an uneven distribution of both supply and demand. As a commuter, I am only interested in how this attitude impacts the availability of the supply. While it might be skewed to say there is no real increase in demand, the truth of the matter is merely using the supply and demand situation to justify a fare revision has no leg to stand on. After all, it is a more complex issue which involves the attitude of taxi drivers, and also that of our city design (as per my observation above) which seriously impact the distribution of taxis and directly affecting availability. This is clearly not an issue with insufficient supply of taxis!

In my opinion, the primarily driving force behind the unavailability of taxi supply is the attitude of the taxi drivers. A taxi driver would have us believe that they are ripped off by the rentals. The fact that Comfort Delgro recently posted a 12.5% rise in profit in the third quarter reinforces that perception, but it remained to be seen how much of that profit comes from operating taxis in Singapore. Unfortunately, I am just too lazy to dig further into Comfort Delgro’s quarterly reports to get the details.

In spite of that, I still believe it is logical to assume the bulk of the record profits of Comfort Delgro did not come from operating taxis in Singapore. That is the reason I don’t necessary agree that taxi companies should lower the rental as long as taxi drivers continues to use that as an excuse to justify their “cherry picking”. The reason is that either a fare revision or reduction of rentals will create the same effect – i.e. taxi drivers will be getting more money for the same job without working harder.

When taxi drivers are the ones directly passing this so-called “hardships” to commuters, I wouldn’t focus my anger on taxi companies alone. In fact, I simply consider taxi drivers and taxi companies to be in symbiotic relationship which made it difficult to consider them complete, separate entities. Only a reduction in rental which goes hand in hand with a complete revision of the taxi fare system will bring about an overall improvement in service. Unfortunately, unless the government does something to reduce the Certificate of Entitlement [COE] on new taxis, asking taxi operators to lower rentals is about as easy as forcing an elephant to submit.

That leaves the evil system of surcharges which allow taxi drivers to go about their “cherry picking”. And this system must go. Raise the flag down to $6 and do away with all the surcharges except those for Sentosa, the airports and also for driving after midnight. Surcharges for call booking should be nominal, enough to pay the taxi operators for operating the service. We should not pay more to tell the taxi driver where his business is. Other than industrial parks like Tuas or SingTel’s complex in Kim Chuan, taxi drivers should not be paid anything more than their flag down charges to answer a call booking.

If anyone were to say that this will drive some taxi drivers out of business and a job, they should be reminded that no one owes taxi drivers a living. After all, why the hell should we buy this sorry excuse from taxi drivers when they take us for fools so they can fleece us even more? Everyone of us are also having a hard time coping with higher costs of living and inflation, why are we making special allowances for taxi drivers?

Stop ripping us off. Do away with the damned surcharges. NOW!

Tablet Review – Blackberry Playbook

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I won a pass to Blackberry DevCon Asia 2011 and with that, a 16GB Blackberry Playbook which Research in Motion (RIM) gives out to every attendee. I must specifically thank Ridzuan of ridz.sg whose wall post in Facebook introduced me to the contest for the passes. Otherwise I would never have the opportunity to attend the one and only Blackberry DevCon Asia held in Singapore because I realised that some of the other attendees paid something in the range of US$150 (or perhaps more) to attend. On top of which, the event was to be held in Bangkok originally and it was hastily relocated to Singapore because of the floods there.

I had wanted a Playbook ever since it was released. That is in spite of the iPad and the myriad of tablets (Android or otherwise) out there. I even went as far as asking an old army buddy who now works in the U.S. to get one for me off Best Buy. Unfortunately, it ran out of stock before Black Friday and for a brief moment I was actually tempted to get an Amazon Kindle Fire (which according to some articles from tech sites or blogs, has more or less the same specifications as the Playbook except the camera and some other stuff.). Thus, winning the pass to the DevCon and then the Playbook was my Christmas present for this year. Again, I must thank Ridzuan, and also to Lewis PR Singapore which provided the passes to be won in this contest.

Being at the conference changed my perception of RIM some what. Though most would normally associate RIM and Blackberry with enterprise / corporate users and would hardly consider Blackberry to be cool, it was quite an eye opener to discover that outside North America, there is actually quite a large Blackberry non-business user community in Indonesia and also the Philippines. These non-business users are very active on the social media platforms in their countries and are driving much of the development of applications for Blackberry. Contrary to all the doom and gloom we normally read on the main stream media and most tech sites or blogs, RIM does not appear to be dying off and is fast expanding in this part of the world. That said, I must also point out that there are more than one way to read statistics so naysayers could also say that RIM is either just putting on a bold face to the ‘ever-increasing darkness engulfing it’ or simply ‘failing to understand and react to the gravity of the situation’. Whatever the case is, I would still say that the folks at RIM do have a course charted out and it is too early to say whether it is a vision or a delusion.

