E V E R Y D A Y . B E A U T I F U L . P U R P O S E F U L
June 13, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken: In a secluded bus depot male toilet, Australia, Taree – A condom vending machine. I love the pack illustrations and the punchy headlines. I see these a lot in many male toilets in Australia. Question is – where are the hot girls? Certainly not the ones next door. Perhaps the supplier should be more selective in the distribution points.)
June 13, 2011 2 Comments
Rain, rain and more rain. (And now the threat of the volcanic ash clouds!) What happened to my sunny blue Australian sky? It was gloomy and wet the entire day (and night). Earlier in the day, we were stranded in the rain and took shelter at the famous Sydney Harbor. Thankfully, the sun was out for a short 30-minute window. We ran out to the pier to shoot our “souvenir-landmark-photos”. The rain came back just when we finished our short tour at the Sydney Opera House. It was a short Day 2 for us. We were leaving for Gold Coast in the evening. Nevertheless, we managed to spend some quality time shopping and visiting the Rocks Discovery Museum before the dreadful 15-hour bus ride.
June 12, 2011 Leave a comment
Exactly 30 days after our last sad goodbye in Singapore, we finally meet again – on our way to Sydney! I wanted to give my boy a surprise. (And to fulfill my promise made to him last Dec when we left him out in the Kenting Tour!) Felicia and I didn’t tell him about my transit in Singapore. Elkan was shocked to see me at the gate last night. He had so many questions about my presence! “You mean, you flew in from Hong Kong to bring us to Australia!”, he exclaimed.
Despite the long, tiring, torturing 12-hour flight, I was energised by the presence of my loved ones and friends. This is a good vacation for all of us (trying to get away from the heat wave and typhoon up north). We love the cool midyear “winter” in Australia. As usual, I travel with an entourage of very close family friends (Meijie & Tracy). Sadly this time, Harshad couldn’t join us. Elkan was really expecting to see Harshad this trip!.
Meijie and Tracy played tour-leader this time. For the first time, I feel so relaxed and carefree. (Usually, I was the one leading the tour, planning and directing – cos I am the most difficult person in the group to please.) For once, it feels good for a change. Upon arrival, Meijie quickly checked in our luggage at the hotel and we went out to explore the city. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad – gloomy, windy, chilly and wet. We couldn’t do all the outdoor activities/shopping. Tracy brought us to the Sydney’s WildLife World and Aquarium.
We spent 3 solid good hours there! The WildLife World surpasses my expectation with their wide range of wildlife exhibits and neat glass displays. It allows both adults and children close proximity with the insects, reptiles and animals. However, the Aquarium is a little disappointing. It can’t be compared with the Underwater Worlds in Singapore or Hong Kong. It is very small and looks old. (Being the nation who owns the world’s largest barrier reefs, I expect a lot more.)
The jet-lag effects finally kicked in. By 7pm, all of us were feeling very very tired. We did a quick tour at the Sydney Sky Tower and headed straight to the hotel to rest (seems like a tradition for us now – we have been to all the city towers in Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Taipei, Macau). I hope we have sunny weather tomorrow so we can visit the shopping streets, the beach and the famous Opera House. Tomorrow night will be another long back-breaking transit (when we will leave Sydney for Gold Coast – on a 15-hour overnight coach!) Ouch…backache again – really need a good massage soon.
June 12, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken: On flight A380, Red-Eye to Sydney. It was fun in the beginning until Elkan landed his foot on my face in the middle of the night…Sigh!)
May 27, 2011 6 Comments
The availability of taxis in Singapore is becoming a big problem. For someone like me who has been away for a while, I could tell the difference. There is simply no “Comfort” in our taxis anymore. Getting from point A to point B can be frustrating and confusing. Not just for the locals but also for tourists who rely on our taxis to get around. To make things worst, there are new rules regulating where passengers can alight from a cab. Taking a cab to CBD is like taking a bus – the passenger can only alight at designated taxi stands. This is the stupidest rule someone in the authority came up with. If it is to prevent taxis from jamming the traffic and endangering other motorists, we can always introduce inlets or special lanes for taxi to stop. To create standard taxi stand for all flag-downs is fair and good, but to restrict where a passenger can alight is absolutely senseless. It hinders the convenience of taking a cab, especially on a rainy day.
