Nicoll Highway speed camera not transparent to motorists

Posted on December 20, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Wrong to hide speed cameras from motorists’, 20 Dec 2012, ST Forum

(Emmanuel David): I RECENTLY received a notice from the Traffic Police informing me that my car was caught by a speed camera near lamp post 107 along Nicoll Highway in the direction of Guillemard Road. After revisiting the site several times, I discovered no notices along that stretch of Nicoll Highway notifying motorists of the presence of a speed camera.

There appeared to be a platform for a speed camera near lamp post 107, but no camera was mounted, and the platform was hidden from the view of motorists. I understand that Britain, Australia and many American states, as well as neighbouring Malaysia, have strict laws specifying that the use of speed cameras must be transparent to motorists.

…At a time when there are visibly fewer Traffic Police officers patrolling our roads, and an increasing dependence on speed cameras, it is important that the use of such third-party devices is governed by legislation. Almost all other speed cameras in Singapore would adhere to such a law if it was promulgated, but the one along Nicoll Highway did not when I was driving past it.

Everyone speeds at some point behind the wheel and most get away with it. When we do get caught it’s only natural to be defensive, denying that we exceeded the speed limit or hope that the camera snapped the wrong car or malfunctioned. Those of us who could afford it and know that we broke the law pay other people to take the rap. The rest of us, like the writer here, blame traffic legislation, display some futile worldliness about other nations’ laws and even conduct our own field sleuthing in an attempt to save face, without admitting whether we had in fact been speeding or not. It’s like you got fined for littering and complained to the officer about the lack of warning signs in the vicinity, or better still, for ambushing you from behind a pillar and violating your right to litter freely and not get caught.

Some would argue that instead of reducing accidents, making speed cameras VISIBLE and bright orange would actually wreck havoc on the roads when motorists jam brakes after spotting the box at the last minute. The same could happen to oblivious drivers who fail to pay attention to road signs telling you there’s a speed trap ahead. Yet, all the speed cameras, bush-raiders and signs in the world won’t help if you don’t even know what the speed limit is (up to 70% of road users). Maybe if a certain Ferrari driver had been snooped by hidden speed cameras and deprived of his licence earlier, a horrible accident could have been prevented.

In the 60′s we had human speed detectors in the form of the traffic police instead of ‘third-party devices’, who were believed to be constantly lurking behind trees or bushes stalking their prey, their motorbike wheel or side of helmet sticking our ridiculously behind a trunk. But it’s not just victims behind the wheel getting ‘punked’. You could be caught unawares jaywalking, smoking in a non-smoking area, or jerking off alone in a cinema. And it doesn’t matter if the one exposing you is a mysterious overhanging box, a squealer, someone with an invisible cloak or an undercover cop dressed as the usher. You lucked out, that is all.

Drivers will generally agree that there should be deterrents to road hazards; it’s only when they get their demerit points when they decide to blame the police for sneaky tactics and lament the lack of ‘transparency’. I mean, why not just do away with ‘undercover’ jobs altogether and put CCTV signs EVERYWHERE so that we’ll rid this country of all forms of shady dealings and misdemeanours altogether? Anyone who speeds and risks hurting another being deserves the full penalty of the law, whether you felt that the snare was unfair to you or not. Anyone who complains to the public about traffic injustice without addressing road safety or personal responsibility ALL the more deserves a ticket too.

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Filed under: 1960s, 2012, Fines, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Traffic warden beaten up to kopitiam applause

Posted on September 23, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Traffic wardens become punching bags’, 23 Sept 2012, article by Bryna Sim, Sunday Times

…In an especially nasty incident earlier this month, Mr Pannirselvam, 47 (traffic warden), said a lorry driver who had just been issued a summons for illegal parking in Upper Serangoon Road walked up to him calmly and shoved a packet of piping hot fried noodles at his face. “I did not see that coming because the driver was not acting aggressively,” he said.

But that was not all. The driver then began punching him on his face and body. He stopped only when the electronic hand-held terminal, used for recording and printing out summonses, fell from Mr Pannirselvam’s hands.

“People at the nearby coffee shop who saw what was happening did not help,” he said. “Instead, they clapped.”

…It does not help that the hours are long and the pay is low. Traffic wardens work around 12 hours a day, six days a week. Depending on the amount of overtime done, their gross salary is about $1,800.

For the same long hours, traffic wardens could get almost twice their current salary if they switched to the far less hazardous job of dishwashing at Sakae Sushi instead. From the days of being called ‘parking attendants’ to today’s derogatory  ‘summon aunties’ who ‘no pang chance’, going around booking errant, angry ‘ah beng’ drivers has to be one of the most thankless jobs ever conceived. Not only do you get bashed until your handheld device falls out of your clutches, your bloody, humiliating plight becomes a glorious spectacle for others. You also get racially stereotyped, and given names like Auntie Fatimah or Hamidah when your name is actually neither. Or you could be named after a dead celebrity (Feng Fei Fei). I wonder why.

Hats off to Summon Aunties

Being a coupon enforcer does no one favours other than the stat boards that recruit them for the dirty work that they can’t bear to do themselves. They also can’t ‘pang chance’ due to auditors checking to see if they’re on the ball. For their tireless summoning in the hot sun and taking the risk of being lynch-mobbed by kopitiam uncles, even if they can be overzealous and too by-the-book at times, the least that one can do is NOT give a standing ovation when they’re being bludgeoned by psychos. It may be safe to roam the streets at night in Singapore, but not if you’re an enforcement officer in a parking lot looking for vehicles to summon.