Ok, enough of ‘selling koyo’ (Singlish for “doing publicity”) for RIM and let me get on to the Playbook. Personally speaking, I liked the set – not so much because it has Flash (because I have tested a Flash game on Facebook and the performance was not really impressive), but because it has one of the most “complete” browser for a tablet. It felt a little heavy originally but that was because I have rarely touched the other tablets. At 7.6″ wide, the size is just nice as I can hold it comfortably in two hands in landscape mode and the keys on the virtual keyboard are just right allowing me to hold it with both hands type away with ease as most the alphabets within the reach of my thumbs. The only thing I don’t like here is there is no Chinese input! Still, the screen is just right and the graphics are good. As a result, the Playbook has replaced the Omnia7 as my device of choice for watching downloaded videos. I still love my Omnia7, but in my opinion RIM did put some thoughts into the design here and contrary to what the deceased Steve Jobs believed, 7″ tablets are not dead on arrival.

Anyway, from what I know there are no 3G versions of the Playbook. All of them comes with WIFI only and that initially seems rather inhibitive to me. Going to the options I discovered that I can tether it to a tether-capable smartphone and so I don’t really care. After all, I thought that would spare me from upgrading to newer LTE or 4G enabled tablets as long as I have a 4G capable smartphone that allows tethering. The loading of pages when the Playbook is tethered is not visibly slower than native 3G in an area with good connection though it can get absolutely annoying in a moving train or car. I used a Blackberry Bold2 for tethering and the only thing I didn’t like about it is that it cease receiving emails on the Blackberry in “modem enabled mode”. (The Bold2 is a company issued set and company policy locked down Blackberry Bridge so to my annoyance I was unable to test it out. Damn the frakkers who wrote the IT policies in head office!)

Next, I would like to talk about how I used it. Having a full feature browser is nice, because I can access Facebook and Youtube in their full glory. In the case of Facebook, there are certain things that can only be done on the site itself, such as defining the privacy of certain posts I want to made. While the Facebook app is convenient, it comes nowhere close to the finesse that the site provides.

But in spite of the brower’s strength, email was a little of a pain in the ass. After 3 days I have failed to find a way to get the same version I see on the PC to load on the Playbook. It loads a version of Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc that doesn’t look like the crappy mobile site but yet it is not the one I see on the PC. I was unable to attach photos I have on the Playbook using Gmail. That made it difficult for me to send photos on my Playbook to my friends or even to myself so I can extract the photo on a PC without the Blackberry Desktop program. It took me some time to find a way past this shortcoming to send the screen shots I made on the device (see mini slideshow below). I finally understand the reason behind the endless rants over the lack of a native email app on this beautiful device. It is an Achilles heel that RIM should make all haste to address instead of waiting until Feb 2012. After all, consumers do not wait for manufacturers when rivals are producing newer (and seemingly better and ‘more advanced’ products every 9 ~ 12 months). The longer RIM takes to address these shortcomings, the harder will it be for RIM to catch up with its rivals. (And talking about screen shots, it is so easy to do so on the Playbook. Meanwhile, there is still no simple way for me to take them on Windows Phone 7. Just what the hell is taking Microsoft so long to come up with one?)

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Onward to the apps. I have always been in the opinion that it doesn’t matter how many apps there are on for a platform because most of us generally just use a handful. It really doesn’t matter whether the iPad or Android has an app for everything as long as the most common ones are available. Sadly, I had so far failed to find the common apps like Windows Live Messenger, Twitter and Whatsapp for the Playbook even though they exists on the Blackberry smartphones. I have to say that wouldn’t go much to endear the Playbook to potential buyers and it makes it rather difficult for me to introduce or promote it to my friends. (Even when I consider myself sort am a pseudo-fanboi for RIM devices, I have to be honest to my friends. I won’t do a Steve Jobs on them and have them buy the bullshit of shortcomings and bugs being a feature! Neither do I expect them to use it the way I do.)

RIM claims to have 50,000 apps for the Blackberry though I suspect that include those for its mobiles running on Blackberry OS 5, 6 and 7. In short, until RIM move on the Blackberry OS 10 (the new name for QNX) for all its devices, I don’t expect the situation with the availability of apps for the Playbook to improve much in the short term. However, I believe RIM also knows and understands their shortcoming in this area and is addressing it with Android Player and also their new drive to encourage developers to convert their Android apps for OS 10. If things go the way as RIM envisioned it, then I am not surprised to see a larger take up rate for the Playbook in the future. (I might be wrong here, but I am a user and not a developer so pardon me for looking at it differently from the other side.)

To end, even though I won’t say I love the Playbook, it has come very very close to my expectation as an alternative to a laptop. While I wouldn’t go so far to say that the Playbook is a class of its own due to my lack of experience with other tablets, I would be able to spare myself from bringing a laptop out on certain occasions. While I had point out the shortcomings of the lack of a native email client and common apps, I still felt the tech reviews which concentrate on bashing it on these matters are really doing the Playbook no justice. My friend “FoxTwo” once pointed out to me back then when he was using an older smartphone that did not have an app, he was still able to get what he wanted out of the Internet via some sites. A app does make things more convenient, but the full feature browser of the Playbook makes up for some of the shortcomings in that department. Maybe the reason I didn’t find the Playbook lacking is because I used it very much like how I used my laptop / desktop, not to mention that I generally try to exhaust all my options in getting things done on a device before I start complaining about it.

I’ll end here and my suggestion for those who are interested in this device to go check out those sets on display especially when it has a WIFI connection. Try do some of the things that other tablets cannot do with their browsers. You might actually find that it suits your needs in spite of the reviews.

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