One of the most common problems is our call-in system and the “mystery of disappearance and appearance of taxis at specific hours”. Any taxi driver with common sense would figure out that it is less-profitable to pick up any passengers 30 minutes before the “peak hours” (example: midnight). Why pick up flag-down passenger when there is a call-in mechanic that will earn them more money? Of course, there is no rule to restrict how our taxi-drivers should do their business. It is simply a “work smart and not hard” policy. But this is the root of the problem as many cab drivers are capitalising on the call-in “bonus cash”. Seriously, our cab companies must look into this as this is becoming a black spot in our “near perfect” tourism image. Profit mongering activities should never be encouraged.
Another confusion is the different tiers of surcharge for different types of taxis. I welcome the newer and bigger cabs but I totally detest the confusing “creative” charges (peak hours, CBD, ERP, midnight, special cabs). At some point, I gave up trying to understand when and how my meter fare ran. Gone were the days when things were simpler and straight-forward. If these are the things we have to compromise for comfort and bigger space, I rather go back to old days when we had decent clean taxis but a standard fare. Surely, what’s the point of having more bigger and newer taxis when more and more of them aren’t available?
When I was in Shanghai, taxi drivers gave discounts for midnight fare. And in Hong Kong, many taxi drivers give discounts if you do special booking. Getting a taxi in Hong Kong is relatively easy (just like how we saw it in those typical Hong Kong drama series). Strangely, Hong Kong is even more congested than Singapore but I don’t see much jams that justify ERPs or peak hour charges. In Singapore, we implemented so many tolls and surcharge to smoother traffics but I don’t see much improvements to the jams in CTE or Orchard Road during the peak hours.
Seriously, if Singapore wants to attract and bring in more tourists, we have to fix this problem. Taxi is one of the most important means of transport for our foreign guests. Taxis are the first point of contact for our visitors. And for these poor tourists, they have to start paying surcharge the minute they leave the airport – not to mention paying the additional peak hours and ERP charges if they landed during the wrong hours. Soon, the same group of tourists may find themselves stranded out there during peak hours (and they are not familiar with our bus or MRT network). It can be a frustrating and painful experience for them. Perhaps our new transport minister should get out of his cozy sedan and spend more time trying to get a taxi (or listening to the repetitive background music of our taxi hotline) in CBD during a freaking hot or wet weather.
May 22, 2011 10 Comments
Singapore Airlines launched their new website today. And shame on them, it crashed on the first day! I was “stranded” here for an hour. Even the link to “Contact Us” failed. (Instead of a generic error message page, the web can give us a more friendly message. At least a MTV of our top Singapore Girl photos while fixing the problem.)
This is my worst experience with SQ. They shouldn’t have launched a new web on a Sunday when many of their overseas offices are closed. The new website is very slow and not stable at all. It is not possible for me to view all my flights (on different days) on one single page.
In the end, after 5 hours of waiting and trying, I downloaded the SQ iPhone App to make my ticket purchase. My nightmare didn’t end there. The iPhone App was buggy and it messed up my booking names. It overwrites my wife’s name with my name even though I have logged off my Kris Flyer account. In the end, I ended up paying an extra SGD30 to change the name. (SQ didn’t think this is their problem!)
If this is not my national carrier, I will not hesitate to switch to another airline. Fix the basics before giving us another new eye-candy homepage. The Singapore Girl looks good but she is not everything.
May 13, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken by my iPhone: Sunset view from the Air, Singapore – Pulau Ubin is the island in the middle.)