Scalded in the face by a pack of char bee hoon aside, other malicious, bizarre attacks in the history of parking warden abuse include:

I think some basic self-defence is on order. Or at least have the hand-held terminal do double duty as an emergency taser. By exposing themselves to killer litter in addition to hooligans, maybe Certis Cisco should equip wardens with standard issue HELMETS instead of straw hats. If employers can’t do anything about the mockery and bad reputation, at least offer some protection, like REAL police officers on watch to prevent them from being flattened by irate drivers. Coupon cheats aside, perhaps wardens should also include in their job scope the authority to fine parking IDIOTS too. Maybe then, just maybe, someone may finally come to their aid whenever drivers start hurling things, be it vulgarities or food. As I said earlier, Douglas Foo is waiting.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Fines, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists, Violence | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Woffles Wu lying to the police

Posted on June 13, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Plastic surgeon Woffles Wu fined $1K for lying to the police’, 13 June 2012, article in asiaone.com

Renowned plastic surgeon Woffles Wu Tze Liang was fined $1,000 after pleading guilty in a district court today for conspiring with an elderly employee to provide incorrect information to the police. Wu got Mr Kuan Yit Wah to lie on two occasions to the police that he was the driver behind Wu’s car when it was caught speeding in Nov 2006 and Sept 2005, reported The Straits Times.

…Senior Counsel Harry Elias asked the judge for leniency, stating that Wu had made numerous contributions to Singapore and the aesthetic surgery sector. Wu operates an aesthetic surgery and laser centre at Camden Medical Centre in Orchard Boulevard, and is often quoted in newspapers on issues relating to plastic surgery.

For ‘perverting the course of justice’, Dr Woffles has to pay a paltry sum which costs almost a tenth of what he earns from a chin implant, or a 50th of a liposuction procedure. Just a single NIPPLE surgery can pay off this fine easily (Woffles doesn’t like ‘em ‘big, grisly, shrunken rambutan nipples’. Funny man).  Woffle’s ‘abetment’ charge is just cheating without any money or gifts being exchanged.  Though no money or ‘gratification’ were exchanged in this case, paying someone to take the rap for your speeding offence has landed less prominent people in jail (2 months’ jail for paying man to take the rap, 25 Dec 2009, ST). In 2010, Charlie Lim Chau Lee was jailed 6 MONTHS for getting friends to take the rap for running a red light.

Last year, model Evangeline Tay was fined $2000 for engaging the eager aid of an ex-cop (6 months jail) and a property agent (3 months) to be ‘fall guys’ for her beating a red light. That is, putting your conspirators in the slammer for a total of 9 months while you get a slap on the wrist and a prescription for Prozac. Apparently she was suffering from an Alex Ong disease (depression), hence spared a jail term. God knows how many important people Woffles have saved from the decaying brink of their ‘golden years’ in the course of his work. In the land of the saggy, the man with the Botox syringe is king.

According to a 15 June ST article (Woffles Wu pays fine, but speeding probe is ongoing), Woffles reportedly said:

‘I believe many people similarly did not know that this is an offence…I was fined for providing the name of someone who was not driving the car, and it was a silly thing I did’

Not knowing if something is a legal offence doesn’t make it less WRONG. Did he think sabotaging someone else was some kind of ‘silly’ prank? There’s no playfulness or mischief in his actions at all. Just fear and deceit, especially for one who willingly exploits 1) an elderly person, 2) an employee and 3) knows that because of the scapegoat’s age he is unlikely to be jailed (and a fine can be settled out of the spare change in his pocket). Woffles not only obstructed justice, but coerced a vulnerable human being into a difficult position (perhaps in exchange for an unlimited supply of his patented ‘Woffles Lift’). For someone who eliminates fine lines and crows’ feet for a living, one must wonder how many more frown lines he must have inflicted upon this poor uncle. It doesn’t even make sense to suspect a 80 year old man for speeding at more than 90 km/hr unless he’s got his walking stick jammed against the accelerator.

One can’t deny Woffles’ contributions to a svelte, wrinkleless, A-cup free society. He’s even ‘presented’ a local movie called Singapore Dreaming. But it’s not the first time this God of the Botox cult has had his integrity questioned. In 2002, he was fined $4000 by the Singapore Medical Council for professional misconduct running a sideline selling skincare products while head at SGH. Plastic surgery, media spokeperson, involvement in the arts and flamboyant 8 days columns aside, a relatively unknown piece of trivia about Woffles is that he used to be a snooker king in the eighties, a ‘smooth criminal’ indeed.  It’s unlikely that Woffles’ reputation and professional integrity as an award-winning plastic surgeon would get tarnished by this incident, though you’ll probably never see him make the list of most trustworthy Singaporeans  again.

Postscript: On 17 June 2012, Law Minister K Shanmugam clarified the charge imposed, dismissing any claims that Woffles was let off easily because he was ‘rich’. He escaped on a technicality since he committed the offence when ‘misleading’ the police  fell within the Road Traffic Act and not the more severe Penal Code in 2008. To be more specific, he was ‘rich enough to hire the best lawyers’.

Well, since the AGC has prompted us to consider the law before 2008, it’s easier to dig out inconsistencies in how it was applied then. In 1993, a man who gave his brother’s particulars after he beat a traffic light was found guilty of giving false information to the police. Delivery assistant Foo Wah Lee was slapped with a 3 week jail sentence (Man gets jail for lying to Traffic Police, 26 Nov 1993, ST). In the same year, a hawker was jailed for lying that it was his wife who was caught beating the red light so that his licence would not be suspended (Motorist jailed for lying to avoid suspension, 8 May 1993, ST).

