Random Discourse – Fare Increments

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Government to ensure fare hikes are reasonable, justifiable

【Excerpts】

Speaking at a National Day celebration in his Teck Ghee Ward, PM Lee told residents that “from time to time, fare increases cannot be helped,” reported The Sunday Times (ST).

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“The government’s interest is to make sure we have a good public transport system for Singaporeans: something you can afford, something which gives you good service,” he was quoted as saying.

“But we have to allow the transport companies to break even and to make reasonable profits,” he noted. This would then ensure they provide good service to commuters, he said.

The PTC, a government-appointed watchdog which has to approve fare hikes, will decide what is deemed “reasonable profit”, said PM Lee.

I read what the Prime Minister said with utter annoyance.

The fact is, this so-called time to time fare increase is an annual affair. The lapdog press under the Singapore Press Holdings will not fail to whitewash it by reminding us that the fares ‘has not gone up since 2009’. Unfortunately for me, fares went up a good 5.9% from S$1.52 to S$1.61 per trip when they changed the fare system last year. What infuriates me the most is that they have the cheek to say 2/3 of commuters will benefit from this change while among my friends the people who actually found it cheaper are in the minority. Benefit, my ass! (Incidentally, they also said 60% of people get a pay increment of 5.5% or something to that effect… I haven’t had a pay increment since 2009.)

If the public transport companies are truly privatised, why should the government speak up for them about “reasonable profits”? The fact is, the SLF [Singapore Labour Foundation] and Temasek Holdings are major shareholders of SBS Transit and SMRT respectively. So, if anyone is are wondering why the PM is speaking up for the business interest and not for the people who elected him, understand that the government is the business interest! It is my considered opinion that the government can either stop pretending that the public transport companies are private and have them completely nationalised like what the Workers’ Party [WP] proposed, or reduce its share holdings in these companies completely and throw them to the sharks. I am quite sure the libertarians would love the latter option.

Anyway, I read from SBS Transit’s latest quarterly financial report that its total operation expenses is S$155.62 million. Extrapolate a little and that means its operating cost would be roughly about S$620 million a year. Now, SBS made a record profit of S$54.28 million in 2010. Is it unhappy that its projected profits will fall below $50 million in 2011? (Comparatively, SMRT made S$162.89 million in 2010. How much does it want to be considered “reasonable”? S$160 million every year? S$160 million once every 3 years? or S$160 million once every 5 years?)

If anyone is wondering whether the ‘good service’ the transport companies have provided can justify the fare increments, let me just point out that our gripes never changed while fares increased all the same. I have written an open letter ‘complimenting’ the SMRT CEO for the ‘exemplary service’ SMRT provided. To add on to what is written, I must also ask how is it that SMRT and SBS Transit suddenly discovered an initiative to add more trains during the Youth Olympics (without all the mumbo jumbo about technical difficulties of the system or the length of the tracks etc), while it has no common sense to increase it over those weekends where there will be trade fairs (like IT shows, NATAS etc) at SunTec or the Singapore Expo? Is SMRT not aware just how much the traffic spike during those periods from the statistics? Or do they never bother to gather these statistics and look at how they can further improve their services? It certainly gives me the impression that our public transport is run for show to get praises from foreigners, and not to serve Singaporeans in their day to day commuting needs.

Let me move on to the buses. I am quite impressed that the new single deck buses SBS Transit bought are much more spacious these days as there are more leg room between the rows of seats now. However, SBS Transit have also decided to remove almost half the seats from these buses so that it can provide two nice spaces for wheel chair users. A space that I often found un-used, since I rarely see a wheel chair person on the bus. As the public transport operators have cited their fleet replacements as one of the justification for fare increment, I must ask how are these new buses more cost effective not only because they are more expensive than the ones they are replacing but that it has a lower seating capacity? Isn’t it more dangerous to have more people stand (in the empty space provided for the rare wheelchair user) on the bus? Frankly, I have no idea how the research done to justify the choice of these new buses is based on commuter feedback. No one in his sane mind would not have considered that the choice is made simply to maximise profit at the expense of commuter comfort.

