A Singaporean In Australia

A Singaporean Son - 

Dear SG son, I am flattered that you have asked for my story - I am a young grad just starting out and to be honest, I have no rags to riches or inspirational story to share - just one of someone who was lucky that my work paid off, and someone who thinks a lot, and gets frustrated with a lot of things in general.

I have a whole collection of my private writings and rants that I usually write in my own private blog / Facebook, and I do write quite a fair bit as a hobby in my spare time as well so this will be a combination and short summary of both my story and everything that I feel is wrong with the system in Singapore - in other words, all the push factors that brought me to Australia. 

I'm your typical middle class kid - all the comforts and pampering through the 90s when the economy was booming, my parents held good professional jobs, all my older cousins and relatives graduated from university, started professional jobs and rode the wave of the economy and did well, and the same was expected of me - anything else was ITE - It's The End.

I struggled through the education system despite always getting praise for my writing and oral communication skills, simply because I wasn't good at memorizing textbooks, and I know a couple of friends who went through the same thing. This caused a considerable amount of grief in my family especially with the pressure created to follow the Singaporean dream of going to university and getting a comfortable office job. I even started to learn to fix cars in preparation for my possible failure at O levels! 

On hindsight that was a blessing in disguise as it made me realize I was different, and so are many other people - just because someone is in ITE, elite JC, or whatever - doesn't make someone better than the other person - it is the rigidity of the system that had failed to cater for the diverse needs of a population, and it will be this rigidity and inability to adapt that will eventually see us lose our competitive edge after all these years of success. 

After all the doom by my teachers and parents, I managed to get into a business course in poly with decent O level results. I did well in the first year, before getting dragged down by rote learning subjects in the 2nd and 3rd year and to me, a pointless internal attachment year. I ended up with a decent GPA, but apparently only the top 5% of each poly intake goes to university. This pretty much scuppered any hopes I had of going to local university (despite all the promises when we signed up - this is one issue I have always had with the polytechnics that I have written at greater length about - don't mislead the students! Also, there is a general perception that poly students are half past six and struggle in university - well it's the system's fault then isn't it?) 

So at this point I had to convince my fervent pro-establishment mother to send me overseas. Now she is the type that has all the best intentions and no one else is allowed to criticize her but me, but she is basically the type that has been brainwashed by stories of how "quitters" like us go overseas, take drugs, spend parents money, etc and it took a lot to convince her that to get that decent Singapore dream, I had to go overseas for studies (especially since they could easily afford it). 

Life in Australia was good - I worked part time earning minimum wage while being able to play sports and write in my free time, even landing a gig writing for a large organization in Australia. And drank lots of beer. 

Of course, as Singaporeans back home always said, it's easier in Australia, just as is everything that everyone else does. This condescending attitude and "sinkie-pwn-sinkie" attitude was brought over to Australia for most Singaporeans - I personally found most of the Singapore club members to be a bunch of wankers who only seemed interested in talking to this ah Beng after they found out I had good grades (which I forgot to mention, lol). 

So anyway, I ended up mixing with a whole bunch of other people - Malaysians, HKers, Chinese, and Singaporeans equally disenchanted with their fellow Singaporeans. Like I said, I got good grades through a mix of luck and hard work, studying while my friends were out partying, taking instagrams of their food, or joining those wanker international student club activities - not that I didn't go for the odd party every weekend.  

The good grades turned out kinda useful, I got a few minor grants / scholarships as an international student (so much for not being good enough for Singapore's education system), got through (but ultimately got rejected) numerous Australian company interviews as a graduate. At least I got through to the interview stages, I didn't even get any replies from Singapore and was feeling pretty demoralized by the end of graduation - caught in the middle as an international student who finds more barriers in the foreign country, but with no home advantage in Singapore either. 

In the end, I managed to pass IELTS and get PR, and my relatives managed to pull some strings to get me into a Singapore company. I worked for a year in Singapore before finally getting a job in Australia that paid double and was a "promotion" in a sense - doing something I was much more interested in, and with an equally good promotion track, and moved over. My Singapore bosses lamented how I was on the good promotion track in the firm, but totally understood my decision to migrate. 