In 2003, national footballer Ahmad Latiff  was suspected of taking the rap for his wife after his BMW was caught speeding. According to the report, a person making a false declaration to authorities is guilty of a criminal offence which carries a maximum of TWO WEEKS jail. However, the footballer was acquitted eventually after charges were dropped (National plater acquitted of speeding, 22 May 2003, ST). In the latest press statement, the AGC stated ‘as there was no major accident or injury, the AGC said it was considered appropriate to charge Wu under the Road Traffic Act’.  Neither was there any accident in the above examples, but offenders faced jail time anyway.

It appears that the only difference  between a 1K fine and a jail term is Woffles got SOMEONE ELSE to lie on his behalf, whether Mr Kuan did it on his own accord out of indebtedness or was coerced remains unknown. But it ‘s clear what Woffles’ INTENTION was, as he admitted in his quote above (‘I was fined for providing the name of someone who was not driving the car’). Woffle’s scapegoat appears to be carefully selected, he did the same thing TWICE, and he hid this cheating incident away for 6 years, yet this pinprick penalty was within ‘the norm of usual sentences’. As for the police taking an old man’s cooked up stories, time to take some lie-detection courses, guys.

Filed under: 2000s, 2010, 2011, 2012, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

My grandfather road vandalised

Posted on June 4, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘My grandfather road vandal arrested’, 4 June 2012, article in asiaone.com

Police have arrested a 25-year-old woman who is believed to have vandalised several roads in Singapore. Between May 17 to 21 this year, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) saw that the words “MY GRANDFATHER ROAD” were painted along Robinson Road and Maxwell Road and reported the matter to the Police.

It also reported that circular stickers printed with captions were pasted on a pavement around Lau Pa Sat and on a road traffic sign along Robinson Road. The female suspect was arrested at her residence in the eastern part of Singapore on June 3. The officers also found several paint-stained stencils and several pieces of stickers printed with captions. These items were seized for investigation.

Investigation is ongoing. The police are also working with LTA on earlier reports of round stickers found affixed on other pedestrian crossings at various places.

The case is classified as Vandalism under Section 3 of the Vandalism Act, Chapter 341. A person who is convicted for the offence shall be punished with a fine not exceeding $2,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding to 3 years and shall be liable to caning subjected to the Criminal Procedure Code 2010.

Sins of the Grandfather

Spray painting a road may land you 3 YEARS in jail and a severe beating, but knocking over someone while drunk driving and splattering someone’s BLOOD all over the road gives you a miserable SIX months sentence, or a fine between $1000 and $5000. So, the police have spent the past month tracking down someone placing stickers on pedestrian crossing buttons, while elsewhere cyclists and joggers are being mowed down by maniac drivers.  Instead of monitoring speedsters, they’re keeping their eyes peeled for sticker vandals, who do nothing more than kill pedestrians’ time, not kill THEM unlike some nuisance drivers we know.

The colloquialism ‘My grandfather’s road’ has been used since the eighties, often used to describe motorists taking their own sweet time on the roads, or road-hoggers. In this case, the phrase could also double up as a visual protest against people who think they ‘own the road’ so they could streak about in the early wee hours in their Ferraris. Just a couple of days back, the ST ran a piece on these mystery ‘Press until Shiok’ stickers, that these  antics were ‘to the amusement’ of Singaporeans, with some speculating that it could be a smart ‘guerilla marketing’ campaign. One interviewee remarked that this shows ‘the vibrant culture of Singapore and a let-your-hair-down attitude’. More like ‘let-your-pants-down for a whipping’ attitude. It almost sounded light hearted and did not end in the typically admonishing ‘Anyone with information on the culprit are to report to the police immediately’.  Next thing you know, the one putting a smile on people’s faces with catchy slogans and making Singapore ‘hip’ again is being hauled to court for vandalising public property. Well thanks a lot, Straits Jinx. Don’t ever attempt to act cool again.

The ‘grandfather road’ vandal brings to mind the ‘white elephant’ incident at Buangkok MRT, where cut outs were put up to mock the two-year delay in the opening of Buangkok MRT station. It remains unknown as to who was ultimately responsible for this ‘outdoor protest’, though it was reported that a ‘veteran grassroots leader’ was behind it and his identity remains protected till this day.  The blatant symbolism seemed to prick the conscience of the authorities that they forgot about the elephant displays being vandalism at all. Instead the police had to investigate if there had been any breach of the ‘Public Entertainments and Meetings Act’. Which means if you’re sticking it to the authorities though a piece of art, you’re ‘protesting’ without a permit. If you’re just trying to be funny with some stencils and stickers, you’re a menace to society.

A couple of years back, the Speak Good English campaign embarked on their own spate of state endorsed ‘vandalism’, putting ugly sticky notes on lampposts and hawker centre tables to instruct people on on speaking properly. So if it’s for a ‘good cause’ and you have a permit, marring the urban landscape is OK, but not if you’re a street artist inspired by the ‘functional’ landscape graffiti of Banksy. With an actual sense of humour. You can’t even walk around with a piece of chalk these days without a cop telling you to stay away from roads and buildings, as if you were in possession of a stick of dynamite instead.

Postcript: Fast turning out to be a anti-establishment cult heroine, ‘Sticker Lady’ is actually Samantha Lo, artist and founder of online magazine RCGNTN. Her Pinterest is still available for viewing, where she appears to have a special interest in typography. Also see the rest of her ‘Press’ series (Tumblr disabled), including ‘Anyhow Press Police Catch’, ‘Press for Nirvana’ and ‘Everything Also Press’. OK I made the last one up.

Then there’s the question of whether My Grandfather Road is considered ‘art’ at all. According to a ST Forum writer and SOTA student Darshini Ramiah (Suspect art has no value, 9 June 2012, ST Forum):

While the works are humorous, parodying Singaporean culture and Singlish, they seem to have no value whatsoever. Furthermore, the removal of the ‘art’ from public property involved spending money, time and effort.

