and thirdly

Public Transport

With there recent SMRT fiasco, I feel that Singapore is no longer where I want to be. Many of my friends do not get why I am so livid over this whole issue. Let me try and explain as concisely as I can.

To me, public transport is the lifeblood of the nation especially in an island state as small as Singapore. Not everyone may be able to afford a car, but we sure can use public transport to move around. It its he basic fundamental component of any economy - bringing the workers to their work and to their homes.

To have this important component utterly fail the way it has in the past week, is perhaps normal in other economies, but this is Singapore where everything has to be efficient. We are not like the Australians where everyone seems slightly more patient in situations like these. We are also not as nice as they are when understanding the situation as the following photo will tell.

While I would say this is not as bad as most countries, it is depressing to see this happening to Singaporean society in general.

With raising private transport ownership costs (you pay about 50K for a piece of paper that says you are allowed to own a car of a certain capacity), public transport has become more and more important to a country that depends a lot on their human potential; their ability to throw bodies at middle to high level tasks.

There is nothing we can do about the weather, but it does exacerbate the problem when things are fucking up and you are perspiring because of it. Doesn’t help that there was a fare hike for cabs prior to this happening. Its most probably not a conspiracy but it does just increase the frustration of it all.

So if the CEO of the public transport company, who is paid 1.2 million a year, can say that there are enough trains, its just people aren’t choosing to get on it, how can I not be livid? Even more so, the hike in fare prices recently is inversely proportional to service quality.

Oh yes, new signaling systems and new trains to handle the increase in load will only happen by 2015. I wonder how many more breakdowns can happen in that time. Statistical probability seems high when you take into account the things that happen this week.

So yes, I’m livid.

I am an engineer

Without knowing about the details of person who created the film, I’d say this is a terrible stereotype of engineers. Sadly, one does fall back to their profession to define who they are. That however is besides the point.

I don’t know about the women in Singapore, but the women here comes across as a bunch of superficial, money grubbing, ignorant humans. But I suppose in the interest of story telling, one has to lay down some background.

To which I say, this is a terrible use of stereotypes. To explain what an engineer does and is in the context of sexual and perhaps relationship compatability is but the easiest example of comparing Apples to Oranges for which the equation does not balance.

So here’s my counter proposal. Why the hell are people not talking about how cool engineering is? (It really is!) And why are engineers not building cool things to explain what they do?

Hell, I can imagine the scenario.

…

Guy walks in.

“Hi, I’m an engineer.”

(to script)”What’s that?”

“Oh, I built Facebook.”

…

So cut the bullshit. Go build something awesome.

I know I am.

I have a plan

I’ve always had a plan. Whether it was to get into a secondary school that I really wanted. Or that I would be the guy speaking to a group of freshmen right at the very front because I was the guy in charge, I’ve always had a plan.

Sure there were detours. But they were damn well worth every minute I’ve spent on them. I’ve learnt much along the way but now at this point in time, the plan has come to an end. I’ve reached my goal of completing University albeit not the way I would’ve wanted it.

So here’s to the next 4 years because a new plan is in play.