On top of which, very often the buses come at even more obscene intervals than the trains even when the traffic conditions are ok. At times, one can wait for more than 15 minutes at the fourth or fifth stop from the terminal and the bus that shows up no longer has any more seats if not packed to the rim. Woe to the poor sod who boarded even further down the road. Yet, the bus companies seem to believe it isn’t worth running a double decker instead. What alternatives do commuters really have here when both the trains and buses provide almost the same commuter experience? In fact, this is something that I can never understand since if it takes 1 driver (1 portion of pay) + 1 portion of fuel to run the same bus service for the same trip, why not just run a double decker and make commuters happier? Are bus drivers for double decker paid more and double deckers less fuel efficient?

That’s not all. It is even worse when the bus driver sticks to the time limit (not the speed limit!). By that I mean the driver drags the bus at some unbearable slow speed so he wouldn’t be penalised for reaching the end point early. When one listens to whine of the bus engine, one can imagine a beast trying to break free while a group of people is dragging it from behind and preventing it from running away. Imagine having a car which you always drag at second gear. How is that going to be good for the gear box and in extension – the bus?

Simply put, if the Prime Minister wants us to relax and justify maintaining “reasonable profits” and ensuring “good service, he should be aware that he should first tell us how much is “reasonable” and why. On top of which he needs to be aware that the “good service” has been non existent and clearly the replacement buses the operators are getting will not achieve it either! The entire ‘paradigm’ in which the public transport system is based on needs to be given a serious rethink in view of Singapore’s city design. I am not surprised that once that is done, the bus operators may actually even make steady profits there after without any need to constantly ask for fare increments or fewer commuters will grumpy about fare increments when it happens.

Movies – Transformers 3: “Dark of the Moon”

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This post contains spoilers. But if haven’t watch it until now then you probably don’t care anyway. And if you cared and still want to watch it, stop reading now.

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You have been warned and you proceed at your own risk!

Watched this movie on a weekend some time back with Angel. Dark of the Moon is the third in the Transformer movie series and in my opinion it is much better than the previous sequel even though Megan Fox has been dropped from the movie. After all it doesn’t make the movie any less entertaining without that eye candy. It’s all about the giant robots and the animation anyway. Regardless, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is a good replacement though I personally wouldn’t care who took that position as long as she’s not some fugly, screaming b*tch.

There are some marked improvements in this movie, simply because some of the robot combat scenes are now very much clearer. Unlike the previous two movies where the viewer would have no clue most of the time who is fighting and how they got destroyed, it appeared to have been deliberately slowed down to let us view the robot action without sacrificing the fluidity.

If you just watch it for pure entertainment, I would say it is worth the money you paid for the ticket – especially in 3D. But if you watch it for the plot then well, don’t think too much about some of the obvious flaws in the storyline which I am going to talk about.

First of all, Megatron. We recalled from the previous movie that part of his head was smashed and that is retained this round. That goes to say that this would be a continuation from the two previous movie and my best friend raised a good point over dinner some time ago. He said that in the first movie they found Megatron frozen in some Arctic place By Witwicky’s grandfather (which is at least 100 years ago) and it was subsequently shipped to Hoover Dam to be kept frozen and immobile.

That means Megatron would be out of action as Decepticon leader for almost 100 years. If that is the case, who then is in charge of the operation to trick the humans into leading the Autobots to find Sentinel Prime when right in the beginning the Decepticons were looking for both their leader and the AllSpark? Who has enough clout among the Decepticons to lead in Megatron’s absence? If Megatron told one of its subordinates to plan this, how the hell did it know before it got frozen to tell them to work on misleading the American and Soviet space programs when back then didn’t even exist?

Talking about which, in “The Fallen” they were attempting to recover the leadership matrix to revive Optimus Prime. Now, the AllSpark itself can turn anything into a Transformer but it can’t revive Optimus Prime? And the best part is that in this movie Optimus wanted to return the leadership matrix to Sentinel Prime as if it received the change of command from Sentinel Prime!

Confusing, isn’t it? Obviously someone didn’t really think through the damned script.

Next, the bad science. 2012 isn’t the only movie that’s guilty of that. Consider this, we all know that the gravitational pull of the moon is what caused the tides on Earth. If the moon is a lot closer, the tides will be a lot more devastating on our shorelines than what they are now. Now imagine moving something the size of Cybertron into orbit. Without even considering how it is going to affect the planetary dynamics between the Earth and the Moon, the gravitational pull of Cybertron – had Sentinel Prime succeed in bringing it through the space bridge – would have been devastating to the Earth. I can’t imagine what happens during high tide to coastal areas not to mention what Cybertron’s gravity might do the the structure of our planet.

