Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Out Of Town Perspective

The world looks different from Mt Sinai, Egypt, some 2,000+ metres above sea level. Definitely more peaceful and tranquil, far away from the maddening crowds of Singapore. And the rumble of the problems with the public transportation system.

The wifi router in the tour bus provided net access on the move, and an update of the SMRT woes at home. So CEO Saw is still in self denial mode, refusing to vacate her tenacious claim on the shaky throne, with the atrocious claim that only she can make things right. Will anybody be brave enough to tell her she's the one responsible for the mess in the first place? Lee Hsien Loong made the mistake of not asking Wong Kan Seng to step down after the Mas Selamat debacle, and it cost him dearly at the polls in May. By turning a blind eye, this shirking of his own accountability to the people will surely come back to haunt him in the near future. Lame duck Lui Tuck Yew doesn't have the cojones to take on the patron saint, madame Ho. No wonder the technically challenged Saw, who probably thinks a collector shoe is the latest footwear from Gucci, is acting all cocky and smug.

We had a sampling of the Dubai trains during the transit stopover, a glimpse of what a smoothly run transportation system should be like. Come to think of it, even Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur never had to put up with the SMRT snafus in the past week. Surely it's not too difficult to source a more capable transportation executive than the Duty-Free-Sales girl? With that character in charge, even the camels that we rode on to ascend Mt Sinai were more dependable.

12 comments:

  1. Wow! I just can't resist reading your blog posts. I really love the way you write! So witty and caustic! Brilliant!

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  2. Agree with Gintai . Always a pleasure to read your postings. Made my day, as a certain Clint Eastwood used to say.

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  3. A good bench mark for Singapore is HK MTR.

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  4. Chairman, SMRT12/20/2011 8:49 PM

    Sir Tattler,

    Man, your article is just dripping with thick sarcasm. Excellent and masterful! And enjoy your trip through.....the Holy Land (?) to bring solace to a soul tortured by a holier-than-thou government? :-)

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  5. no word on the impact of foreign influxes in your column? were you not taken aback by the fact tt everyone in dubai seems to be from outside the middle east? a foretaste of singapore's future...

    i kinda of freaked at my stopover in qatar when i was doing the pilgrimage. the guide on our half-day city tour was nepalese. he informed me that three out of four there is not a qatari.

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  6. Hahaa, all should go to tremeritus website to take a good look at Cleopatra Saw Phaik Hwa on sedan carried by bare bodied hunks.

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  7. Your writing style put people like the ST Chua sisters to shame!

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  8. Definitely a more sensible out-of-town perspective than the Samson guy from Barcelona.

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  9. Well - the spin has begun. They are building a Transport Centre of Excellence in Sg because we have the best blah blah blah...

    Kind of reminded me of a recent case in China's Wenzhou Rail Crash :

    //Ministry of Railways spokesperson Liu Yongping, who provided assurance that the Chinese railway system was running on "advanced technology", news anchor Bai Yansong retorted on CCTV, "The technology may be advanced, but is your management advanced? Are your standard operating procedures advanced? Is the supervision advanced? Is your respect for people advanced? Are all the minute details advanced? At the end of the day, is your overall operational capability advanced?"//

    Bottom line - do you have an excellent CEO to helm the Org going forward.

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  10. Oh, why didn't you write a piece about how you received one of the commandments while up there in Mt Sinai, that SMRT CEO should go, we would have believed every oracle said here as spoken by god and guided by st catherine's angels.

    Enjoy your holidays.

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  11. Yes should take a look at the transportation system in HK. It does not "take away" the other modes of transports like ours does when the MRT line runs parallel with our buses. There are many choices running the same route: the minibus, the trams, the buses and the more expensive taxis. With no COE and ERP, the system still runs well in that small city.

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  12. Poor Singaporean12/21/2011 4:38 PM

    I have avoided the MRT since the major breakdown on Friday. Don't want to walk in the underground tunnel.

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