While the suspect’s intentions may have been light-hearted, she appears to have had no consideration for the impact that her work may have caused. Art should serve to enhance and better a community. But the suspect’s work seems to be nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek attempt to garner public attention.

The writer fails to mention what is considered ‘proper’ art and how this makes a community ‘better’, using vague words like ‘value’ and ‘enhance’ without explaining why art MATTERS. Value, like art, is subjective and in order to argue if what Sticker Lady did has any ‘value’ in the very mundane sense of dollars and cents, consider if anyone will purchase any of her sticker creations after her conviction (It would probably sell like Hello Kitty plush toys). In terms of more abstract ‘value’, her ‘tongue-in-cheek’ humour may have made someone’s day, or made people conscious of their furious but useless pedestrian button pressing, i.e altered someone’s behavior, at least temporarily.  In contrast, an almost blank piece of canvas may be clamoured to death as a timeless masterpiece, but if it leaves a viewer nonchalant and deemed as mere wall filler, how does it ‘enhance’ the community, despite being extremely ‘valuable’? Does ‘Brother Cane’ and its pubic hair snipping have any ‘value’? When Josef Ng broke the law (for public indecency) staging the act, like how Samantha Lo committed an offence (defacing public property), does it mean that the original Brother Cane wasn’t art?

Sticker Lady was eventually charged with mischief in late March 2013, in which the maximum penalty is one year’s jail and a fine. It was revealed that one of Lo’s creations was labelled ‘So Kancheong For What’. Though it was placed near a pedestrian crossing, I wonder if she was really referring to the government asking us to have more babies.

Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2010, 2012, Art, Environment, Fun and games, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists, MRT, Pedestrians, Police officers, Public works, Singlish/Broken english | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 38 Comments »

Killer Ferraris on congested roads

Posted on May 15, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Gerard Ee rejects call for curbs on fast cars’, 15 May 2012, article by Ethan Lou, My Paper

MR GERARD Ee, chairman of the Public Transport Council, has rejected calls for tougher restrictions on high-performance sports cars following the fatal three-vehicle collision in Bugis involving a Ferrari.

Instead, he blamed reckless drivers and not fast cars. “Low-performance cars can also be going at 100kmh and beat the red light,” Mr Ee told my paper last night. In a post on citizen-journalism website Stomp yesterday, a netizen known as “Ban it” proposed that high-performance sports cars be banned on congested Singapore roads.

The netizen wrote: “As a small country, should we accommodate such high-performance cars on our increasingly packed roads?”

While most Singaporeans are reeling from the shocking video, others are hurling abuse at the dead PRC speedster. The reactions from Twitter are flushed with unanimous anger towards the departed, with insults like ‘bastard’ ,’Ferrari fucker’ and terms like ‘murder’ being tossed around. A case of flogging a dead horse perhaps, but anyone who has seen how the maniac smashed into the taxi with the relentless ferocity no Michael-Bay special effects could possibly match, killing two innocent people, would be tempted to think the Ferrari driver was asking for it. It adds an ironic twist to how someone once suggested that there should be a death penalty for speeding. Taxis seem to bear the brunt of sports car collisions; In April 2011 and July 2008, taxis collided with a Lamborghini and Mitsubishi Evo 9 respectively, the latter fatal for the taxi-driver involved.

The media is still milking the tragedy dry with the expected ‘mystery nightclub hostess’ angle, hoping to reap some scandalous, poetic justice out of a terrible situation for all families involved. Taking these monsters off the road won’t help matters, and nobody who could afford to drive a Ferrari would waste it by sticking to the speed limit. Like guns Ferraris don’t kill people, drivers do. Except that while most of us yield pistols, those who could afford it go for machine guns and missile launchers. This guy was freaking Rambo, and he bit the bullet hard.

It’s easy to associate Ferrari drivers with a certain ‘fast and furious’, decadently lavish, Type A lifestyle, though some loutish towkays who pick fights with random youths may own one too. In some tragic cases, the allure of  the testosterone and adrenaline cocktail that comes with driving such cars prove too much for children of FATHERS who own them (Mazda MX-5) (Teens killed in horrific Sixth Ave  car crash, 5 June 2008, ST). Still, most owners should be familiar with the temperament of their beasts and pay extra caution on the roads BECAUSE they are Ferraris, and because they’re expensive. Ma Chi could have been an experienced racer with hardly any incident during his racing streaks, no thanks to the bewildering generosity and ‘support’ from a wife who allowed her husband to sneak out with his toy in the wee hours to break the law, oblivious to how dangerous his addiction to speed is. Even the professionals on the circuit crash and burn, and maybe this isn’t really about drunkedness, the distraction of an attractive hostess/mistress, or whether PRCs can drive, but simply horrible luck; You can totally trash a sports car but still end up unhurt, while your passenger gets killed all because of you.

In 2010, Regan Lee lost control of a Mazda MX-5 during a test drive, and the car ‘flew over the road divider, smashed head-on into a black BMW, flipped over it and crashed down into a van in the other lane’ – an orgy of wanton destruction. You would have thought the guy would have been pulverised to bits, but he emerged unscathed. His female passenger, on the hand, was killed and all he got was a driving suspension. Maybe these guys were playing Stare and Drive,  like what the folks from Fast and Furious do to impress girls.

Filed under: 2012, Foreign workers, Fun and games, Funerals/Death, Motorists, PRCs, Taxi drivers, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Super Import Nights too sexy

Posted on May 5, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ Car show heats up with sexy bikini girls’, 4 May 2012, article in insing.com

Some are wondering if upcoming car show Super Import Nights (SIN), which features not just cars but also sexy girls, will prove too raunchy – especially for children. SIN is returning for the fourth time this year and will be held at the Singapore Expo from 25 to 27 May.