The only thing that left a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth was how I had to go one big round to be recognized - and the frustration I would have faced if my parents didn't have the resources available to send me overseas. 

I feel this says something about the system that I previously mentioned - because we have been so focused on economic growth, we have been concentrating all our resources on a certain type of individual without catering to the positives that a diverse population can bring - and now, caught out, we resort to bringing in expensive expats who exhibit exactly these characteristics we didn't give a shit about previously. Let's use an analogy, playing scrabble - you are holding out for a certain word, but you are so obsessed with getting this word u discard all your other good cards and when u realize u need those cards, u go oh shit - and end up paying a large premium for those cards u originally had but discarded. 

That is the irony of someone like LimpehFT, who has a large following on his blog, who is inspirational - I look forward to the day I return to Singapore as an expat, telling people how they need my "expertise", ha ha.  

Thank you for listening to my story -my advice to anyone making the move, especially younger grads, like has already been said countless times is to open your mind, be humble, listen to people but have a mind of your own to filter out what is right and what is self-interested bullshit. 

Don't listen to the oldies who tell you Singaporeans of my generation are soft - what did you expect me to do, throw away all my certs and start working as a cleaner to prove a point to someone I don't give a shit about? The expectations of my generation are much higher than those of the previous ones and it is about making the most of our opportunities. Like I said previously, everything done by others is always easier - this is just self-interested bullshit by the older generation to prove they are better. 

Don't follow the crowd, and do what other people find too tough to do - best of luck to everyone else! 

By the way, I am an accountant based on the nominated skill list - I got in through the graduate visa scheme. 

Yours sincerely, Yoda

******

Yoda, hi.

Truly inspiring to me, your story is.

Do. Or do not. There is not try.

Young not make one unqualified to seek for the future he proclaims.

asingaporeanson

Yeah I'm slow but today I learnt that Singapore has implemented its first Minimum Wage policy by mandating cleaning firms to pay their cleaners at least $1,000 a month for their work. The government was quick to announce that this was to be implemented only on targeted industries and not national wide. As we know, the Singapore government used to avoid the idea of Minimum Wage like plague. That meant that we are very inexperienced in handling such a system.

I don't think I will be the first one will point out the fallacies of their new model for the cleaners. In fact, most of them will have already been covered by bloggers making their rounds. I suppose a glaring one which came to my mind immediately was that employers would start increasing workload for their cleaners so that they would take more hours to complete their jobs every day. The workers will be paid $1,000 of course but when they work more hours than before, they get paid less per hour. In fact, that asshole bosscould simply give them the workload of 2 person for their 'pay increment'. Haha. Screw you peasants, says the boss.

So what happens if the government implemented the minimum wage of cleaners to be paid by the HOUR instead? They probably should have and give these bosses a chance to grind their creaky brains. Just yesterday I already read interviews in the Shitty Times about how they warned that their operating cost increased by 30-40% over the last few years because of labour cost and these cost were to be eventually pass on to the consumers. Ha, does that mean the rumors of cleaners earning $600-700 a month in the past were actually truths then? They had denied much of the claims previously but slapped themselves in the face later. So costs will be passed on to us? Sounds like a threat to me. In case you didn't notice, the Shitty Times have been spamming similar reports of the same context but different content to make Singaporeans subconsciously go against the concept of minimum wage without knowing why exactly. SME owners would have been annoyed at how the media portrayed them after trying their best to keep their businesses afloat and minimising their "cost passing" to their consumers to gain a competitive advantage. The government would like us to believe every business operates at a cartel basis like our petrol kiosks. Perhaps the best examples are our transportation companies - suka suka, increase fares, suka suka pass on costs to consumers, no business no problem. Perhaps those cleaning companies that the Shitty Times interviewed were hired by some companies we better not know about, such as those in charge of sweeping your HDB corridors. Suka suka increase price also have business. If these companies were doing business with normal Singaporeans on the streets, they'll be dropped without hesitation with the next option readily available. So you believe the Shitty Times?

