Personalised taxi service is a happy buyer, happy seller situation

Posted on October 1, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From various letters, 1 Oct 2012, ST Forum

(Sng Kee Chuan): I AM surprised such a practice exists (“No taxis? Some offer extra cash to get a ride”; last Friday). Some taxi drivers already take their taxis off the road to wait for call bookings, or for peak-hour surcharges to kick in – a common complaint among commuters. Allowing illegal booking services only provides an opportunity for more cabbies to take their taxis off the road – further reducing the supply.

(Jack Chew): GOVERNMENT Parliamentary Committee for Transport vice-chairman Seng Han Thong and transport expert Lee Der Horng appear to be advocating a free market system for taxis That is tantamount to agreeing that it is all right to let a commuter at the back of a taxi queue flash a $50 note to get to the front and into a taxi. What if there are others, including seniors and unwell commuters, who are in front?

(Ng Kei Yong):…Of greater concern were the responses of National Taxi Association president Wee Boon Kim and National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der Horng, which seem to imply that there is nothing wrong with the practice of offering extra cash to get a cab.

Taxis are a public transport service. The drivers are licensed and must provide the service to the public fairly and responsibly. In return, concessions are given to taxi operators by the authorities. If this practice of providing services only to the highest bidder is allowed, one might as well allow taxis without meters and cabbies to choose whom to provide their services to.

In the original article, GPC member Lim Biow Chuan and vice-chair and MP Seng Han Thong seemed to be at odds regarding this practice of paying more for jumping the queue. Lim said it would be unfair to commuters, while Seng responded that ‘this is the reality on the ground where some passengers prefer a personalised service..It’s a HAPPY BUYER, HAPPY SELLER situation.’ Transport expert Professor Lee Der Horng had the impression that if the passenger is offering to pay more, and there was mutual agreement, then there’s nothing illegal about it. Not a regular taxi commuter myself, I’ve nonetheless had first-hand experience of being late for an appointment and getting distressed over the fact that despite waiting for a good half hour and finally getting to be first in line,  I’d still see ‘On Call’ cabs come and pick up people who had come out of NOWHERE, passengers who might as well thumb their nose at you and go ‘Nyah nyah’ as they scoot away, though most of the time they avoid eye contact in fear of getting shopping trolleys flung at them.

People who wish to scrimp on booking fees will be forced to wait needlessly, and can no longer use ‘There was a long Q at the taxi stand’ or ‘There were no taxis in sight’ as an excuse anymore. You should have call-booked, or get assistance from a independent radiotaxi service like Lakeview. If I had to rush to the hospital to see a dying relative, I would appreciate some backdoor assistance pronto. If a cabbie is willing to offer priority service and I make it worth his while, my $50 ‘tip’ in exchange to get where I want on TIME is pittance, even if it meant leapfrogging over someone in a wheelchair or a woman about to give birth. The downside is such desperation is liable to abuse, with cabbies conspiring to make themselves scarce, so that all involved in the network would benefit from a forced ‘premium’, which puts the more ‘public-spirited’ cabbies at a disadvantage, cabbies who waste fuel patrolling the streets looking for damsels in distress, while his peers park somewhere and have forty winks while awaiting a forty dollars fee from anyone desperate enough to pay.

Such practices are nothing new. In 1989, if you asked for a ‘Code 3′, you will get exclusive access to a taxi even if none was available initially. This means paying a measly $3 extra on top of the meter value, which the Registrar of Vehicles considered as ‘overcharging’. It’s like asking for a ‘special’ after a sleazy massage, or giving a waiter something extra to play along to a surprise wedding proposal. It’s undisclosed and agreed upon, in other words, a FAIR deal, but you don’t accuse the service providers of ‘overcharging’ if you know exactly what you’re in for.  Then there’s the issue of whether taxis are a form of public transport. In 2007, the same transport researcher Professor Lee described taxis as such:

‘Taxis are not public transportation… (but) should be considered as a complement to public transport because it offers door-to-door transport services to those who need car-like transportation but do not own a car.’