For those who aren’t aware, there’s something called the Roche Limit – something that’s like “safety distance” between celestial bodies. In short, and if they are too close to one another it would mean the destruction of the smaller counterpart. So, moving Cybertron into orbit and turning the human race into a slave force is the most harebrained idea in the universe because in the end the Earth may no longer be suitable for human habitation and the entire delicate balance between the Earth, the moon and the sun is disrupted in ways unimaginable. Fancy someone like Sentinel Prime – which at one part of the movie is referred to as the Einstein of their race – to think about something like this and imagine itself to be a “god”. It was with some great satisfaction when I watch it suffered a fate most deserving of such immense stupidity.

All things being said, it is still an enjoyable movie. After all, we go to movies not to become scientists or philosophers but merely to be entertained. Furthermore, some times it is the company that matters.

Phishing Alert – Gmail Scam

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Click for Enlarged

I received this email in my Gmail mailbox a few days ago, and for a moment I almost fell for it. The main reason was that it didn’t end up in the spam folder, nor was there an alert indicating that this email “isn’t from who it claimed to be”.

Somewhere at the back of my head, a small alarm went off. I recalled that back in the office, we constantly educate our users never to give their passwords to anyone even when it is one of us from the IT Department. After all, if these guys are the administrators of Gmail, why on earth would they need my password? Something is really fishy about this mail and I decided to click “show details” and my suspicion was further raised when I discovered that the return address is to “verifysiencsess@gmail.com” while it claimed to have come from “verification@google-editing.com”.

So, I pasted the first line of the tax into Google and did a search. There were some information on this and while the few entries I checked were quite brief, they all referred to it as a scam. That was enough for me and I decided not to take the risk. Beyond that, I decided to change the password to my Gmail account as well, even though I already had 2-step verification on my Google account. Of course 2-step verification does make login to some of my Google accounts a little more tedious on another computer, and if I forget to bring or lost my mobile phone then I’ll be “semi-locked out” of my Google account. But, I am that paranoid and there is no reason why I should make it easy for anyone even though there is no absolute certainty that my online information will be safe. Furthermore, if I am “semi-locked out”, that would most likely mean no one else would be able to access it unless they have access to my mobile phone.

I had wondered what these scammers are going to do with any account they gained access to when I received an email from “a friend who is in trouble in Malaysia” asking me to transfer USD 2400 via Western Union. I know the friend is in Singapore and not anywhere else because she has just mentioned to me a while back that she has replied to this email with the information required not long ago. That confirmed my suspicion that this was indeed a scam. The following screen shot is the email I received from my friend. The scammers eveb placed everyone on my friend’s list on bcc: to hide the fact that this email was sent to everyone on her mailing list.

So, please just ignore and delete this email if you receive one. All it needs is one person to fall for this scam and the scammers would have made more money than some of us do in a month. Pass the word on, do not let your friends be victims!

Please note that there might be a possibility that the same tactic maybe used for instant messenger [IM] (such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, G-Talk, ICQ etc), or even in FaceBook. If anyone suddenly asked for money on any of these plaforms citing the similar difficulties while claiming to be overseas, do not believe them right away. Just pick up the phone and call your friends to verify they are safe, and let them know their accounts have been compromised.

Random Discourse – New Citizens? Or Foreigners with Singapore Passport & IC?

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One of my complaints about new citizens (or immigrants) has always been this: They have different aspirations and are indifferent to our values and traditions. I shared this view with a number of people and a fellow Singaporean (not one of those new ones) asked me – Just exactly what are our “traditions” anyway? Do we even have one?

He has a point. For the longest moment, I couldn’t think of an answer. Even after weeks, I couldn’t think of one. We have Singlish, we rush into the train and the lift without waiting for others to come out, and we queue for so-called “free stuff” even though the queue is so long that the time cost no longer make it worthwhile. But none of these are our traditions. In fact, Singaporeans may not even share common values across racial lines. The term “Asian Values” is really a misnomer, because Asians are so diverse that the values and traditions of those in East Asia will differ from those in the godforsaken winter wastes of Siberia.

So we really don’t have any traditions, and I can’t even say we have common values. A friend thus pointed out that it would be more correct to say: they have different aspirations and are indifferent to our way of life. I had attempted to argue that National Service [NS] can be considered one of our traditions but our women don’t serve NS. Above which, Chillycraps pointed out in a private conversation that a tradition is not something forced upon us. A tradition would be something we would want to keep and proud of. Not something that we find to be a burden.

