今天逛街时，我经过一间店看到了银联的商标。现在是不是在新加坡有银联商标的大陆银联卡也能在新加坡消费？是这样的话，太好了。 如果有NETS商标的卡也能在大陆用那就更好？
看来过不久，新加坡会给大陆人同化了，不是吗？老干妈，酸豆角，等等，在这都有的买了。
Tag: temasek
-
Budget Terminal Sucks!
I have been taking budget airlines from our new Singapore Budget Airline Terminal for quite sometime. My travelling experience with budget airlines is getting from worse to worst.
I have no choice but to take Tiger Air is the only way to reach my destination, Macau faster. I do not mind paying more and get a more spacious seat during the flight.
Plus travelling on Tiger Air for almost six months, the food menu is still the same. Wonder when the management will change the menu.
How much can I save by using such low cost airlines at the expense of inconvenience. The Singapore Budget Airline Terminal is out of the way for public bus and MRT. If you take bus or MRT, we will end up in Changi Airport Terminal 1, and make a transfer to the Budget Terminal with our baggage.
And the maximum baggage weight for check-in is 15kg. today I checked in with 23kg, 8kg more and I have to pay SGD$60 for over my weight limit.
So I wait a while and join in a group to share the baggage weight limit. The counter staff is very unfriendly. She disapprove me of sharing with the unknown group and give fearful remarks to the group that I may be carrying illegal items and if they share with me and they have to be responsible.
I am really piss off and take out my overweight item and slam my Samsonite baggage on the weighing belt to voice out my silent protest. That is not all. This counter staff walk off and help out at the other counter before attending to me. I am really piss off now but what can I do in this so-called world class city called Singapore.
What kind of fcuking attitude and crappy service. Is it because is a budget airline. I do not mind for budget attitudes and budget services if they are getting a budget salaries too.
Ah…I forget to give them a budget complaint.
I go through the custom and came to the x-ray check. I was asked to remove my computer notebook and rescan my bag again. I was a bit unhappy but the security officers are friendly enough and do not give me the feeling of intruding me for co-operating with them.
After the security check, I am now in the waiting mall and I can shop around before my boarding time. Since we have a budget terminal, why those shops in the waiting mall are not offering budget items? Why are the food expensive? The whole Budget Terminal is build like a warehouse and cheap building materials, why are the retail goods not discounted.
Oops! This Singapore budget airline terminal is not really build cheap. In the terminal, wireless internet is not deploy but fixed network cables are installed. Wireless deployment is more cost effective than wired installment.
How much saving can I get from using a budget airline. With all these displeasure encounters and inconveniences, I rather pay what i have to pay and get better treatment and a more pleasurable journey.
As a seasoned traveller, an unpleasant journey to my destination can really spoil my day.
I am still stuck with this Singapore budget airline facility known as Budget Terminal and Tiger Air until there is another carrier offer flight to my destination.
-
A Premier To Terrorise Singapore (Part 2 of 2)
A Premier To Terrorise Singapore (Part 1 of 2)
What is terrorism? How are we going to prevent ourselves from such attack?
The answer is simple. Do not let technology to be integrated into your lifestyle. Technology only compliments our lifestyles and not replacement.
Seriously we have to ask ourselves:
1. Can I contact my friend if I do not have my mobile phone with me.
2. If I do not have a computer, can I get my document send out?
3. If I do not have a cashcard (problem passing through the ERP gantry), can I still drive and go to the CBD?
4. Do I have a problem travelling with public transport without the linkcard?
5. Can I make payment without NETS and VISA cards?These questions sound trivia but will disable our lifestyles and give us hell if our lifelines are depending on it. If your answers to the above questions are all ‘no’, you have a serious problem with your lifestyle. If some are ‘no’, you are still ok. If ‘yes’ is all your answers, good!
In Singapore, we are so dependent on technologies and if one day not available to us, we will stop our life, our work. I am serious. I have ask around what happen when you computer breakdown or when your corporate network becomes unavailable for a day. Most will tell me, they cannot work. Some companies even have policy to request staffs to go on compulsory leave.