That’s assuming of course, that our REAL public transport system is up to par. The ones suffering from mixed perceptions are the taxi drivers themselves, who are torn between running the show like businessmen, or as an accompaniment to buses and trains. If you have children to feed and send to school, and everyone you know is plying the illegal trade of pandering to ‘big-spenders’ or living off call booking, why not join ‘em if you can’t beat ‘em? Chances are cabbies who follow strictly ‘by the book’ are a dying breed. So there either must be an incentive to loyal drivers who abide by the ethic of ‘first come first served’, or a deterrent for those benefiting from under-the-table premiums. LTA decided that imposing a penalty would be the easier way out, compared to say, suggestions to make flagdown taxi-driving more profitable or scrapping call-booking altogether.

Taking cabs in Singapore is still a frightful ordeal at times, and though there may be still some who persist in being ‘public service providers’ and serve Singaporeans without the ‘income opportunity’ mentality, there should be still some wiggle-room for operators to cater for those dire moments when you REALLY need a ride and are willing to pay extra for it. There are services where you pay more to get urgent parcels sent from point A to point B. Why not the same for taxis when that parcel is you?

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Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Money, Politicians, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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 »

PRCs ‘abducting’ boy at AMK Hub

Posted on March 22, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ PRC couple attempts to abduct local boy?’ 22 March 2012, article in insing.com

A woman has complained on the internet that a Chinese national couple tried to abduct her child at Ang Mo Kio Hub. Ms ‘Allison Goon’ shared her experience on her Facebook page, explaining that she was at the AMK Hub Fiesta on Sunday (18 Mar).

She had just fed her son and walked away to throw some rubbish when she turned back and found another woman taking her son away by his hand. She shouted after her son and asked the woman why she was holding her son’s hand.

The woman, who spoke with a China accent, replied that she had “the wrong child”, then walked away with another man while pretending that nothing had happened. When Ms Allison Goon asked her son why he had followed the stranger, the boy said that the woman had told him, “follow me, I will bring you home”.

According to the ST, ‘Ms Goon said the woman had spoken in Mandarin and sounded like she could have been from China’. Whether or not this incident really happened, it speaks volumes about the recent paranoia surrounding Chinese nationals, whether they’re flaming us online for being ‘dogs’, hijacking taxis and running people over with them or murdering taxi drivers themselves,  stealing men from their wives, and in this case, attempting to steal other people’s children. Which is pretty much consistent with what foreigners have been accused of doing anyway, taking away what’s rightfully ours.

In 2008, a China national set up a phantom kidnap scam in exchange for $100,000 and was eventually thwarted by a quick-thinking parent. There was even a recorded anonymous Chinese child’s cry for help circulating last year according to a Stomp contributor. A similar ‘attempted abduction’ case occurred in Disneyland Hongkong in the same year, sparking speculations of PRC ‘kidnapping syndicates’. There doesn’t appear, however, to be any cases of successful kidnapping/torturing of local kids by PRCs to date. In fact, it was a China national’s kid who was kidnapped and brutally murdered at the hands of a Malaysian Took Leng How in the Huang Na case in 2004. In 2009, a 28 year old PRC KTV hostess named Han Yan Fei went missing, with speculations that a murdered Singaporean man and a human trafficking ring were involved.  Statistically speaking, PRCs should be more concerned for their own kids’ safety (or themselves) than us ours.

I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the high anxiety parents face whenever a child disappears into thin air, but terrified parents like Goon here sending out almost-horror stories of predatory PRCs would inevitably lead to panicky knee-jerk reactions like parents huddling kids and getting ready to call the police whenever someone who remotely looks or sounds like a PRC flashes a seemingly over-friendly wink or a smile at their child.  It’s like how people instinctively breathe through their mouth whenever a foreign construction worker boards the train, forgetting that some schoolgirl passengers in PE attire with towels wrapped around their neck smell as bad, if not worse. It also explains why toddler leashes are such a hit.