Mr Tharman the Shiny added on to the discussion. He was reportedly to have stressed the importance of not having a minimum wage system because it has "crippled countries in Europe and the United States, particularly in worsening employment conditions." He elaborated the justifications to his claims,

I don't like the way the government people use straw man arguments to make their points. It won't be that bad if they don't do it all the time but they do. I could very well say Kangaroos are the reason WA was the hottest place on the planet on 11th January 2014. However ridiculous that sound, the fact that there isn't a large population of Kangaroos anywhere else in the world outside Australia makes that difficult to refute at an instance. So when a politician comes out with a straw man argument that sounds remotely possible, or even correct, with the help of a media constantly drumming the idea into our minds, what would the result be? The population would simply take that as the truth without questioning. Politicians time their claims perfectly well to their advantage. When Australia is doing well, our Ministers would mention nothing of it. The media would be targeting other areas to smear the idea of migrating to Australia [Read: Letter from Shitty Times Journalist]. When Australia goes through an inevitable recession in the future (if not already), you can trust our Ministers to tell Singaporeans that welfarism, minimum wage and work/life balance is the cause of it. Heck, Singaporeans will probably even believe it if the Ministers tell us Australia's economy isn't doing well because there isn't ERP in Perth and brand new cars cost only $20,000. Didn't Singaporeans lap up every word Lee Kuan Yew said when he claimed that Japan's economic downfall was caused by the reluctance to open their floodgates to cheap foreign workers? (to justify why Singapore should)

So why did the government decided to give the cleaning industry preferential treatment by mandating a minimum wage but ignore other industries, such as FnB or construction, where many workers are exploited just like the cleaners? Whatever the reason, the cleaners have now joined the ranks with Ministers of Singapore being the prestigious occupations with minimum wages. 

Haven't been posting a single thing due to a combination of being sick and having a sudden rush of unusual tasks at the workplace to prepare for the ISO audit which left me so exhausted and sick since Monday that I had to take a nap before dinner and go to bed early. Albany had to be contented with playing on her half asleep daddy before dinner, wondering why I didn't spring up to play catch with her these few days. I did jerked up once, when she made a loud pop with her head against the wall and quickly grab her to soothe her pain but shortly after I had to go into slumber from the effects of flu medicine.

Little Albany was sick over the last weekend where Perth experienced the hottest January day in almost 30 years. It was a torrid time for both Albany and me. She was sick and should be resting to get well but it was too hot to sleep. Her flu was made worse in an air conditioned room. We all experienced being sick under unusual conditions before. These surely do us no favours in hope to get well. Her constant whines were expected and so were the hugs she wanted from daddy to feel better. As a result, my face became the target board for her constant sneezing. Either that or risk my ears imploded by her cries. I chose to be sick. 

Though this wasn't the first time I was sick in Perth, it remained one of the rare cases. Air quality is really great here and my health has been great until Summer - where I am prone to heat related illnesses such as sore throat and fever that I used to get in regularity in Singapore. Unfortunately, when one is sick, somehow life has a knack of demanding more out of you during this period. I had to lead my workers to do a one-time installation of new steel racks in the workshop. The dust from drilling concrete made my entire week pretty much hellish at work. The demarcation painting throughout the workshop didn't help either but at last all these were behind me. We are ready for the ISO audit.

Didn't I talk about that briefly last year, where we received the award for the first time? Have one year just passed on like that? I didn't know if I should feel happy with how quickly time passed or not. There was always a nagging feeling that I had done very little to improve myself and provide better for the family. Before I could even sit down and reflect on 2013, half of the January of 2014 had already passed. The Christmas holidays zipped pass without a glitch. I found myself shrouded in weariness. That could be due to my recovering self, we tend to feel both the physical and mental strain during this stage. Perhaps our bodies get sick on purpose to force us to correct our unhealthy life habits and give us an opportunity to slow down and communicate with our souls. I have probably done plenty of that in my half asleep state during the afternoon naps this week.