Either way, it cannot be denied that immigrants have different aspirations. Their first and foremost: an opportunity to better their lives and that of their family. While that might sound absurd, since Singaporeans also aspire for better lives for themselves and the family, the fact is that Singaporeans want something even better and not have people coming from another place to reap the fruits of our forebears at our expense. Very much like some white Australians in the 90s who wished that Asians would just stay home and not mess out their great nation.

Furthermore, the aspirations of these immigrants may not necessarily come with any attachment or loyalty to Singapore. To some of them, the Singapore pink IC [Identity Card] and red passport is nothing more than a “key” – perhaps to open other doors to yet another place which could provide yet better opportunities. I have no doubt some will leave for greener pastures using their new found convenience in a few years.

But what irks me the most is when some of them speak so passionately against Singaporeans raving and ranting against foreigners, as if those who complained are making a point against them in particular. While I cannot expect them to completely detach themselves from their land of birth (or forsake it completely), their reaction suggests they still think of themselves as if they are still foreigners! There appears to be a complete lack of regard to their new status as Singaporeans. I seriously question their loyalty to this country. Their passionate defense as if they are foreigners themselves is puzzling. It makes me wondered whether they have given a really serious thought when giving up their original citizenship. Don’t all of them have to take an oath of allegiance to this country or some kind of pledge when they take up our citizenship? Does that mean nothing to them? (Talking about that, I found it ironical that for failing to give his pledge, a Mr Ogawa Ryuju became stateless for about half a year even though he has served NS.)

Singapore has clearly been giving out citizenship as cheaply and as quickly as a streetwalker agrees to provide sex service for the right price. After all, a recently elected Member of Parliament [MP] is a new citizen who has not served NS. It is clear that while NS used to be a valued rite of passage for Singaporean boys into manhood, these days it is considered a liability, and a waste of time by employers and Operationally Ready National Servicemen [NSmen] alike. It would appear to me that life in the army has improved so drastically, that even new citizens who did serve NS think very little of it (see screen shot). Although I clearly detest the dehumanisation and abuse during my NS days, the experience is something we Singaporean men commonly shared and at times the most common topic among those who met for the first time. Not to mention, what I got in NS was already far milder than my predecessors.

Certainly, while new citizens may not be indifferent to our non-existent common values and traditions, I am quite certain they are indifferent to our way of life. A life in which we would like a little more living space in our lifts and trains, a smoother ride on the road or even a voice with an accent that sounds much more familiar and at home when we called a help line. I recalled the joy of a Singaporean working for the Thompson Reuters Help Desk in Australia who happily spoke to me in Hokkien. Some of us would prefer a life where there is less competition, less hectic and more harmonious even when most would consider such a life to be mediocre and uninspiring. The fact is, if the government want us to live more graciously and learn to appreciate life, then it can’t expect us to continue to do so in an environment where we constantly fight tooth and nail for our very own survival. Who gives a damn about the arts when losing their job means losing the roof over their heads because they have still another 20 years of housing loans to service?

Thus, I am not surprised that many local-born Singaporeans (including myself, during the May 2011 General Election) are in the opinion that the People’s Action Party [PAP] deliberately “imported” these foreigners to “dilute” our votes. I remembered that one of the points made then was that this is the election to make a difference because if we don’t, the floodgates will be opened to yet another 900,000 foreigners and by 2016, our votes will even be more “diluted” and our collective voices drowned out be “foreign interests”. It doesn’t matter there is no evidence whatsoever that new citizens will do so, and truth be told I suspect they might actually even vote against the PAP for any opposition party that would make it a lot more like the place they left believing they could yet retain the economic and political stability which they liked about Singapore. In other words, not only will the demographic distribution of this country will be screwed up, our way of life are going to be messed up in more ways than one!

Personally, I don’t want to treat new citizens as outsiders. However, if new citizens continue to set themselves apart, then it is almost certain that will be reciprocated. Perhaps they have bought too much into the PAP’s propaganda of them being talented, to the point that they think of themselves as elite. I have no doubt that some of them already looked down upon us and think of us as stupid. After all, the elitism oozes out of every spore of that person who wrote that load of crap in the screen shot.

