The Straits Times team apparently tested out the routes with the newly raised ERP rates and found that the road conditions are pretty decent. However, they also concede that the increased rates can only do this much for now - that Singaporeans will soon get over with the raised charges and continue jamming the roads.

The only recourse left seems to be the coming school holidays, which should reduce traffic by a fair bit considering that parents no longer have to drive their children to school that early. Apparently, traffic conditions seem to improve during school holidays. Likewise, ERP rates are expected to be reduced… but judging from the time of the next review, this is quite unlikely to happen.

People interviewed seem to share the same problem as me: remembering combinations of roads to avoid jams and dysfunctional ERPs…

CTE, PIE, KPE, ECP.

For the longest time, these expressway initials have flashed past Miss Q. Tian, 24, as she drives to work.

The banker, who lives in Thomson Road and works at Suntec City, has been taking this longer route to avoid the chronic morning Central Expressway (CTE) jams.

She is on the CTE briefly after leaving her home, instead of using it all the way.

Another motorist arranges meetings after 10am and a third gets to work way before the morning jam.

Motorists like them stay clear of the congestion and charges on Singapore’s most expensive stretch.

In a move to ease the morning congestion, CTE charges hit a record high of $5 from Monday for motorists entering it via the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) slip road near Mar Thoma Road between 8.30am and 9am.

The Straits Times got onto the CTE via that slip road on Friday morning. It found the higher charges may have - for now, at least - eased the volume of traffic.

Several trips down the CTE from the PIE slip road (westbound) near Mar Thoma Road at half-hour intervals from 7.30am to 10am found traffic mostly smooth flowing.

The Straits Times was able to drive the 7km stretch to Havelock Road at speeds of between 60kmh and 70kmh and complete the journey in six minutes, except between 9am and 9.30am.

During that period, driving speed fell to just below 60kmh and the journey took seven minutes.

A check with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) real-time traffic monitoring map found that speeds never fell below 40kmh and were mostly above 60kmh during the morning rush hour on the CTE.

It is not known if there were fewer motorists on Friday, which was a day after the Deepavali holiday.

In raising the CTE charges, the LTA said average traffic volumes on the expressway have grown steadily from 2001 to last year.

It wants to keep traffic speeds during peak hours within the optimum range - 45kmh to 65kmh.

But Miss Tian, the banker who leaves for work at Suntec City before 8am, doubts the $5 charge will work after some time.

She said her route ‘may seem convoluted but it saves me half the time. Taking the CTE will take me about half an hour, but using the other expressways takes me 15 minutes in total’.

But Miss Tina Ho, 27, a financial consultant who travels before 9am to her work place in Tanjong Pagar, will stick to the CTE.

‘I will pay if it means I can get to work faster,’ said the Serangoon North Avenue 1 resident.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th November 2007

Apparently, part of the funds that Ren Ci has goes out to interest-free loans to companies - one of which is registered under the Venerable Ming Yi, who is also the honorary CEO of Ren Ci. Some people are also surprised that Ren Ci is lending money from it’s coffers.

This investigation ensued from an earlier general review and many are sombre at the news of yet another charity under probe since the National Kidney Foundation scandal of 2005 triggered tighter controls on corporate governance. The Institute of Public Character (IPC) status will also not be renew after it’s expiry on the 27th November 2007, until all investigations have completed - which could take up to 3 months, during which, donations made to Ren Ci will no longer be tax exempt.

MANDALA Buddhist Cultural Centre, a company selling Buddhist artefacts, has emerged as one of the external organisations said to have received interest-free loans from Ren Ci Hospital & Medicare Centre.

Ren Ci is being investigated by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for financial irregularities which were found during a general review, said the ministry in a statement released on Wednesday.

Mandala, whose registered owners are Mr We Beng Seng and Ren Ci honorary CEO Vnerable Ming Yi, operated from a shop unit in the Fu Lu Shou Complex in Rochor Road.

When contacted on Friday, Mr We said that Mandala was set up in 1996 with $200,000 to $300,000 from Ren Ci. Profits from the business, which was run out of a Balestier address before it moved to Rochor Road in 1997, were intended to be ploughed back to Ren Ci.

But business was poor and Mandala gave up its two shop units three years ago and took a small counter at Foo Hai Ch’an Monastery in Geylang East, of which Venerable Ming Yi is abbot.

Asked about loan, Mr We said: ‘It hasn’t been returned yet. Unfortunately, the shop is not making any profit.’ It is still running but business is ‘not very good’, he added.

The Straits Times understands that Ren Ci may have been making interest-free loans totalling millions of dollars to various companies from as far back as 1996. There appear to be discrepancies - of several hundred thousand dollars in some cases - between what the charity recorded it lent, and what the companies involved recorded as having borrowed.