Still, one can’t get too cosy with any stranger, be it foreigner or local; a sensational history of PRC vice and violence has simply heightened our suspicions and hence the stereotypical cautionary anecdotes like Goon’s here. We would have taxi drivers having their hand on the emergency button whenever a PRC passenger’s on board, bus passengers bracing themselves for hazardous brakes when the driver’s a PRC, wives clamping down on husbands if they find out about his PRC colleague, etc.  Instead of drilling maths algorithms and phonetics into our kids or lamenting that Singapore is a PRC thief haven, perhaps we should consider inculcating some basic defensive skills in children like our parents used to do, like how to say no to strangers, screaming at the top of your lungs to draw attention, or headbutting a kidnapper in the groin when push comes to shove.

Filed under: 2000s, 2011, 2012, Bloggers, Kids, Parenting, PRCs, Shopping malls, Taxi drivers, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

One man’s breakdown is another’s income opportunity

Posted on December 16, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘SMRT says sorry for its message to cabbies’, 16 Dec 2011, article by Daryl Chin, ST

SMRT has apologised for a message it broadcast to its fleet of taxis yesterday amid the chaos on the subway system. The message, which flashed on its drivers’ screens at about 8pm, read: ‘Income opportunity. Dear partners, there is a breakdown in our MRT train services from Bishan MRT to Marina Bay MRT stretch of stations.’

A photo of the screen – presumably taken by a passenger – soon appeared on social networking site Twitter and spread online, drawing sharp criticism.

‘Bad enough they are raising taxi fares, now they want to cash in on an event that is their fault to begin with,’ said sales assistant Candice Tan, 24, one of the many who tweeted about it.

Attempts to contact the photographer were unsuccessful. The message, presumably sent by SMRT call centrestaff, would have reached all 3,100 taxis in its fleet. An SMRT spokesman said last night: ‘We are sorry for the oversight. Our staff were using a template message, and we have since corrected it.’

Some More Revenue, Taxis!

The second breakdown in a week came after a Circle Line delay the day before. News of the trauma of passengers stuck in tunnels went live before SMRT could even recover from the backlash of its ‘official statement’ fiasco yesterday. Train windows were smashed out of desperation, passengers plunged into darkness and sent on a pitch-black tunnel march between City Hall and Dhoby Ghaut, images which anyone who’s seen the 90′s Sylvester Stallone disaster movie Daylight would find hauntingly familiar. I exaggerated in a previous post that SMRT was keeping silent because of zombie carnage in the train and on platforms, and looking at the state of chaos and the contorted faces of victims in agony, it appears that I wasn’t too far off the mark.

SMRT: Tunnel vision

Seems like SMRT is running out of ‘I’m sorry’ templates too. Here it’s ‘We are sorry for the oversight‘, last night it was:

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused…Preliminary investigation shows that around 40m of the power rail had been damaged between the City Hall and Dhoby Ghaut stations.

Inconvenience, of course, is a gross understatement, especially if you have passengers gasping for air, resorting to sacrificing fire extinguishers to smash windows to stay alive. One can only guess at the kind of mixed feelings that cabbies would have capitalising on stranded, desperate commuters only too eager to head home after a hard day’s work, although the cruel coincidence of the two incendiary events (MRT breakdown, taxi fare hike) reeks of a backdoor cost-recovery conspiracy on the part of SMRT, which not only has to deal with ticket refunds and whatever damages sustained because of angry, oxygen-deprived mobs, but foreigners sueing them for negligence after having their legs pulverised by trains. Or perhaps so much attention was given to ‘security breaches’ that there were simply not enough people to inspect cables every once in a while. Give me a graffitti-strewn train that gets me to work and home on the dot rather than a squeaky clean one that disgorges passengers into tunnels smack  in the middle of nowhere.

