Unlike what Vivan said, whether PAP stays in power is not because of the talent pool per se, but rather whether Sporeans really want change pronto. Vote in an opposition GRC posse and lo and behold, change is there right away overnight by Apollo I swear. Vivian did say the right thing to the kids recently at the “Singaporeans in Conversation 2010″ youth outreach that the PAP makes no apologies about recruiting and retaining the best they can snare. Sporeans should just wake the frak up and snap out of it. The PAP would go all the way to get the best talent. Why let the opposition i.e. the competition get a chance. All is fair in love, war, business and politics including GRC gerrymandering. On the other hand, the opposition always had the powerful underdog card which carefully used can get them a GRC. However, this card in their sleeve has never been pulled out at the right time somehow. Guys, please use this sleight of hand, milk it, the ground is forever sympathetic to most of the alternative parties (except for lost cause SDP) but the buttons to push the voters to vote NoPAP has been strangely elusive so far. Heh. BTW all must catch the Rally later and drop whatever you normally do on Sunday nite, as it is the last Rally before the election. Gear up, mount up, let’s ride!

One dude Abdul Malik Mohammed Ghazali got busted for his “burn Vivian Balakrishnan and the PAP” tirade in Facebook. That was touch and go, as maybe the blue shirts were worried that it was to instigate more Ong Kah Chua-styled burning of PAP members. Errrr ok, fair enough as violence is uncool. If some Sporeans are daft enough to vote the PAP time after time, there might be other Sporeans dumb enough to think take the burn Vivian trashtalking seriously and light him up in this Ghost Month. Soon after that, another fella Abdillah Zamzuri got brought in for views made in his blog about the handcuffing of the tabloid photographer taking photo of the flood. This time the supposed offence was… ahem, this takes the cake, “prejudice to the conduct of good order and discipline”. Not sure if formal charges were made yet or everything is still under the “assisting in police investigations” stage. The first one is less shaky but the second case is really bordering on flimsy ground, partly because we didn’t know what the hell really happened.

Bottom line. The police are flexing their muscle in the web! More to come my Spidey sense tells us. Stay tuned, stay frosty, stay anonymous! LOL

Secondly, Baybeats is back. wOOt. Come on down to the freebie event. Yup it is free and poor Celebration @ Marina or whatever that event is going to get further forgotten, if it can be possible since nobody knows what it is to even forget about it! Samsung, dudes, sponsor Baybeats instead next year if you guys have not done so! I’m cool about that Marina Bay bash giving zest and oomph to the YOG, sure, but WTF there was so little publicity. Just a few days ago I headed down to support some local bands but frak, I thought it was at the Esplanade, parked there but it wasn’t it. Celebration was at O frakking RQ! Like HUH?  How the hell do I get there? (Rhetorical question BTW).

Ahem. And since I’m an unabashed Lunarin fan, please check them out at Baybeats tonight, and buy their album Duae if you into their thingy.

Some foreign athletes walk left, some walk right, most of them the face blur fuck and don’t follow the YOG staff in front! KNN if it is NS, most of them kenna run to touch Merlion at Durian and back by CSM! Chope. Not the foreign athletes salah fault! hehe Make the organisers run touch Merlion and back and do star jumps until hernia!Actually super cock coordination by YOG organisers doing the frag walkin, and even cockest recovery as the foreign athletes still clusterfuck on the main stage later.  Some more TV opening ceremony is shown to the world woh!  Halfway thru the walk-in as organisers still didn’t manage to make everybody fall in behind and follow instructions backstage.

You know why? hehe coz those athletes are not Sgporeans lor! They firstly dun understand WTF is happening, and they bochup abt instructions, not like sheep Sgporean kwai kwai obedient follow lor! Lucky got so much fireworks! It is like SOP liao, when stage performance is so-so, to make crowd ooooh-aaaah just set off fireworks! Make money explode into lights and sound in the air next to Sg skyline! hehe

First time ever got YOG and comes here, not Shanghai, not Sydney, not Santiago. Shoot-over-budget 3x to $387 million YOG comes to Sg I actually sarpork lah. Come liao why sabo ourselves. If want to sabo someone, not ourselves but PAP lor later at GE to show our frustration. Oso, the publicity and orgnaisation so far like so-so oni, they shld give free tickets to schools to go and watch, or they have oredi done dat?

Inaugural events got 2 kinds, the nobody gives a fuck one, and the everybody happy excited one. Unfortunately for Sg, it looks like the former leh. Even our own Sgporeans dun care. So kesian yumkong one, esp our Sg athletes who are taking parts now in horse-riding, weight-lifting and those ulu sports. OK so maybe the YOG orgnaisation is fuckup so far, but Sgpore athletes out there, I is still hearts you, sarpok you dip dip. Jiayou!

When policemen wear shorts…

Have a good one all!

December is mths after national day rally and good time for gahment reveal to peasants details of whatever goodies promised during rally. Baby bonus, tax relief, dunno wat NSman rebate, one time economic improvement shares SMLJ lah that would be confirmed after budget in February. hehe dat means must votes the PAP in before the budget for these goodies can be approved by parlament lor! So to consfirm when GE datang, must look and listen carefully during national day rally and see if PAP choot pattern. Dat is the real green or red light on whether GE onz or not in December. But chope. Dunno wheder PAP remember dat December is raining month or not! If  the floods again, PAP GE hopes is 101% honggan washed away liao!

The vehicle quota is 23,063 for the six months from August this year to January next year. This means per bidding month, there would be a 3844 fixed limit. The current per month vehicle limit for the period April to Jul is 4238. Just to give a better idea of where COE prices is heading, the monthly quota before this new reduced COE formula was implemented was 6982 vehicles.