Venerable Ming Yi had told Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao on Wednesday that the money was mostly recovered, with only $200,000 to $300,000 still due.

A check showed that Venerable Ming Yi is the registered owner of two businesses, Mandala and Ch’an Yun Buddhist Handicrafts & Trading. He is also shareholder of Savoury Restaurant, Bodhicherie Vegeatarian Food and Semco Design Communications Pte Ltd.

Ren Ci, which has 120 nursing home patients and 324 chronic sick patients, is holding a fund-raising Qian Shou (Thousand Hand) Guanyin Charity Concert next weekend, from Nov 17 to 18.

The government inquiry is expected to take about three months. In the meantime, Ren Ci’s Institution of Public Character (IPC) status would not be renewed when it expires on Nov 27. This means that donations made to Ren Ci by members of the public after then will not be tax-deductible.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th November 2007

I was reading the papers when I stumbled upon this article. Curious, I searched and found out that in Singapore, for 2006, there’s about 1 suicide a day, which amounts to about 360 suicides a year - about 1% that of Japan’s. In Singapore itself, this accounts for 2.4% of the total number of deaths in 2006.

As Singapore’s economy grows and as competition for jobs get fiercer, I sometimes wonder how much stress can Singaporeans take. However, from what I know so far, most people take a resign-and-search-for-another-job approach, rather than slogging too hard for a particular job. There is, though, one such person that I knew who died from being overworked. I think she was from HP… not too sure on that. Can someone verify this?

Quoting from a report (Renowned global suicide prevention experts gather for Asia Pacific Conference in Singapore, Press Release, Institute of Mental Health, March 2006) that I found,

Studies show that males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females, although women are more likely to attempt suicide than men. In Singapore, there are slightly more adolescent females between the ages of 15 to 19 years who die from suicide. Suicide is among the top three causes of death among young people aged 15 to 35 years. In the past, suicide among the elderly accounted for more than 50% of total suicides. With improvement in healthcare and with the development of community services for older Singaporeans, this rate has come down.

it seems that the elderly (accounting for more than 50% of the total suicides in Singapore) is more prone to suicide possibly health-related, as further described in the report:

Studies have shown that teens commit suicide due to relationship or family problems, or study stress. Adult suicides are mainly related to financial and marital problems while suicides in the elderly are more related to health problems and the perception of being a burden to the family.

As Singapore is looming towards an ageing population, and with statistics showing that more than 50% of the total suicides coming from this population group, it really worries me if suicide rates in Singapore will increase. However, some people have also mentioned to me that it’s more expensive to be alive and be sick than to die - and for the terminally ill, it can really clear the family of their savings.

I am trying to link this information to CPF savings, annuity and insurance. So, if you are old and sick and your insurance coverage stops, what happens? Hmm…

TOKYO - THE number of suicides in Japan topped 30,000 for the ninth straight year in 2006, the government said on Friday, urging employers to do more to tackle depression at work.

Japan’s suicide rate has shot up since the mid-1990s to become one of the highest outside the former Soviet Union as the Japanese ideal of lifetime job security crumbled away amid years of economic recession.

With more jobs now available because of a recent economic recovery, the number of suicides dropped 1.2 per cent last year, although it is still above the 30,000 mark - 32,155, according to a government white paper that quoted police estimates.

Among the Japanese who took their lives, men between 55 and 64 made up more than half, according to the white paper, the first since a suicide prevention law was passed by the government last year amid concerns about the high numbers.

About 48 per cent of the total were unemployed, with health concerns, financial difficulties and family problems seen as the main motives.

The health ministry reported in June that 29,887 Japanese killed themselves last year, a fall of 2.2 per cent from 2005.

Japan in recent years has seen a spate of heavily publicised incidents in which strangers who meet on the Internet make suicide pacts and die together from carbon monoxide poisoning in cars.

The suicide rate was brought sharply into focus in May when the country’s farm minister hanged himself.

The government white paper called on employers to increase mental health support and counselling.

In April the government set a goal of driving down the suicide rate by 20 per cent in the next decade by ensuring people have access to psychological care and are not pressured into working Japan’s notoriously marathon overtime hours.