If one day you are on the street and you forget to bring your mobile phone out or the battery is flat and you need to make a phone call. If you are in Singapore then you are in deep shit because you hardly find public phone on the street anymore. If you manage to find one, you will be shocked you need a prepaid card to use it. Adding more shock to it, you have to buy a $10 prepaid card to make a ten-cent call.
In Singapore, even you have the key to a car, does not mean you can drive. You need a cashcard too. What happen if your cashcard value is low or the card is damage? You will be as good as a cripple or handicap having a car. So your cashcard is damage and you need a replacement. Do you know where to get it? 7-11 store? Are you sure you they are selling it?
Recently I am back to Singapore and have been visiting our civil department. All these department no longer accept cash payment. You have to use NETS or cashcard. Some may offer payment through credit card. Sound cool, huh! Our government looks high-tech. Imagine a guy like me back to Singapore without all these cards or expired cards to facilitate payment. I am so handicap and cannot even make a $15 cash payment for my identity card renewal. By the way, why do I have to pay for my identity card? I have to borrow a stranger’s card to make my payment. Imagine a network disconnection in such department. The whole unit cannot transact?
In our present times, nothing is eternal. Everything is volatile. HP can takeover Compaq, IBM sells the notebook division to Lenovo. New York’s twin tower flatten to ground. Enron’s disgrace. Singapore is a safe place to live, do not mean no risk. We cannot take life for granted.
I remember once, I park my car at Raffles City. My cashcard is low and I top up at a top-up machine in the carpark. Then come along an American lady making payment for her parking fee.
She also wants to top up her card to make payment for her parking fee. But her ATM card cannot work with the machine. It is late in the night and there is no customer service officer at the counter to assist her. She is so helpless and rushing to go off to fetch her little child. So I decide to help her by using my ATM card, but she only have a $50 bill and I do not have change for that. In the end, she write me a cheque of $10.
With all these unspoken problems I mention. How much worst can it be to affect our life if one day a terrorist strikes the electronic heartbeat of Singapore. This is what is terrorism all about in our modern age!
-
What Is The Catalyst?
Due to the recent murder case in the tuina shop in Ang Mo Kio, our government stepped up the requirements and regulations for such joint.
According to the newspaper, Zaobao published on 25 June 2006, the authority implemented three restrictions. No girls standing outside of the joint. No ‘less’ wear and the joint could not be curtained up. The authority was also stepping up to clamp down unlicensed joints.
People like us knew that these tuina shops were actually fcuk shops. Implementing all these rules and regulations to shut down such joints sounded logical and achievable. Thinking deeper, we had not solved the root of the problem, that was, why such joints propagated so fast over the years and went into the heartland of our HDBs.
Was it because we, men were getting more horny than before? Or our wives could not satisfied us, so we had to find our fulfilment else where? There must be some good reasons for such activities to grow and outbreak to HDB areas. If there was no demands for such supplies, the business would die and cease steadily long time ago.
As my Canadian friend, Bob Urichuck always said, ‘the world revolves around sales’ and I add on, ‘sales is based on supplies and demand.’ Even the authority banned the tuina shops like banning chewing gum, these girls would find other means to survive in this sex trade. If there were demands, no matter how we regulated the trade, these girls would carry on until the demands were no more. If tuina shop could be opened, they could open a cosmetic shop, hair salon, spa and so on.
For such outbreak of prostitution in Singapore, I could only say, we were approaching a family crisis here that would lead to other social problems, that would affect our economy in the near future.
I think to solve the problem is to solve the answer to this question, ‘What is the catalyst of this business?’
-
A Premier To Terrorise Singapore (Part 1 of 2)
In conjunction with the CommunicAsia 2006, our Media Development Authority launched another new IT masterplan, pushing Singapore to another higher level of world class infocomm. It was great to hear our government bla bla bla on all these crappy great ideas and made us on the world spotlight again.