So what have you achieved for the past year? Unfortunately my highlight of 2013 was being diagnosed with cancer. I hope you had better luck. Well it wasn't that bad for me really for I am still here writing things. Hope I'll survive 2014 unscathed. This should be a good year. My buddy successfully did his marriage proposal late last year and would be getting married this year. I had been waiting for this for some time now. Winking Doll will be getting married this year too. [link] That's a wedding a tad too far for me to attend, even if I am invited. I wish these couples smacking good weddings.

How did you find this picture? I took this with my mobile phone and I was very pleased with it. 

Why?

Because I am no photographer and I hate myself sometimes for taking shit photographs that did no justice to the beautiful feel of a place or moment I experienced. This morning something changed for the better though I am not going to take any credit for that. Nothing has changed. Same shitty mobile phone on auto camera settings and same shitty man-who-clicked-button (I cannot call myself a photographer, for that will be an insult to the photography gods i know). This time round, I had nature on my side and plenty of luck because I have no knowledge whatsoever how to position a camera and use natural light to my advantage. Result: I took the best picture of nature (if you exclude that jetty) in my life. I knew this wouldn't go on a calender or a motivation poster or make the wrapping paper on Thomas Lim's portfolio but I took it, that was what it mattered.

That was taken at 0515 hrs at Como Jetty, Perth. The sun rises pretty early during Summer eh? It would be pitch darkness at the same time during Winter. So why was I there? To catch crab. Who were I with? Grace and Stephen. Did we catch any? No.

While I was taking some pictures, I noticed no crabs came to the shore. All I saw was plenty of blower fish and large schools of tiny fishes. So I knew we would go home empty handed even before we got started. It didn't mattered, so we tried anyway since we wee already there. It was a last minute impromptu decision requested by Grace on Friday. The environment was pretty good at 5am in the morning. I doubt I would enjoy it as much later in the day when the folks began to carry out their water activities under one of the hottest days in Perth. So three of us were able to enjoy a chat without humans and animals providing background music. It was lovely. If only we had that in Singapore, after which we would head somewhere nearby for Roti Prata or Mee Rebus or something.

Fortunately, Steph was in good mood and made us very good Mee Siam, without hum (because it wasn't to our old fashioned taste), and we savored all up at Steph's rental house in Como. That could very well be my last meal with them in that house. The couple would be moving to their own home very soon. Good memories folks. Times went by.

Other than the useless Blow Fish, the area were swarmed with Jelly fish. So we spent more than an hour watching Jelly Fishes flipped flopped aimlessly around while checking our empty crab traps. I told Grace I was convinced that Jelly Fish were high tech bio-surveillance equipment planted by aliens. We have Rover and the aliens have Jelly fish. I fished one up just to have a closer look at alien technology.

  

Work will begin early this year on a 12 month benchmarking study, with SGD$529,000 awarded to Murdoch by the Singapore Government through the Singapore Innovation and Productivity Institute.

“Singapore is currently in a period of low productivity growth, compared to other developed nations,” said Murdoch University’s Singapore Dean Associate Professor Peter Waring.

“The Singapore Government has identified this as its most important economic priority as it wishes to remain competitive internationally.” Read the rest [link]

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Perhaps I'm too new to Australia to appreciate their level of innovation in manufacturing. The company I am working for is using almost pre-historic equipment to produce and we are constantly begging the boss in Asia to get provide us one of those state-of-the-art machines they are using in Singapore and Malaysia. Of course, I understand that my company is not a good representation of the Australia manufacturing industry. Still, are the manufacturing industries Australia particularly productive and innovative such that Singapore should fork out half a million bucks to research on? Didn't the Straits Times and the PAP government repeatedly tell Singaporeans that the "White Thrash" were too lazy, unproductive and it would be dire to learn from their ways?