For the first time, the show is also organising a beauty pageant – Miss SIN Search 2012 – and inviting women to submit their photographs to the website. According to Shin Min Daily News, the pageant rules, first published in late April, required aspiring contestants to submit two kinds of photos; one of them clad only in a bikini, and another of them partying in a club.

As the result, many submissions depicting women in little or no clothing can be seen on the website. The flesh parade has raised the temperature in Internet forums. Cabelle Liew Sheryln commented: “Why so X-rated? Promoting cars or boobs? For a moment, I thought I’m looking at Playboy’s website.”

A Shin Min Daily News reader, housewife Wu Ning Jing, also pointed out that the show was offering tickets priced at $5 for children. The 41-year-old is concerned that children may attend the exhibition and “see things they shouldn’t”.

Bikinis and cars go together like ham and cheese. Today, the word ‘model’ has become standard double entrendre when it comes to car show displays.  Flashy cars have been linked to beautiful women since at least 1970, with the ‘Concours International d’Elegance’ motor show being staged at the appropriately titled Gay World, bringing together ‘the glittering status symbols of modern man’. You won’t see such sexist promotions anymore, but ‘race queens’ as they are known today, are wearing much less than their 70′s counterparts. Automobiles have been feminised by men for as long as anyone could remember. We call our toy ‘a beauty’, talk about her ‘sleek curves’, and how she ‘purrs’ when the engine is ignited.  Placing an actual female next to a car is merely extending its gender, maybe personality, into flesh and bone. In 1936, there was even a model called the ‘Hillman Minx’. In Kill Bill, the Bride calls her ride the ‘Pussy Wagon’.

Biker chic

In 1978, one lucky Lagonda was ridden by seven models during a fashion show at Mandarin Hotel. Even vintage cars that seem to have come right out of the Monopoly game get their share of the ladies.

Herbie is jealous

What would a motor show be without women then? Perhaps a ‘ringside magic show’, or a ‘dance band’ for entertainment (1965)? Steak without the sizzle, fireworks without the noise. Today, the car is not the only hardware that sells better with sex. Tech fairs selling smartphones, TVs, cameras, Playstations, tablets are all employing models to caress products with their fingers, though the likelihood of snaring a babe with every purchase is dismal compared to buying a car. Why didn’t we have such things during the days of VCR tape recorders and mini-compos? If only Borders had thought of this gimmick before they closed shop. The only way to promote the reading habit and sell encyclopedia these days is to have bikini models manning booths at book fairs. You can even make the Oxford Dictionary look sexy if you try hard enough.

Go go gadget gals

But what’s this about a ‘pageant’ then? If you have women vying for a title and using their sex appeal to outdo each other, who cares about the cars? Perhaps Super Import Nights is overselling its sideshow perks, and since it’s harder to be tempted into buying a car than a new set of speakers, having a bikini contest instead of the usual anonymous flesh parade is unlikely to boost sales at a motor show. In fact, with hordes of guys busy gawking and not browsing merchandise, it may even backfire on the organisers if the crowd of horny onlookers turns off genuine car buyers.

Here’s a list of strange things you can get a pretty lady to sell at trade fairs. Nope, no books still.

1) Mouse

2) Keyboard

3) Battery Grip

4) Stuff that look like they belong to another type of lifestyle fair

Filed under: 1930s, 1970s, 2012, Fun and games, Motorists, Nudity, Sex, Singaporean women, Toys | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

URA banning new food joints at Serangoon Garden

Posted on March 25, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Restaurant ban to ease traffic at Serangoon Garden’, 25 March 2012, article by Toh Yong Chuan, Sunday Times

…Acting on residents’ complaints, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) imposed a ban last month: No more Serangoon Garden shophouses can be turned into food joints.

Existing eateries can carry on if there are no complaints. New food businesses can move in only if they take over the space of another. The ban does not apply to pubs and KTV nightspots. These, says the URA, result in problems such as social disturbance, and thus have always been subject to ‘stricter evaluation’ outside the new ban on eateries.

It told The Sunday Times that the ban has been implemented to avoid worsening ‘severe parking and traffic problems caused by the presence of eating houses’.

Four other neighbourhoods have been added to the URA’s little-known list of areas where there is ‘a moratorium on the further increase in the number of eating houses’. They are Tanjong Katong Road, Sembawang Road near Yishun Ave 3, Greenwood Avenue and Binjai Park.

Fish is their specialty

Of the 5 C’s, CAR is king, and Cuisine isn’t even on the list. Putting a ban on eateries will not address the underlying traffic problems at Serangoon Garden, an estate that has been plagued by congestion all the way since the fifties, believe it or not. To link the stagnant disamenities to the slew of restaurants rather than a more fundamental issue of infrastructure or vehicle management smacks of lazy  blame-shifting on the part of URA and a woeful decades-long lack of imagination when it comes to urban planning and liveable spaces. What is it exactly about this place and its ‘laid-back charm’ that the government, after half a century of road widening, CTE building, and parking enforcement, is still scratching its head over? And why target ‘food joints’ when fish spas, hairdressers, bakeries and bubble tea shops draw crowds and cars as well? Did someone study the relevant questions before this blanket ban was made, like why SG is so damned popular in the first place? Are bus services and taxi stands inadequate? Would opening another Hong Kong cafe make a difference?

If you can’t build a multi-storey carpark to spoil drivers, get enough officers on patrol to put people off illegal parking to placate residents, or can’t bear the whining of motorists who insist on driving to SG in spite of its half-century old reputation as a congestion sinkhole, why not just put a stopper on the eatery sprawl and hope for the best? Because that’s what’s basically happening here, like a soccer captain on a losing streak telling his team to crowd out the goalposts and fight for stalemate rather than attempt a single shot at goal. By all means reserve a plot of land for a foreign worker dorm, but stifle local business opportunities because you’ve run out of ideas? What the fish indeed.