Yes, we singaporean were knowledge-based workers. We could multitask, cross-train, bilingual, IT literate, etc. We singaporean were one of the best breeds of the human race. But we had a reset button somewhere. If somebody did a Ctrl-Alt-Del, we would be like Microsoft Windows, restarted and maybe take a minute to startup again. Worst still, we might not have the password to login after restart.
Ok, so you said, we have gurkas guarding the reset button. Fine but having gurkas would not prevent a ‘blue screen of death’ that invoked by the user himself, that could happen anywhere in our little island.
What was the reset button I was talking about? The reset was electronic. All we had to do was to EMP the targeted place. Using EMP device sounded too bombastic? Actually we had a easier way to do it, just turned off the switch. Think creative and you would know how to power off the building of ICA at the flip of your finger.
A frequency jammer could had similar damaged effects as EMP. We need not to be a PhD in computer to figure out how our ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) gantry worked and what frequency it used. During my younger days, I had accidentally experimented how to pass the gantry for free.
To do the ‘blue screen’ was much easier than the reset. To prove my point, our recent case, money stolen from our DBS Bank ATM machine. If your mind was thinking now, how about having a surprise blackout party at national stadium for this year National Day Parade? I would not elaborate on it. Use your brain juice and you could come out with more innovative ideas better than stealing from ATM machine.
Another good place to strike was at subway station. Those senior citizens wearing security uniform, with flabby tummies, patrolling the station. Could they catch up with the suspect? And those wearing thick glasses, I wondered what were they trying to spot? Could they recognise clearly the look of a suspect because of their short-sightedness.
Think again, what is terrorism? Are you really safe from a domestic terrorist?
-
My Powerbook Live In NAC 2006
After all these years, my powerbook finally went live in front of a total of 8000 audiences for 4 days at the National Achievers Congress in KL and Singapore. It was scary to be part of the production team because everything was done in real-time and we had no room for mistake. On the production stage, I was glad to see all familiar faces I had worked with before including crews from Unusual Productions.I was the DJ for the event. I had to arrange and use the right songs and music to flow with the live sessions. Everything was dynamic and we had to play-by-ear to flow with the event. Applications used were iTunes, Cleaner, Real Player and Quicktime. I was glad it was over and of course our production team had a great time too, although we were sleepless throughout the week.
This time I had the chance to work with a lovely girl, Shirlynn, from Penang office. She was sweet and smell good. She was the production head for this year NAC. Felt bad for screwing up the show at times, like playing the wrong music and did not play or sync at the right time with the sessions, and got her scolded by the boss.
-
I Am Dying, Singapore, Dying
Fifteen years ago, I was asked many times where was Singapore. I told them it was at the end of Malay Peninsula. I gave them all the geographical description to pin point where was it on the map and a quickie on our young history. Some foreigners thought Singapore was a town or province in China because I was a Chinese. Many also thought Singapore was a third-world country with poor people and old villages. Singapore was too small to be printed on the map.
At that time we were so insignificant to the westerners but we, Singaporeans knew that we were a small but powerful country. Powerful not just in term of military defence, but in economic, international diplomacy, nation building and so on. By this time we were recognised by the world of our world class seaport, indisputable number one Changi Airport, government efficiency, etc.
Then ten years later, I asked foreigners if they knew where Singapore was. This time many westerners knew there was this hidden country called Singapore some where on the map. By now Singapore had spread it great name to the end of the earth. We were well respected and welcomed to foreign lands.
Add another five years, which was now, I asked this question again, “Where is Singapore?” but this time I asked my fellow countryman. Our forefathers, which was my grandfather, immigrated here and toiled together. Forty years had past, now we were coming into our third generation.
The third generation Singapore would be led by my generation. We would continue to run the race with the baton that was passed on to us. We understood how our nation was developed because we gone through the process side by side with our forefathers. We had seen how they toiled and learned from them. We had inherited their spirit of fervency, and grew up seeing and feeling their hardship and how they built our nation.
Forty years from now will be fourth generation Singapore. If I ask this question again “Where is Singapore?” forty years later. I am questioning the future of the nation. The leaders after my generation, how will they lead the nation like our forefathers?