So something has changed since eh?

My first thought was why Australia and not Germany or even Korea? Only our government can answer that, I suppose. I can't help but laugh when I read the second last paragraph of the article which goes like this, “Singaporeans are already looking to Australia for its innovative practices, notably in the construction industry."

Oh right. So we are talking. 

If the Singapore government is interested in improving construction standards and innovation, there is nowhere better to look than Japan. And by that I don't mean the Japanese main contractors in Singapore. It is widely accepted that the Japanese run their construction projects with the most efficient, clean and safe methods. I think that is the way to go. Truth to be told, I'm secretly delighted that some government body actually realised that our standard of our construction industry in Singapore is, for want of a better word, third world. I might not have been in the construction industry for a long time but I had seen enough examples from people of all levels - be it business owners, construction managers, project engineers or site supervisors - regard the mother of all construction solutions to be "put more people." I.e. to spam the project with as many foreign workers on the job as possible to finish the projects in the shortest possible time.

I apologise for using an illustration of the Egyptians using Jewish slaves to build their ancient buildings. That would be an insult to their amazing engineering that stood the test of time. Unlike the masterwork of the Egyptians, the recent projects in Singapore were completed by flogging the dead horse and had been in shambles in terms of quality. Just look at the Downtown Line, leaky new structures everywhere and things going out of operation. In terms of labour resource management, it was as good as modern slavery. I believe I do not need to elaborate on this. I had seen it with my own eyes during my A&A project in NUS AS2 building. Foreign workers, being paid on $2 per hour were sent in by the doves by a competitor contractor to finish the job quickly late one evening, away from public eye and where safety officials were more 'relaxed'. The foreign workers carried chunky steel channels by hand, sometimes 8 of them together to lift a heavy one like how the older Singaporean sons did their log PT during National Service. I asked the manager of that team why he chose to do that instead of hiring a crane to do the job. His reply was,

As our project was on the roof of level 5, 6 and 7 of the Arts and Social Science Block 2 building, we needed at least a 150 tonnes crane in order to stretch its boom to reach level 7 from the nearest ground safe enough for a crane set up. That was probably a classic situation of construction innovation. Innovation? Is there any incentive to do that where there is an easier way out between a business owner and the bank? In our case, spamming 50 workers on the roof appeared to be one. Can you beat 50 workers with innovation to paint a house or to sweep up the streets? Not when they cost $100 an hour. It would cost the Australian boss $1000/hour to hire 50 labourers or $2000-3000/hour to hire 50 tradesmen. Do you understand the secrets of innovation now, Singapore government?

Innovation is a motivation. It is not a talent exclusive to any race or nationality. Even Singaporeans, who are known to be rigid in the mind due to our education system, can innovate. Before the government spends half a million bucks, they should understand the philosophies behind motivations of innovation. Some say necessity or laziness is the mother of all inventions. I think there is wisdom in these sayings. If the Aussies have excess to a $2 per hour labour pool, would I still witness so often here how entire workshop steel structure were constructed by only 2 tradesmen, a mobile crane, a forklift and a boom lift?

Truth to be told, there is very little we can do to emulate the Aussie way of construction. By making the grave mistake of forcing out the skilled tradesmen during our fathers' generation, we have lost a full generation of know-hows and skillful hands that education will never replace in a short 1-2 decades. The government was too casual in approaching this matter and thought that cheap foreign workers were a viable solution for the long term. Perhaps they are slowly beginning to see light to the folly of their ways. Who knows, that $529,000 may just go down the drain after the officials found the studies unimpressive and "irrelevant" solutions to Singapore's needs. We'll never know. Does anyone in Singapore know we spent this money in the first place?

I work in the south-western region of metropolitian Perth. So it is an everyday thing to drive past through the City of Cockburn. Lately I spotted some curious signage all over the city that cried, "Hands off Cockburn!" Many of these signage were not professionally made. Some were even handwritten and erected casually by the side of the road. However, the messages on these were far from casual and I could feel the messengers were dead serious about that.