SMRT isn’t the only body exploiting the misfortune of others. Just after the Japanese tsunami in March this year, Mediacorp sent out an email soliciting for advertisers who might be interested in ‘breaking news’ coverage, each 30-second commercial costing $5000. Edwin Koh, Senior Vice President, stepped up to ‘apologise unreservedly if we had been seen to be insensitive to the gravity of the situation’. Note that it could have been either Mediacorp or SMRT who wanted to hush up DJ Hossan Leong for tweeting about the Circle Line fault yesterday as well. But it’s only the amoral nature of business after all, and corporations like these two have been ‘cashing’ in way before the advent of social media, whether we like it or not. Pharmaceutical giants ‘cash in’ whenever there’s an outbreak of disease, weapon manufacturers in the event of war, and likewise a swarm of passengers with nowhere to go is prime catch for cabbies.  Whether you call it ‘good business’ or ‘income opportunity’, the fact of the matter, as it is everywhere else, is that there is always a market for misfortune. It’s just unfortunate that an ‘oversight’ exposed the unfeeling machine that SMRT really was all along. So much for ‘MOVING people, ENHANCING lives’ as its motto boasts, when it has done the exact opposite these past few days.

Tsunami=Income opportunity

Let’s not forget another player in the grand scheme of things; ComfortDelgro for raising fees in the first place, after which we’ve seen wave after wave of sociopathic behavior occurring, from old men vandalising taxis, to graffitti on taxi panels about how we’re like ‘donkeys’ and always ‘Pay and Pay’, and the most ‘Grand Theft Auto’ of them all, a Trans cab taxi going on a hit-and-run rampage across town. Police blamed it on DRUGS, naturally. Maybe it’s the same drug that the SMRT spokespeople have been taking these couple of days, one that depletes every ounce of empathy in your body. Then again, according to writer/film-maker/lawyer Joel Bakan, corporations  are inherently self-interested psychopaths, with one of the traits being a ‘callous unconcern for the feelings of others’. A big, fat ‘Check’.

Nobody died during the shutdown last night (though it was reported that one fainted), but if there’s anybody that should be ‘apologising unreservedly’ it should be an actual PERSON, not the epitome of insincerity  in the form of the collective ‘WE’, crafting a response with the cut-and-paste dexterity as one garbles swill from random leftovers for pigs. The only trait that separates a chief mafioso from a company head in the context of exploiting tragedies for personal profit is that the gangster never needs to apologise.  This is how conspiracy theorists would view this situation: If you’re stuck with a cure (fare hikes to alleviate cabbies’ miserable takings) which nobody wants to take, then you have to create the disease (train failures). The truth is ‘shit happens’, but adding to the stink with a ‘template oversight’ is just ‘full of it’.

We want to see a sorry face, not a sorry excuse for an answer.

Postscript: And here’s SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa’s ‘very, very sorry face’ during a press conference later in the day. Isabella Loh must be thanking the heavens she never got into a seat as hot as this.

CEOs can resign, it is whether they choose to

Filed under: Bureaucrats, Corporations, MRT, Public works, Taxi drivers, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Just for Laughs’ cabby prank not LOL

Posted on April 21, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Picking on cabbies is not funny’, 21 April 2011, ST Forum online

(Nicholas Tan): ON TUESDAY, I watched Just For Laughs (Singapore edition) and there was a section where pranks were played on taxi drivers.

The producer of the show should not play pranks on cabbies as time is precious to them.

Not all taxi drivers are young and fit. Some are older, and they might be injured while carrying the many pieces of luggage as part of the prank.

(Couldn’t find the video of this segment, but found the likely non-Asian original version below)

Naturally, for a Candid Camera-style format, viewers only get to see the smiley, lighter side of such gags while the ones that were taken a wee bit too seriously ending up with people charging at the hidden camera didn’t make it to the final cut of the episode. It remains to be seen if Singaporeans have loosened up over the years, looking at the dismal state of local comedy and satire today. In fact, the very first complaints against  suggestions of a local ‘Candid Camera’ emerged as early as the seventies (see below Untitled, 15 Jan 1971). Obviously such warnings were ignored and SBC went ahead to create the failed social experiment that is ‘Gotcha!’ in the nineties (Moe Alkaff remains in hiding till this day). So now we have Just for Gags Asia which is basically Same Gag, Different Victims, with our local production team relying on tried and tested formulae approved by JFG CEO without daring to pull something truly original and risking being labelled as a public nuisance. Probably not a bad idea to copy and shift the blame to our foreign bosses, since Singaporeans have been the unwilling recipients of a few horrendous local pranks of late, including a make-believe fairy tale ending in a bloodbath and a man dressed as a grizzly bear.