May 8, 2011 Leave a comment
Yes, I am back in May again. This time for work, for casting a vote and celebrating Mother’s Day with my 2 mums and aunt. This is my shortest May visit ever – 5 days in exact – but this is one special visit of many “firsts” (voting and our dip in the infinity pool) and wonderful gatherings with my friends (Danielle, Wenxu, HongFei, Sherry, Kalinda, Juliana, Duuk, Meijie and Gareth!)
This is the first time I exercise my rights to vote. Yesterday morning, we went back to my old neighborhood to cast our votes. It has been almost 5 years since I last visited my estate! So many new roads and amenities. I saw many familiar faces and they have aged so much. I saw the uncle who used to sell sugar-cane drink at the hawker center at the voting center – but he was in a wheel-chair looking frail. From a distant, I took a glance at my flat. Sure miss those days back at home. We have been renting out that space for the last 4 years.
Right after my voting, my ex-business buddy Richard (and Chin) drove by and brought us to eat my favorite Bak Ku Teh pork soup at Joo Chiat. Later in the afternoon, I met 2 good friends from Shanghai – Johnny and Ming were in town – and we met over a short meal at Bugis.
My original plan was to bring Felicia and Elkan to Bintan for a short weekend getaway. But thanks to my company’s special corporate hotel rates, I managed to get us a good (and big) city-view room at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. As we are staying at the Sands, we decided to celebrate our Mother’s Day lunch at the hotel. I was right, my family and guests love the pool and the SkyPark! They visited us last evening and we showed them around the hotel. We have free access passes to the SkyPark and the Infinity Pool – we were just right in time to catch the 270-degree panorama sunset view on the 57th-floor.
The “Infinity Pool” is the main reason why we are here. This is the world’s largest pool at 200m high! Elkan, Felicia, Qiqi, Meijie and I had such a great time at the pool. It is 100% visually-stunning! The “infinity pool”, the city landscape and the many many hot bods and chicks! The experience is beyond words.
April 1, 2011 2 Comments
My last visit to Ho Chi Minh city was almost 3 years ago. The sleepy financial capital of Vietnam is evolving. New sky-scrapper “Bitexco” lit the evening sky. New shopping malls, casinos, office towers, hotels and branded boutiques are springing up in District 1. The city is slowly transforming. It reminded me of the good old days of Pudong in early 2000s.
Nevertheless, Ho Chi Minh needs more to speed up its growth. The city’s infrastructure is lacking. Its stagnant tourism needs a big revamp to attract more repeated visitors. The government and its ministries need to work together to find the right formula to get the city moving. Clean the street, tidy the traffic, fix the civil service standards and better city planning. Despite all these, the gem of Vietnam is in its people. They are a wonderful lot. Friendly, helpful and charming.
Crime rates are certainly on the rise. 2 of our delegates were robbed on separate occasions on the same night. The locals call these petty snatch thieves “Ali Babas”. I was told not to walk and chat on my iPhone (be it day or night). The thieves target these expensive phones (like iPhone and Blackberry). They will sneak behind you, grab your phone off your hand, punch you in the face and escape on a nearby motorbike. I increased my vigilance around me as I certainly do not want to be the third victim in the group. Guess we took our safety for granted outside our home.
Despite the bad “Ali Baba Experience”, this Ho Chi Minh trip was full of pleasant meetings and surprises. Coincidentally, Chen (my Taiwan friend) was also in town. It was his second trip and I showed him around the city. Later that evening, at our company’s welcome party at the hotel’s rooftop, I bumped into my ex-Poly school mate, Peter Lee! He was our new Creative Director in Taiwan! It was a shocking moment when I saw him walking into our party! Can’t imagine seeing him here in Vietnam after so many years! (We last met in 1999!) What a small crazy world!
I spent my last 2 nights clubbing with an old friend, Kevin (a Singaporean who was based in HCM since 2006). It was good to have him to show us the night life of Ho Chi Minh. All of us had such a fun time together here in Vietnam. (Not forgetting to mention about the low-budget movie Harshad and my boss, David shot on the streets in their hot robe and red under-pants! Opps, not supposed to say this out here!)
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