Residents will still complain about their idyllic ‘village’ vibe being ruined by crowds. Drivers will still complain about inadequate parking spaces,  and nothing else is being done here by the authorities other than the brute swagger of an iron first that’s made to sound efficient on paper but is in fact as robust as plugging a bathroom leak with cotton swabs.  Even if you close every run-of-the-mill diner down to restore the ‘tranquility’ of SG, all you need are a few quality upstarts, a glowing magazine review or a perfect rating on HungryGoWhere to get the hungry crowds chugging back again. SG is ‘where it’s at’, whatever ‘It’ is.  Instead of nudging the system in a carbon-friendly, sustainable direction through price controls, deterrents or roadblocks ala Holland Village to foster a pedestrian culture (not kowtowing to a chope-and-honk one), aspiring establishments are subjugated by the blunt instrument that is blubber-headed bureaucracy. And here we are, self-proclaimed World City extraordinaire, dishing out LKY prizes to city mayors when we have an oppressive, overcrowded, automobile-addicted dystopic enclave that thinks it’s still a charming virgin hamlet in the woods, brewing right under our noses for as long as LKY was even in power.

For a city that prides itself in innovative urban design and resourcefulness when it comes to land use, the URA’s tough love on the FnB business is perhaps a bit too much to stomach.

Filed under: 1950s, 2012, Environment, Local food, Motorists, Public works | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Bentley driver smashing windscreen with bare hands

Posted on September 24, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Bentley driver in road rage incident is RBS exec’, 24 Sept 2011, article by Amanda Yong, TNP

She was filtering out of the Central Expressway (CTE) into Braddell Road when a car overtook her. The blue Bentley accelerated and abruptly cut into her lane, she claimed. It then screeched to a sudden halt, forcing her to step on her brakes.

What happened next so frightened Madam Wang, 36, a manager, that it left her shaking. The driver of the British sports car, a Caucasian man, got out of his vehicle, stormed over to her white Mercedes-Benz and started shouting at her.

Then, he slammed his bare fist into her car windscreen as she remained in the driver’s seat. He did this at least twice, cracking the glass, Madam Wang said. She immediately got out of the car as she did not want to be hit by falling glass shards.

She said: “I was terrified. I feared for my personal safety, I feared for my life.”

Stunned by the man’s outburst, Madam Wang’s female cousin and four-year-old son also stepped out of the car. “I was shocked by his behaviour and shocked that he could actually damage the windscreen using his bare hand. And I was afraid that he would hit me too,” said Madam Wang, a Taiwanese married to a Singaporean.

…The New Paper understands that the man claimed that Madam Wang had cut into his lane and he decided to do the same to her. But she denied having cut into his lane.

…She said that before the man left, he took out his business card, shoved it into her cousin’s hands and said: “I’ll pay for everything.” Then, he drove off. The police arrived shortly after. Madam Wang said the man’s card stated that he is a managing director (Stephan Masuhr) in a unit of a major foreign bank here.

She said: “Did he think I wasn’t a human being and that just because he’s rich and drives an expensive car that he can just bully me and pay me off?

“He was very arrogant. His attitude was too much.”

I’m beginning to think road bullies are not just prone to bursts of violence, but are sociopaths who exhibit bizarre behaviour as well. Not only does this brute have a fist of iron, but he willingly offered his identity and number as a form of apology and compensation after smashing someone’s windscreen, which just makes the job of the police easier. Interestingly enough, according to Mr Masuhr’s Linkin homepage, aside from the impressive CV , he also affiliates himself with a group called ‘IRONMAN FINISHERS’, which only a select group of triathletes can claim to be a part of. It’ll be intriguing to see how this high-profile case plays out, because clearly Masuhr isn’t just an ‘exec’ of Royal Bank Scotland, he’s HEAD of EM (emerging markets, or is it ENRAGED MOTORISTS) and Credit Structuring & Repacking Asia Pacific. He also happens to be German,  and to think that they’re the ones who made fun of CRAZY Singaporeans   (He in fact became a Singaporean 4 years ago).

The trigger of road rage can be boiled down to an exaggerated intolerance of two basic road behaviours 1) when one is deemed to be driving dangerously (cutting into one’s lane) or 2) One is the deemed to be the cause of delay (road hogging, obstruction). In light of how road rage is becoming seen as a mental disorder in some scientific circles, Masuhr’s strange namecard-giving gesture could be a ruse to plead insanity if he’s eventually nabbed.  But if you thought road rage was a fairly recent phenomenon symptomatic of a stressful environment, overpopulation and bad traffic infrastructure, or may be attributed to loudmouthed Caucasian expats in luxury cars, think again.

Here’s a history of obscene gestures, swearing, improvised weaponry,  punching, kicking and other near-fatalities that is road rage violence in Singapore:

195o’s: ‘Ill-mannered’ drivers were blamed for the increase in road accidents according to Singapore AA, in particular drivers of buses and taxis. In 1959, two hooligans on a TRICYCLE beat up a motorist for sounding his horn.

1973: Before the term was even coined, ‘road ragers’ were simply ‘road bullies’, with an ‘appalling sense of road courtesy’, according to the chairman of the National Safety First Council.

1989: A motocyclist broke a lorry driver’s nose and slashed another passenger with a broken bottle from a nearby crate He was jailed for 6 months.

199os: A road bully was fined $4000 for thumping a motorcyclist with a hammer.  In 1998, a service technician hit a trailer driver in the face with a screwdriver. Another weapon of choice was an iron pipe, which was brandished in a threatening manner in a 1993 incident and earning the aggressor a 4 weeks stint in jail.   But these attacks pale in comparison to a triple-penknife- stabbing of a cabby in 1992.