Still, it’s not just taxi drivers but everyone’s time which is precious here, and you don’t want to be caught in a gag while you’re on the way to see a dying relative at the hospital, meeting a client, or rushing home to watch Ai.  If we want to be so cautious about stepping on the wrong toes, that pretty much leaves running sight gags only on people with the leisure to afford a chuckle at their own expense: Tourists, and only those who look happy-go-lucky too. Which defeats the purpose of having a Singaporean Just For Laughs in the first place. Granted, this isn’t exactly the finest LOL moment out of JFG’s bag of tricks, but for a complainant to see a prank not as public humiliation but a waste of time is a disturbing sign of our straight-laced preoccupation with efficiency. If it’s any consolation, our cabbies had it easy; other variants from the original series include transporting a heavily bandaged, incapacitated stooge in a wheelchair or having a fake python escaping from its cage in the back seat ( Nicholas would warn that such scares could lead to heart attacks, especially for old and unfit cabbies, which means they could probably die in the line of duty or land up in hospital i.e not working) I’m sure JFG Inc have done the necessary research and legal paperwork in the event the huge risk that is poking fun at a Singaporean doesn’t pay off.  And speaking of poking…

Filed under: 1970s, 2011, Fun and games, Local TV shows, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Pedestrians are kings of the road

Posted on September 20, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Kings of the road?’, 20 Sept 2010, Voices, Today online

(Yvonne Tan): …As a motorist, I frequently see pedestrians taking their own sweet time to cross at the traffic lights. They often continue walking slowly even when the green man turns to red. They also often continue to cross the road until the “green arrow” for cars that are turning goes off.

I have come across pedestrians crossing the road so slowly that cars have to slow down almost to a stop in the middle of the road.

…I had stopped at a T-junction to ensure that there was no oncoming traffic before turning out. Just then a group of pedestrians crossed the road in front my car. I could see that some did walk faster to cross the road. However, there were others who did not increase their speed.

I honked at them, cut a little into the next lane and drove off. I stopped at the traffic light a few metres away.  While there, one of the pedestrians at whom I had honked approached me and told me that I had to stop because pedestrians had right of way.  He insisted that he had right of way and threatened to call the Land Transport Authority.

I find that this behaviour stems from the belief that pedestrians are kings of the road.

…The law protects pedestrians from reckless and irresponsible drivers. Shouldn’t it also protect motorists from arrogant, uniquely Singapore pedestrians.

No, the law should protect people against impatient, rude, noisy honkers like Yvonne Tan. Whether pedestrians behave like royalty or not, you can grumble all you want to your fellow passengers,  even try to traverse the crossing carefully provided the pedestrians are far away, aware of your illegal movements and not playing with their phones if you’re really in such a rush, but surely there’s no reason to honk at people for walking slowly when they have the right of way. Why should motorists, behind the wheel of a killing, polluting machine, be granted any special concessions against vulnerable, human traffic? What sort of damage can a bunch of slow-crossing pedestrians do to a waiting motorist other than brittle nails from furious steering-wheel drumming that warrants ‘protection?’ Tell that to the family of the savaged Vietnamese tourist who was near decapitated by a runaway taxi even though she was nowhere near a pedestrian or zebra crossing. Car drivers are kings of the road everywhere else, on the expressways, in parking lots, making a nuisance with their modified engines, hell, they are the reason why roads exist in the first place. Granted, it’s annoying to dilly dally and dawdle about but the onus is on drivers to be cautious and alert for unsuspecting, dashing , or in this case, strolling, humans. As much as inconsiderate behaviour by pedestrians is uncalled for, at least it’s not potentially deadly as impatient, aggressive road warriors like Ms Tan here. As for the real ‘King of the Road’, indisputably it is, and has always been, the taxi driver, as seen in this letter dated 14 July 1949.