This coming July 21st Wednesday bidding for COE would be exciting indeed. The monthly quota for cars has shrunk, but not that much compared to when the new formula was introduced a few months ago. When LTA announced the new COE formula in March earlier, COE for Cat A cars was $20,802 before the bad news was revealed, and jumped to $28,389 for the last bidding after the announcement and before the new quota kicked in. And truly reflecting the panic buying, the COE for this category shot up to $34,001 next in the first bidding under the new reduced COE quota period from April to July.

History usually repeats itself and there would be probably be a surge in demand for new cars this coming Wednesday as buyers expect even more hunger for COE once the latest reduced COE quota figures swerves in from August onwards for six months. Besides COE for Cat A cars is now below $30,000 again, teasing would-be buyers that they better act now before the COE for small cars would go up beyond the $30,000 ceiling.

So the bottom line, if you already have a car and don’t need to replace it with a new one and can wait, hold on and watch, and rather perversely contribute to the fewer number of deregistered vehicles these six months ahead. This also means even fewer COE recycled into the car pool for the February to July 2011 period as the current COE quota system is based on the number of deregistered cars in the last period transferred into the next period, and a vehicle growth rate of 1.5%.  An unpleasant dilemma for the car buyer. LTA’s grand scheme to reduce the car population drastically to make up for its mistake in allowing accelerated car growth in the past few years is working. However, the car dealers are going to cry foul very soon.

SMRT’s public image is a train wreck. Swiss Fricker who sprayed graffiti on a SMRT train carriage tagged that SMRT has serious security lapses. A rotan-defying foreign talent could sneak into a SMRT train depot and somewhat “bombed”, in graffiti jargon, a train carriage. Particularly when SMRT screens a short video on vigilance on suspicious people and packages in all its MRT stations, exhorting commuters waiting for the trains to be alert to terrorist threats. The government subsequently clucked its tongue in frustration that SMRT was sleeping at the wheel and rightly insisted that taxpayers should not foot the bill for SMRT to pay for security guards and whatnot.

Soon after and genuine thanks to the media who are picking the right quotes for us to read and rant, SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa blurted “People can board the trains – it is whether they choose to” when talking about commuters’ imagined overcrowding of MRT trains. This dialed up the public’s lynch mob mood as the CEO was clearly not in touch with the realities of cathing peak hour trains. Phaik Hwa recently insisted that she had her ear on the track “I am very aware it’s crowded. I take the trains all the time. I take the effort to go all the way to the northern towns to see how crowded it is during the morning peaks and I take the train with the people.” This sounds a little bit like dismal public relations damage control. Adding on, I really doubt that Phaik Hwa really took the train regularly enough at popular stations at peak hours to understand the gravity of the overcrowding situation. Referring to Tokyo’s crowded trains with station staff in white gloves pushing stuffing people into trains might be accurate in pointing out that the situation in Singapore is not that bad in comparison, but Phaik Hwa has missed the train if she wanted to contain the public’s frustration.

Increased MRT Ridership and Overcrowding

The SMRT overcrowding concern has to be taken in context which the SMRT CEO does not seem to be concerned about, as it is not really her business to do so. With the government stepping on the brakes on car ownership by slowing down the growth of the car population since April with the new COE quota system, and thinking of making driving more expensive with the distance-based ERP, public transport is the logical alternative for the masses and more people are expected to use the MRT.

Besides, public transport like the MRT system, despite the laudable construction of the new Circle and Bt Timah lines, is itself straining with the influx of foreign white and blue collar labour and the consequent increased population in Singapore. SMRT has monthly ridership figures which document increased traffic on trains. As a quick snapshot, in May 2010, MRT ridership was 49,320,732. It was 43,082,486 in May 2009, 41,964,448 in May 2008, 38,532,342 in May 2007 and 36,012,048 in 2006. Clearly MRT ridership has gone up and from the coffeeshop complaints, train frequncy cannot keep pace with the increased number of passengers.

There are Solutions and There are Solutions

Returning to the SMRT proposal to run SMRT buses shadowing the MRT train lines, it is about time although SMRT would rightly think that it does not make sense for them. A shadow bus service instead should be taken up by a so-called competitor like SBS or a new player which would liven things up slightly for the public transport oligopoly. Let the competitor divert some traffic and therefore profit away from SMRT. Furthermore, rolling out a shadow bus service is the most convenient solution.

The MRT platforms are based on the length of the existing MRT trains. Introducing longer trains or more carriages might just mean that they won’t fit into the existing train platforms. Extending the platforms for the aboveground stations is feasible but probably less for the underground stations. Which is unfortunate as underground stations are the city ones mostly and therefore more crowded and more in need of extension to cope with peak hour traffic. Also, I don’t expect SMRT to absorb the costs of extending platforms and adding more carriages to the trains and they might transfer the costs to commuters. So the usual question to ask is how much we are prepared to pay for an improved quality of service in MRT commuting, or the other way around. We are paying so much and yet we get such quality of service?

“The other 2 groups – “We believe City Harvest Church is framed and maligned!!” and “We believe City Harvest Church is guilty and corrupted!!” – have hundreds of members. They may be more popular, but we have the moral high ground. We are not defending ourselves or attacking others. Plus, our group name is more grammatical.”

“Look, we don’t like the Devil either, but will people stop pinning all kinds of misdeeds committed by human individuals on him? It’s already looking quite embarrassing, like we don’t have free will or are incapable of doing wrong. Learn to own up and be responsible for once!”