2000′s: Cabbie Low Eng Whye, 54, floored a lorry driver ten years his senior during a confrontation which involved Low giving a middle finger to Han Cheow Pong for driving too slowly. In 2004, a cabbie slashed a motorist’s face with a pair of scissors.  Four years later, private bus driver Yeo Teck Kiang pursued an SMRT bus after having his lane cut, punched the victim in the face and drove off. He was jailed for 5 weeks. The most extreme tantrum would be the bully ramming his own vehicle into the back of the victim’s car repeatedly, as what Chan Swee Leng did in 2008, a trait that would have made him the perfect kamikaze pilot. He also served 5 weeks in jail. Just last year, someone was stalked with a baseball bat, according to Stomp website (See below)

In S'pore, baseball bats are used for anything except baseball

Most recently, another Caucasian ‘body slammed’ female dance instructor Rachel Lim on a bus for ‘talking too loudly’ over the phone. Except that he was a PASSENGER and not a driver, something which should give the police food for thought when it comes to defining what makes a ‘road bully’.

So, there’s no discernible pattern of the kind of people or occupations succumbing to road rage and physical violence other than the fact they are predominantly male and have a really short fuse. Locking all doors and hiding under your dashboard won’t help if you’re unlucky enough to encounter a plumber, mechanic or anyone with a toolkit in his boot. Courtesy campaigns are pretty much useless; you can’t educate someone who constantly loses his temper at the wheel, you either institutionalise him, medicate him with antipsychotics, or impose a deterrent like lifetime driving bans. Hell, you may even get accosted by bullies on public transport if you’re too terrified to drive yourself because of all these motorists with vehicles more equipped for war than a SAF military truck.

But what bugs me  is that pranksters, in particular Swiss Oliver Fricker, get caned for spray painting public property but not bullies who smash other drivers’ windscreens, whether it’s with their fists, metal pipes, chains or spare tires. Imagine the trauma and injuries the glass shards could have inflicted. Such hooligans should be banned from driving altogether and thoroughly spanked before someone gets murdered. We already have people dying from drunk and reckless driving, so if we can’t ban alcohol, or put speed demons to death, we should, at the very least, chuck these nuisances off the damn roads already. Not only will our roads be more pleasant to drive on, we’ll have less vehicles to deal with too. Alas, judging from the dismal statement ‘investigations are ongoing’, it looks like Masuhr is getting off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, a fine at most. All those ex bullies who suffered weeks in jail for nothing more than waving a fist, cursing other drivers’ mothers or denting car doors must be kicking themselves as we speak.

Filed under: 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists, Police officers, Taxi drivers, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Women are better drivers than men

Posted on September 11, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Lady driver:Women are just better drivers’, 11 Sept 2011, article by Tan Mae Lynn, TNP

Let’s be honest. We’re better drivers and you know it.

We women are just more modest (usually) and don’t have epic egos to battle with. Self-assured is what you can call us.

One reason why we’re better drivers is that we have better temperaments – which is why insurance companies offer lower premiums to women drivers.

The tired stereotype that is the ‘woman driver’ still makes its rounds on our congested roads today whenever we see someone hogging traffic. Our gut reaction would be to assume that it’s either a woman driver or  an old man, and Lord help us if it’s a grandmother at the wheel. Driving is a favourite pop psychology test to study sex differences because unlike other one-dimensional tests like reading maps or finding a way out of mazes, there are other specific abilities and traits which one could evaluate of each sex  from behind the wheel. For example you could compare how often one speeds (risk-taking, aggression), how often one overtakes (spatial awareness, reflexes, risk-taking), how well one parks (spatial awareness) or even how often one blasts the horn (impatience, aggression). It also has implications on the male ego, because any study that proves that women are able to handle their favourite toys better than men themselves would send it crashing for sure.

The claim that ladies make ‘better’ drivers needs a definition of what ‘better’ means. Does it mean ‘safer’? If so, that would be summoning bland stereotypes like how women are naturally ‘protective’ of their passengers due to the ‘maternity instinct’, or less likely to fly into a rage and cut dangerously into others’ lanes (if you exclude the effect of PMS) because of their ‘temperament’.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves this question: If you were sick with fever and vomiting and needed to get to the hospital pronto with the least discomfort, and you had two friends willing to take you, one male, another female, who would you choose as your driver, assuming that you’ve never been a passenger in either car? Obviously the ‘better’ driver would get you there first without having to vacuum up your undigested lunch later. In this instance, ‘better’ means achieving an optimal balance between speed and smoothness. An excessively cautious driver might as well take you to the morgue, a panicky one with brake-happy feet would make you wish you were dead.

Here’s a look at the how perceptions of women drivers have changed over the years:

In 1937, a contributing writer to the ST Mrs Richard C.H Lim admitted that her own gender is, ‘as a rule, not certain of herself’, and ‘inclined to hesitate, to make quite certain, and therein lies the danger, not just to herself but others’. On the other hand a woman ‘certain of herself flies along the road at top speed..expects everyone to give way to her..doesn’t bother about giving correct road signals. She may not be a bad driver, but she is very often a selfish one.’ (Woman drivers -Says a Woman, won’t give their mind to the job, 14 Oct 1937, ST)

By 1956, women drivers became rather commonplace and it marked the beginning of Singaporean ladies making confident strides into the male domain of motoring. According to one ST reporter, women are generally ‘more careful and hence less accident-prone’. They also ‘seldom take risks as men do, and they drive at a slower pace’ (Women at the wheel, 19 Jan 1956, ST). It was also the same decade where we saw our first female driving instructor (1953) and  taxi-driver (1959), a milestone for Women’s Lib in a pre-independence Singapore.