Other planned measures include better consultation services for the unemployed, a clampdown on Internet sites that encourage suicide and barriers at train stations to prevent people throwing themselves onto the tracks. — AFP

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th November 2007

For the uninitiated like me, a stowaway is defined as:

stow·a·way /ˈstoʊəˌweɪ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[stoh-uh-wey] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun a person who hides aboard a ship or airplane in order to obtain free transportation or elude pursuers.

and not what I thought it was - something that moves the plane onto the runway =P However, the person was found in a cargo plane and not a passenger plane - the difference in that, there’s no barrier between the cargo and the cockpit. It was not known how the person managed to sneak into the plane, but this probably hints of a security lapse. For me, I am hoping that this does not happen on a passenger plane for 2 reasons:

1. Quote obviously, all the passengers’ lives may be in danger since we do not know if the stowaway(s) have any other motives
2. This will give the airports an additional reason to up their apparently insufficient security measures (and why is it that the passengers have to take the full brunt of it? are they going to bill us their electricity bill as well?)

I would think that it’s an airport issue as opposed to an airline issue - or perhaps both, since the pilots didn’t notice him until 1 hour into the flight. I guess both the airport and airline have some explaining to do. The times are different now, especially after 9/11.

ANOTHER stowaway has been found on a Singapore Airlines (SIA) plane, the second in a month.

The unauthorised passenger managed to get his way into the cabin area of a cargo plane which was flying from Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates - about 30 minutes’ drive from Dubai - to Amsterdam, Holland on Tuesday.

The Straits Times understands that he was caught sitting in one of the six seats, just several metres behind the pilots, after an hour into the seven-hour flight, which was forced to turn back.

It is believed that the first officer of the plane was going to the galley to prepare a meal when he saw the “burly Indian man”.

The man could not speak English, did not appear drunk and was calm during the flight. He was served food and drink and was not restrained during the flight.

As a precaution, however, the pilots returned to Sharjah Airport, where the man was taken away by the police there, said an SIA spokesman when contacted. The pilots were concerned that the man would turn violent if he “saw sand instead of tulips”, said sources, who added that the shade next to man’s seat was pulled down so that the stowaway would not know where the plane was heading.

On Oct 11, a Palestinian fell out of the nose wheel well of an SIA passenger plane at Changi Airport after it arrived from Kuala Lumpur.

Tuesday’s incident raises security concerns for pilots of cargo planes because unlike passenger jets, there is no cockpit door protecting them.

Investigations into the incident are underway.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th November 2007

Well, if you did, then NUS will probably be overcrowded and NTU will really be empty. There are more things than to rankings of a university - sometimes, it’s just about finding a suitable place (according to your needs, academically or financially, amongst others), sometimes, it’s about knowing what the school has (in terms of facilities, the faculty and the administration and unions), and at other times, it’s about that gut feeling.

Moreover, there are various measures and criteria that a particular ranking system has - and this may not always reflect the performance of the university well. For instance, NTU may not be known for its science subjects, but it is known for its engineering subjects (although I am not sure if that’s still true now). If a particular ranking weighs more on the “overall” performance, the ranking of NTU might be pulled down - but this does not mean that NTU is not good for any faculties at all.

Take another example, LSE is probably a good place to study economics or finance, but probably not a right place for sciences? And harvard - probably a good business school but I’m not sure about its other areas. So you see, there’s more than just rankings.

If you are at a dilemma on where to go, you should go down to the school and take a look. If they have an open house, it’s a good time to mingle with the staff and students there to find out if the place is right for you. A university’s ranking is one thing, what’s more important is if it allows you to shine and to bring out your best.

Today seems like a rather peaceful day in Singapore except maybe for the following:

• Ren Ci probe - don’t really know what started this; but a friend of mine is wondering if churches will be involved in the future
• NMP Thio getting a second letter - someone thought that the other possibility is that she’s riding on the waves and gaining more publicity; but I highly think that’s not really possible, since she isn’t much of a favourite within the gay community anyway
• Drop in NUS ranking - but it’s still an elite university in Singapore anyway; NTU is too far away and SMU is not ranked
• Dispute over Pedra Branca - which pretty much reminds me of Christmas Island, which was “sold” to Australia for 2.9 million pounds in 1957; is this why Singapore is now fighting so hard for Pedra Branca?
• More PRs and citizens - how does this affect you as a Singaporean?

Yup… that’s that’s pretty much there is today… Peaceful and quiet…

I totally forgot about my birthday. Haha… I had been so busy with studies and work that it totally slipped my mind until my friends mentioned to me about it. Actually, 1 or 2 people had been saying that my birthday is coming… but it always seemed so far away that I brushed it aside and totally forgetting about it.

Well, the good thing this year is that… it’s next Tuesday. Yes, it’s the 13th November… but you know, I sort of stopped celebrating it after I reached some undisclosed age and that’s probably when all your friends either go overseas for further studies or start working somewhere, and somehow, everyone just disappears. Well, maybe I really don’t have any friends after all.

So, what am I going to do this year? Frankly, I have no plans. It’s probably just 4 days away… but I thought it’s really kinda silly of me to go buy some cake and getting people to celebrate with you. It’s just so… erm… don’t really know how to describe it.