The protestants were residents of Cockburn. (pronounced as Ko-burn, in case you have a picture of a charred dick in your mind) They were protesting against the state government's intention to break up the City of Cockburn and merge the northern and southern parts to the City of Melville and Kwinana respectively. My curiosity with the random signs led me to do a brief read up online and learnt that the Cockburn community actually held a protest outside the Parliament House last month to have their voices heard: They did not want their City to be carved up and given to other councils.

At the rally, the Cockburn community submitted its own proposal, (I will spare you the details) along with almost 11,000 signatures from the electors showing the community support for their proposals. What impressed me was the committee behind this only took ten days to come out with a 100-page proposal and manage to amass close to 11,000 people to support it. Quite a feat, if you think about how logistically challenged it is for them to do so as compared to our situation in Singapore. That only tells me one thing, the community spirit is very strong over here, much like the Kampong Spirit that used to exist many pockets of Singapore.

These protestants would be arrested by the police if they had done that in Singapore. One would wonder why. Did the protest (shown above) look like a Little India riot to you? Were the protestants violent or disorder? No. Did they cause public inconveniences? No. The most important question Singaporeans should think about, do we have a right to voice out against decisions of the government that we do not agree with? The community of Cockburn had it and did it. Whether or not their proposal would be accepted later was inconsequential to me (but obviously not to them) because I felt the whole thing was a new experience, a new sensation to me altogether. It made me feel the place was actually alive, not the boring Perth that Singaporeans love to assume. It made me feel that people here are living things who care about the people, community groups, nature and identity around them unlike the absolute apathy that I used to experience in "vibrant Singapore."

I wrote this not to condone protests or encourage people to become dissidents but to highlight the importance of having passionate close knitted communities in Singapore. In an environment where the government tells the people regularly to "take care of ourselves", my point couldn't be emphasize enough. Unfortunately, our community spirit is fast dwindling. Think about it, if we cannot even be attached to our surroundings or take pride in our community identity, how will the future generation be take pride in their country? 

If you want proof that the people don't give a damn what happens to their constituencies, just look for anyone who gave a damn when the GRCs of Cheng San or Eunos were broken up to combine with the other GRCs or wards. Most of us didn't even understand the impact of these arrangements. Will the residents of Potong Pasir voice their unhappiness (if any) when they become part of a GRC in the next elections? To us, a constituency border is just a boundary line on the map, only applicable during the General Elections. Besides, what can we do about it? Protest like the Cockburn residents? I am not sure at all Singaporeans would bother to do so even if protesting is made legal in Singapore. It isn't about protesting, it is about whether we even care or not. We don't and probably never will.

Perhaps the system was designed with the purpose of segregating the people so that power can be eternally maintained since the divided can be easily conquered., combined with the constant emphasis on materialism, so that the people would focus solely on material pursuits and be useful economic numbers in their entire life span. What an amazing model. Such brilliance. But life is so cruel for the people who woke.

Every Singaporean knows 'custom very strict' and every one has their misconceptions of what is or isn't allowed to be imported in. Bear in mind, I used the word 'import' loosely here. I meant to say bringing back food stuff from our overseas trips instead of full fledged commercial importing (which is a different set of restrictions) So, this link provided by Mrs Liew was really useful for me and I would share it with you today. That should officially mark the end of the "Egg can, egg cannot. Meat can, meat cannot" confusing debates among us and set things right from now.

Even vacuum sealed meat items are not allowed. That probably explain why folks gave me the hairdryer treatment when I suggested bringing Bak Kwa in. "NOT ALLOWED!!" What a scream. But read on the requirements under jerky.