Facebook Annoyances – “Happening Now”

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Facebook has recently rolled out something called “Happening Now” to my Facebook profile, and I find it exceptionally irritating because this is even more detailed than my news feed. Now, I have a scrolling update not just on what my friends have posted, what they comment on, what they liked, when they have been tagged etc, I am also “informed” when they have posted a comment to their own photos or wall comments – even on matters and things which my interest goes as just taking a look most of the time. It is even more irritating when I get “informed” of things I may have clicked on the ‘X’ to hide it so I won’t ever see them again. After all, if I was interested in keeping track of a particular wall post, note or picture, I would have “liked” them or made a comment so that I will automatically get an update when anything get posted on those!

That’s not all. The Facebook chat feature which I have always turned off, now keeps popping up “tempting” me to try it whenever I refresh the Facebook page. It just won’t go away even after I have turned it off. Sort of like a toggle switch which after you have turned off the lights to your bathroom automatically turns the light back on the moment you walk past it. Utterly irritating, isn’t it?

Has Facebook run out of ideas? Why do I need something similar to a Twitter feed inside Facebook or a more detailed version of the traditional Facebook News Feed? I am already unhappy I don’t have a detailed enough filter to automatically eliminate stuff I didn’t want to see! The worst part of it all is that I can’t even disable it and in the case of the chat, it refused to “remember” I had. Even if all these are just for trial, I want the option to be able to disable it. I hate it not only because it is feeding things I don’t want, but because it is also making a decision for me by assuming that I would like it and not providing me the option to disable it.

I searched in Google and found nothing on how I can disable it. My friend Joey mentioned that he only managed to get rid of it after he gave Facebook feedback. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy option for me to give feedback quickly. I ain’t going to navigate through several pages only to find a feedback page when I do not know when someone will act on it. I simply want to be able to just click something and make it go away, pronto!


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So instead of wasting my time searching in Google to find where I can bring up Facebook’s feedback page, I continued searching on Google to find out how I can disable it. It was a futile search and only after I changed the search parameters that I found F.B. Purity – a script which I can install in the browser (only Chrome / Firefox / Safari / Opera supported) so I can rid of all those irritating junk that Facebook has been adding over the years in the sidebar – for e.g. advertisements, sponsors etc. All of this is done with a few clicks, but it still doesn’t vanquish the irritating feeds from “Happening Now”. Arrgghhhh!!

I was about to uninstall it when I decided to give it one last look. I went back to the site and did a search for “Happening Now” and apparently there are suggestions on what I can do to disable it. Unfortunately, the suggested solution didn’t work, but it gave me ideas. Since I don’t really care about what shows up on the right sidebar anyway (including pokes, or birthday notifications because I get an email every week informing of upcoming birthdays), I decided I could disable it completely.


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So I added what a small piece of ‘code’ into the Custom CSS box in F.B. Purity and viola… the entire sidebar was gone! I can once and for all vanquish all these nonsense I have been forced to live with as and when I wanted to. It even come with a custom text filter which I have always been asking for but never getting from Facebook. I haven’t yet tested it but I am glad it exists. There’s a slight drawback on any other browser other than FireFox, however. While it worked on all Facebook pages (even apps.facebook.com) on FireFox, it doesn’t work beyond the newsfeed page on the rest of the support browsers (such as Google Chrome). I don’t mind because that is good enough since I am usually on the News Feed page most of the time.

Frankly, I rarely whine about Facebook and its boo-boos, even when at one point of time it rolled back the privacy settings of my friends and caused some misunderstanding between us. I also didn’t made fuss when Facebook credit suddenly became the only “currency” that is accepted in Facebook games – which means whatever credits I bought for the games suddenly become almost worthless overnight. All I had to say was that Facebook credits was not a new idea anyway since qq.com had implement the QQ Coin [QQ 币] for several years. It made me wonder why it took so long to actually implement it. Perhaps they had a hard time arm twisting the game makers into accepting it because of the cut they are making out of this.

All I want to say is, there’s only so much nonsense users can take even though the service is provided more or less for free. I know Facebook rarely gives a damn about our complaints or feedback much like the Singapore government in the past, but with Google+ users may no longer take this shit lying down.

Addendum (23-Sep-2011)

F.B. Purity has released several updates since I first made this post. They have included a feature to easily turn off the ticker without the need to add those ‘difficult’ CSS codes. (See screen shot below)

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