中庸之道

难也!

Requests to public transport operators

For years, the Singapore public transport operators had made countless requests. Among which, the more memorable, frequent and recent would be passing on the increase of their operating costs to the consumer by means of increasing fares.

Perhaps it's time for the users to start making valid requests to these operators too, and I'll start by listing just a few.

1) Noise level
The reason to set the Ipod volume at 100 decibels and above? Just to hear what is being played while traveling in an environment that's already at 81 decibels. That is 4 decibels away getting hearing damage from long term exposure. And all along I believed that we're a conservative and cautious society who prefer to err on the safe side.

2) Acknowledge that they are monopolies in their respective mode of transport (Read: Comfortdelgro, SMRT)
Facts: From Comfordelgro, Annual Report 2006
a) Profit from Diesel sales - 4.1% of total profits or $14.6million.
What it means - Divided equally among all 15,000 Comfortdelgro taxis in Singapore, each cabbie will be about $973 richer in 2006.

b) Profit from taxi operations - $109 million
Revenue from taxi operations - $866.5 million
Profit margin from taxi operations - 12.6%
Group Operating profits - $305.4 million
Group Revenue - $2761.8 million
Group Profit margin - 11%
What it means - taxi operation is one of the more profitable business segments for the company, which brings us back to the question, who is more directly involved in affecting the cabbie's take-home pay? Who decides the cabbies' cost structure? Reducing the profit margin by 1.6% to 11% will save the cabbies $13.7million in 2006. That's $913 each. Including savings from the profit from diesel sales, that's $1886/cabbie. Sounds like a reasonable 13th month bonus.

c) Energy and fuel cost - $196 million
Staff cost - $862.9 million
Staff cost of top 6 Executives (taken at the lowest end of the renumeration band)
- $1,750,000 + $750,000 + $500,000 x 3 + $250,000 = $4.25 million
Operating Cost - $2487 million
Energy cost as a percentage of operating cost - 7.9%
Staff cost as a percentage of operating cost - 34.7%
What it means - 7.9% didn't seem as much a pressing concern or room for improvements compared to 34.7%. But increasing staff cost without increasing revenue will be hard to explain to shareholders. Increasing fares in a monopoly market to maintain/increase margins sits in better with shareholders and subsequently, performance-based renumeration. A monkey can run such an operation. The difference is you just need to pay the monkey peanuts.

Question at the end of the day: Why do you corporatize a national interest which happens to operate in a monopoly market, and then set up a Public Transport Council to oversee it? Politically sensitive strategy to enter overseas market? A fool will see through the cover with GLCs as the major shareholders.

3) Improve hygiene level
Is there a need for us to go through another SARS to keep our buses clean? It is hard-pressed to believe that a bus was cleansed frequently when you see the amount of grim accumulated on a 8am bus.

4) Be part of the new Clean & Green Singapore 2007
It continues to baffle me on the restriction of private vehicles to petrol-powered engines, while public transport continues their pollution with their diesel engines. Granted that new diesel engines might be cleaner than existing petrol engines but the majority of our buses and taxis hardly looks new. The state of our buses and taxis brings us back to point number 1 & 3. A quick & dirty Google search will yield this.

Anyone care to add any more to the list?

Are birds afraid of heights?

For those scientifically-inclined and critical minds, NO. Obviously those flightless birds are excluded to begin with. So think parrots, sparrows, and your usual birds that has the ability to shit on your head.

Boss not included.

Birds shouldn't be afraid of heights. It is as second nature to them as water is to fish. The air is their playground. High or low, they simply cannot be imagined to have fallen to their death; just as you can't drown the fish.

But I thought I had just seen a tinge of fear in my pet parrot, as its devilishly curious owner brought the unwitting furball up the stairs and set it alone on the railings looking 5m down to a silly grin and constant encouragement for it to make the jump.

5m? That's not too much of a height until we put things into perspective. The little furball is less than 10cm in height and 5m is 50 times its bodily height. Consider yourself at the top of a 28th storey building waiting to make the jump and tell me convincingly that death never crossed your mind.

For those in the know, yes, my bird had fallen off 11 stories from my window, by its own ingenuity and over-enthusiasm. But the conditions were different. There are space constrains. Try landing a Boeing 747 within a 50m runway.

Before the SPCAs decided to ask Google for my IP address, my pet parrot just had breakfast with me on my shoulder.

It jumped. And made a pompous landing on my dad's shoulder with lots of fowl language.

It is not the destination that frightens us, but the journey.

VENT!

There isn't a time when I don't feel like telling you,

1) You've got an ego that's way too large for your capability
2) Your sense of logic is just about as accurate as a deaf recognising the works of Beethoven
3) Your questions had been the best detours anyone can have in a discussion
4) Last but not least, your humor had been as entertaining as a dead fish in a tank

My new wish...

Beijing air pollution is slowly killing me...

The constant nonsensical chatter of people is bothering me...

The dry and hot weather is sucking the life out of anyone who dares venture out of the artificial air-conditioned cocoon...

I can't solve all the problems... But at least this new baby can... I want it!!!

When I say I don't know...

When I say I don't know / I'm not sure...

It means:
1) I respect you as one of my peers in terms of knowledge and would like to engage in an intellectual conversation with you, willingly and humbly accept any mistakes or misinformed judgement I might have.
2) This might be despite the fact that I know that I'm more well-read and informed than you are.

Don't mistake my respect for your opinion as a sign of weakness.

Hilarious writings

Just for laughs... ;)

1. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

2. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

3. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

4. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

5. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

6. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

7. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

9. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.