Filed under: 1940s, 2010, Motorists, Pedestrians, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

YOG an unflagging waste of resources

Posted on August 16, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Flag causes a flap’, 16 Aug 2010, ST Forum online

(Chee Hoot Peng): I AM a taxi driver by profession and I have one thing to say about the wastage of resources for the Youth Olympic Games.

About two weeks ago, cabbies like myself were given YOG flags to mount on our taxis. However, after an hour of installing it on the vehicle, I had to remove mine because it kept flapping against the roof and creating an unbearable noise.

While I applaud the idea of such flags, not enough thought has gone into their design, which means there has been a waste of funds producing them.

It’s also a phenomenal waste of time. 1 hour to install a flag which could have been better spent, I dunno, picking and dropping passengers? What’s going to happen to all these flag and banners once the YOG comes to an end anyway? There’s probably enough leftover cloth to form a canopy over Orchard Road to contain flooding, or if that isn’t feasible we could set another useless Guiness book record for most buildings wrapped in YOG paraphernalia. Really, the money could have been better spent on adding more long beans to the volunteers’ lunch packs rather than this unnecessary bombast. I believe the media have already done enough souping up of the occasion, with the drama of a boy running 15km to follow the torch relay to boot. Now all that’s left is giving ourselves the proverbial fat pat on the back, notwithstanding the stench of redundancy and environmental degradation left behind. The sound of a flag relentlessly pounding a taxi rooftop isn’t the most unpleasant noise in the world. The dismal sound of silence from our ecological conscience is.

Of course, I couldn’t resist citing this vulgar greenwashing by the SYOGOC in this Feb post ‘Singapore 2010 YOG goes green!’.Yes, the audacity of the exclamation mark. A taxi driver and a volunteer NS man served a crappy lunch have proven you wrong on all counts.

…We strive for minimal impact on the environment before, during and after the Youth Olympic Games so as to contribute to the well being of all participants, be they athletes, officials, spectators or volunteers. We will focus on the following 3 areas:

Clean environmental standards

We aim to maintain high environmental standards through sound practices and technologies in the most cost-effective manner.

Resource efficient YOG

We aim to implement energy efficient initiatives, water conservation features and 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) measures where applicable

Sustainable communities

We strive to inculcate an environmentally friendly lifestyle among YOG participants and the community in support of the YOG

Note the generous use of future tense in this shameless 3 Rs (redundant, recyclable rhetoric). Aim, strive, will etc. The only thing that’s going to be recycled here is the fallacious overuse of the word ‘sustainable’, which, in consideration of all the bright lights, lasers, electricity and fireworks usurped during the opening ceremony, means that the whole YOG became unsustainable even before a single game began. Even an ST blog has no qualms about bragging about the sheer earth-depleting resources what went into making this ‘extravaganza’, in all senses of the word.

1)32 m metallic cauldron

2)6 giant LED screens

3)And the most obscene natural resource depletion of all is the reflecting pool with 200 tonnes of water requiring 8 hours to fill

So much for 'water conversation features'

Further in the article, it’s mentioned that they ‘will also encourage transport operators to use green vehicles to shuttle the athletes, Olympic officials and members of the Olympic family.’ According to this ST report, only 1 ‘green’ bus running on hydrogen fuel cell was used, and this only to ferry athletes within NTU itself. Which means, we’ve not actually been giving way to hydrogen-electric powered ‘eco-friendly’ vehicles as the SYOGOC made it seem. And in considering the additional vehicles with YOG licence plates around, this one single green bus is a mere speck in a sea of fuel-guzzling, fume-spewing, noise-churning monsters. It doesn’t take an environmentalist with a phD to see that there’s a seriously negative eco-balance here, and it probably would have been tolerable (once-in-a-lifetime what!) if it hadn’t been shrouded in peppy sugar-coated lies.