I remembered there was once (I can’t remember when), when my circle of friends will start planning for someone else’s birthday when it’s approaching - and it sort of became a routine, especially when some friends in the circle are not really cliquish with the birthday boy/girl, but everyone had to go because it was already a “custom” of sorts… I mean, it feels funny though. Hmm…

So what would I like to do this year? Erm, I can either

1. Join the ping.sg gathering next Tuesday that’s close to cancellation
2. Hope for some friends to celebrate with me (don’t know who will ask)
3. Get a few friends to have dinner with (don’t know who to ask)
4. Do none of the above, and just pack my stuffs after school and go back to pig out (safest, best option with zero expectations)
5. Stay at home and blog more

If you were me, which option will you chose? =)

I had a debate with a friend of mine yesterday on my way home about the entire ERP fiasco - and I qualify the use of that term because it doesn’t seem to work - despite raising charges. It did feel like I was paying a lot more for very little improvements. In addition, Singaporeans have a tendency to get over things rather quickly - just like the $2 peak hour surcharge for taxis, and they quickly get back to their usual way of doing things as if nothing happened.

For someone who used to drive (albeit for a very short while), I tried to beat the system by finding alternative roads. For instance, if I needed to go to Orchard Road in the morning, I’d try driving from the north down via Thomson Road and Marymount Road; but lo and behold! There’s a gantry there - so that didn’t work too well.

The next time round, I decided to play smart and went along Lornie Road down Adam Road before turning left towards the city. Lo and behold! Another gantry just before SCGS. The alternative way to skip all the gantries (besides the one at Orchard Road), is to go along Lornie Road, down Adam Road into Farrer Road before turning left into Holland Road towards Tanglin Road. By then, I think anyone would rather pay the ERP and get stuck in a sligher and shorter jam. In addition, you won’t believe how bad the traffic condition at Farrer Road was. Seriously, I fear the erection… of another ERP gantry at Farrer - just like what they did at Upper Bukit Timah Road.

Speaking of Upper Bukit Timah Road, I thought the ERP was meant to encourage people to use other alternative routes? If that’s the case, then what’s the point of having a gantry at BKE towards PIE and another one along Upper Bukit Timah Road? If I am staying at Bukit Panjang, I think I’m pretty much stuck with my fate if I am heading towards town.

Anyway, back to the debate. My friend - let’s call him X, believes that the LTA is genuinely making a conscientious effort to reduce the jams along the expressways and he thinks that the department is at a loss of ideas except to raise ERP charges. X feels that there is insufficient input to the department that the ERP is not working as well as it should, which I have to agree to a certain extent because to the layman on the streets, it does seem like a rather silly idea. Over time, people will just get over with the charges and just drive - ERP or not. It may act as a deterrent, but it’d never work as a good regulator.

Many a times, I toyed with the idea of suggesting to the LTA (via email or forum) to impose a really hefty charge, like $10 per gantry - which will definitely keep the expressway jam-free for a while, and observe what happens. However, I fear for my life and decided against it.

Soon after, the evening ERPs were introduced - yes, I was only talking about the morning ones so far, which is in activation from 6pm to 8pm. However, I heard news of it being extended to run from 5:30pm to 10:30pm, which I am suspecting may just affect the *new* gantry just before the PIE exit on the CTE towards the north. However, for the person who now takes cab occasionally instead of drive (i.e. me), what used to be a 3 hour jam from just before 6pm to about 9pm and at worse 10pm, now extends till 11pm or even near midnight. The frustration of being stuck in a jam at 1130pm with the taxi fare ticking away with midnight charges is… beyond words. It does seem like I’m at the losing end regardless of whichever approach I take. Are buses or the SMRT the ideal solution? I’ll leave that for another day.

To me, the ERP doesn’t seem to work for the morning, nor for the evening and what the evening ERP does seem to do, is to stretch the jam way into the night. As for the morning ERP, I have given up driving and probably not in a position to comment - but from the feedback that’s flooding the blogs and mainstream media - it doesn’t seem to help much (else the ERP charges wouldn’t have to be increased, right?).

Mr X, however, still believes that the LTA wants to resolve the jams and was suggesting that the LTA turn off not one, not two, but all gantries for 1 week to observe the status quo now compared to the times before the ERP was implemented. I was telling him that the LTA will never do that because there’s always the fear of realising that the ERP indeed does not improve traffic that tremendously and that the gantries will all become white elephants.

To me, there are Y number of cars that you have to fit into the roads. If the LTA/government decides to plant ERPs everywhere, then the initial idea to stagger jams/reduce jams/divert drivers simply becomes a revenue churning source. No one will ever give up such a gold mine, will he?