The assumption that females were more ‘trusted’ at the wheel continued into the late 70s, with a former police inspector declaring in a survey that women tend not to speed. Which led to the General Insurance Association of Singapore to conclude in 1987 that based on women’s ‘statistical’ track record of ‘safer driving’, they would pay lower premiums for motor insurance, penalising ‘frequent travelling professional males’ who may actually be safer than less seasoned women drivers BECAUSE they drove more frequently.

All perceptions of women being dainty, speed-limit-obeying, do-gooders behind the wheel were laid to rest with the emergence of our very own female racer for Red Bull Rookies earlier this year, Emmiline Ang. We even have our own all-female Go-Karting race team CTMC2, proving once and for all that the adrenaline-laced world of motor-sports is no longer the exclusive arena of the boys anymore.

So the  jury is still out as to whether women are indeed better drivers than men. In general they do seem to be less accident-prone,  although that would merely be a flipside of slowness or wishy-washiness, but low accident rates could also be an artifact as the majority of road users and hence people getting into accidents are still men. Even then, safer doesn’t necessarily mean better (it inevitably means ‘slower’), depending on what the situation calls for. I think it would be fair to both sexes to compromise and state that there are a FEW women drivers who are better than MOST men.  Likewise there would be a FEW men who are worse drivers than MOST women.

Filed under: 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, 2011, Motorists, Sex, Singaporean men, Singaporean women | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

PAP like bus driver

Posted on April 29, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Shanmugam questions WP’s co-driver analogy’, 29 April 2011, article by Ian de Cotta, Today online

…At his party’s first rally on Thursday night, WP secretary-general, Low Thia Khiang, had said a co-driver was essential, especially as the road got more difficult to navigate. He had said: “The co-driver is there to slap the driver when he drives off course or when he falls asleep or drives dangerously.”

On Friday, Mr Shanmugam asked how often do you see a car driven by two drivers fighting with each other for the wheel? He said: “I can see why the WP calls its vision “unique”. This “unique” vision will lead us to a crash and not the smooth drive that the WP promises. And this co-driver wants to keep slapping the driver, just like what they do in Taiwanese Parliament. I suppose hair-pulling and kicking would be a natural progression.

…”The correct analogy is a bus driver chosen by the people.

“Some people chosen as MPs to sit behind the driver to keep watch on what the driver is doing and ask him questions.

“In the next Parliament, there will be at least 18 non-PAP MPs, together with PAP MPs, to do this. And if people don’t like the driver, under our system, it is easy to change. You get a new driver.

“Mr Low is not satisfied with being a watchdog. He wants to jump next to the driver’s seat. Do you really want a co-driver who will be fighting with the driver to take over the wheel and slapping, kicking him? Is this the way forward?”

Before you know it, this infinite regression of cliched transportation analogies will turn the PAP into the driver of a train, the pilot of a jumbo jet, blimp or even a spaceship, though the most suitable vehicle to describe the way this banter is going is a hot air balloon. Shanmugam’s depressing unfamiliarity with public transport has been exposed here, because nobody ‘sits behind the bus driver asking him questions’ unless he’s a trainee on driving instruction, which doesn’t apply to a experienced bus driver with a supposedly proven ‘track record’. He has also unwittingly got himself into an awkward spot here because if the PAP were truly like a bus driver, then it follows that the paying passengers of his bus, Singaporeans that is, are the reason why his job exists at all. Which turns the dependency angle on its head i.e ‘It’s the PAP who needs us to survive, not the other way around’. Of course if someone the likes of Shanmugan were to be ferrying us around on this bus journey of life, it would be more ‘OI! MOVE TO THE BACK’! than ‘LOVE YOUR RIDE!’. And once you’ve tapped your EZlink card on this ride, you would have exhausted all your credit to be able to alight and change your journey. Now, it appears that Singaporeans don’t just have the choice to sack their bus driver if they don’t like the service, but opt for an entirely different bus company as well.

Of course the fate of the cruising vehicle that is Singapore is dependent not just solely on the man at the wheel but how rocky the road is, how much petrol is in the tank, the behaviour of other motorists, the traffic light system and even the weather, so if our boys continue to pursue the car analogy down to the tire spokes and seat belts and lose track of the  more important election road ahead, we the passengers would do well to just abandon this hopeless ride altogether and leave our tussling ‘co-drivers’ to spin around in circles kicking and screaming like ‘Taiwanese ministers ‘instead. Such blunt, fearmongering crash-and-burn metaphors make WWE wrestlers issuing challenges to each other on air look like a gentleman’s debate on classical Greek philosophy in comparison. It’s also ironic how this jolly bus analogy was already used by a member of the Opposition way back in the eighties (see below, ‘PAP vision a bus ride into the unknown’, 19 December 1984, ST),  presaging and rebutting Shanmugam’s self-defeating attempt at wit close to 30 years before he even uttered it.

Not to mention that it’s a case of driver sabotaging driver when you have our campaign posters blocking road signs (Voices, 28 April 2011).  So nope, it’s not a thuggish Low Thia Khiang grappling for your wheel that’s spinning us out of control, Shanmugam. It’s your lackeys plastering your faces over No U-Turn signs on our streets and having your logos look like deceiving ‘Danger! Lightning ahead’ warnings that’s the perfect recipe for disaster. Funny how all this campaigning is permitted yet distracting roadside billboards are frowned upon. Cars and buses aside, PAP has also been described as Microsoft, Goliath and a Horse-Tiger.

Nicole Seah causes accidents

Filed under: 1980s, 2011, Campaigns/Elections, Motorists, Politicians, Public works, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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