Filed under: 2010, Bureaucrats, Campaigns/Elections, Environment, Noise, Sports, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

No forklift service by SIA

Posted on August 8, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Why did cabby shun us’, 7 Aug 2010, Speakup, The New Paper. Thanks to quirkyhill for the suggestion

(Muhammad Firdaus Abdul Wahid):… I spotted an SMRT cab some 50-60m away and flagged it.

As the taxi neared us, it slowed down and signalled to change lanes towards the side of the road where we were waiting. But it did not stop.

Instead, the taxi carried on past us and stopped about 15-20m away to pick up a middle-aged couple who were also flagging a taxi. My fiancee is handicapped and is wheelchair-bound. Shouldn’t we have been given priority?

I was appalled and flabbergasted at what the taxi driver did. I hope SMRT will investigate this incident.

Well maybe the taxi driver just didn’t see you, or maybe he decided to take a calculated risk in the event that the other party actually flagged first. In the second instance, allowing you to cut queue because you’re with someone in a wheelchair would also piss off the person who flagged first, even though they’re farther down the road. Either way, its a lose-lose situation, hence he opted for the client which would incur the lower fuel cost i.e without the hassle and heft of a wheelchair, knowing he would get a complaint letter anyway. You’re not the only one being snubbed by cabbies. Smelly NSmen with their ‘barang-barang’, people with pets, aunties with groceries fresh out from the fish market etc get dissed all the time. It’s a ruthless business decision on the cabbies’ part, so get over it already. It’s not like a life was in imminent danger and you needed to be rushed to the emergency room or something. More complaints of discrimination against the infirmed in this letter dated 12 April 1980, ‘Grandma’s forklift never came’, ST Forum.

Aren’t forklifts reserved for crates and baggage and stuff?  The only instance I can think of whereby forklifts are used to ferry people is when they’re like morbidly obese, exceeding 300kg in weight and have become one with their beds. Either that or when they’re lowering their bodies into a hole in the ground. Isn’t it unfair, Mr Abdullah, to call the lack of special services ‘disgusting’ and ‘deplorable’ when SIA was just a fledgling industry in 1980 and building up its flight capabilities, and ‘wheelchair’ friendliness was hardly a consideration, not just at the airport but everywhere else in Singapore at the time? Even now, we seem to be pandering to car owners by building more carparks than facilities for the disabled.

Filed under: 1980s, 2010, Customer service, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Kick the Chinaman

Posted on June 12, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Troublesome Rikisha coolies’ 4 May 1905, Letters to ST

A 105-year old letter with the editors of the age displaying a high tolerance for racist slur. Rikisha or rickshaw pullers were the taxi-drivers of the early 20th century, which would probably make us slightly thankful for what we have today.  Of course, any impulse to ‘kick the ah pek cabbie’ would not be tolerated in today’s context, especially if they tune in to a radio station in a language you don’t understand. Trishaws, the next stage of taxi evolution, were not spared from complaints either.

Filed under: 1900s, Racism, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Dog in taxi

Posted on May 14, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From’ Uncaged animals in taxis a safety and hygiene concern’ 14 May 2010 Speakup, New Paper

RECENTLY, I saw a dog in the front seat of a Comfort taxi along Woodlands Avenue 1 at around 8.45pm.

I am curious. Are taxis allowed to take animals as passengers? Or should I say uncaged animals?

The dog was uncaged and moving freely in the seat. This is dangerous as the safety of the driver, his passengers and fellow motorists is compromised. Hence, the incident has made me think twice about whether I would want to take a cab in the future.

I am also concerned about other passengers who would flag that cab later. The commuters of this cab might experience unhygienic conditions that can be detrimental to one’s health, say an asthma patient.

I think we all know the real reason why the complainant Ms Nurul will ‘think twice’ about taxis. Probably feels the same about park benches. Or grass patches. Or anywhere an ‘unhygienic’, ‘asthma-inducing’ dog may decide to sit. By the same reasoning, a fidgety child with hand foot mouth disease on the way to hospital is also a safety and health hazard to public commuters as well. Enough with the excuses already. This is nothing more than religious taboo, plain and simple.

Filed under: 2010, Pesky animals, Religion, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

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