Isn't Bak Kwa jerky? I shouldn't be asking this. It is a fucking jerky. So instead of the traditional box + paper wrapped pack, we have to request for a vacuum seal in a nice commercial bag if we want to bring it back. Who says we cannot bring Bak Kwa in? A casual check suggested Singapore is under one of the approved manufactured countries so just make sure your Bak Kwa is from Singapore and not Malaysia. If it doesn't show "Manufactured in Singapore" on the vacuum pack, the bin will eat up your Bak Kwa at the customs. Limit weight is 1kg. So don't go overzealous. Remember to tell the customs officer the proper terms. Meat = bin. Bak Kwa = bin. Jerky = looks great, can I have some?

Tell you what, I'll attempt to bring some in after CNY and put the money where my mouth is. Stay tuned and see if you'll see my smug face or sorry ass at the end of Summer.

2. Dried, ground spices and spice mixes weighing no greater than 1 kilogram are allowed into Australia

So long they have labels, packaged properly blah blah. So, I can bring in my emperor chicken herbs and bak kut teh spices etc. But wait, when they stated the 1 kilogram limit, do they meant the total weight of ALL spice types or is that the limit per spice? I believe it is for the total, else it will be too good to be true. I'll check with the customs officer when he inspects my stuff. As most spices are generally lightweight, 1kg is adequate for combination of spices.

3. Tea and dried herbs are allowed into Australia

4. Coffee/Coffee Beans are allowed into Australia

Another 1kg limit but all products must be roasted. I'm no coffee drinker but the Missus may be interested.

5. The Mooncake mystery

Confectionery

Cakes, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, biscuits and bread

I think a Mooncake falls under the description of confectionery instead of cakes, since lotus paste, for example, is a form of toffee. It was specifically stated so long the ingredients are cooked with the main product (in the website they gave nuts and fruits as example) and not applied raw afterwards, it is allowed. As far as I know, yolks are baked dead with traditional mooncakes, why wouldn't it be allowed? Bear in mind, "Snow skin" mooncakes are not baked so any yolks in its paste you will not be able to justify to the custom officer it passes the requirement.

Also, think about it. Eggs are used plentifully during the process of cake baking. If cooked beaten eggs (in cakes) are allowed, is there a reason cooked unbeatened eggs in Mooncakes are not allowed? That have been bugging my mind whenever someone says mooncakes with yolks are not allowed into Australia but a Christmas cake is. 

As I am not a Mooncake person so I will not be bringing them in. Why don't you try and let me know?

Though shadows fall still the stars..find their way.
Awaken from a quiet sleep. Hear the whispering of the wind.

SINGAPORE: Starting this June, bus operators SBS Transit and SMRT will be rewarded for arriving at bus stops on schedule.

They will also be penalised if their buses do not run on time.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) plans to introduce a two-year trial for this carrot-and-stick scheme, called the Bus Service Reliability Framework - similar to a system adopted in London.

With the help of GPS technology, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will track bus arrival times at selected bus stops.

Bus operators will then be given an average score based on this data, which will determine how much they receive in rewards or penalties.

A total of 22 bus services will be involved in the pilot scheme.

The services will be monitored and compared to an established baseline of estimated waiting times, which is derived from historical performances.

This will determine the monthly incentive amount, which goes up to a maximum of S$6,000, or penalty amount, which can go up to S$4,000.

LTA said the new Bus Service Reliability Framework, previously known as the Quality Incentive Framework, should help to reduce waiting times, and ensure regular intervals between buses.

Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew said: “It's to try and resolve some of these bus-bunching issues where you may have two buses coming together, and then a long wait if you miss those two buses.

"We're trying to work with operators to make sure that they can time their buses to come at more regular intervals. They need to put more manpower at the back end, monitor it more closely at their ops centre and give direct instructions to the bus driver so that they can better space out the arrivals of the buses."

However, transport analyst Terence Fan pointed out a loophole in the system. Operators could simply state a longer journey time, so buses are seen to be punctual.

But moving forward, Dr Fan said that the reliability framework could work well with a tender system, like the one in London.

He said: “In London, the bus routes operate on a tender process, which means that the operators have to bid for the route for only a number of years. If they don't perform well, they could lose the right to operate the route. This really gives the operator a higher, longer-term incentive to be punctual."

The LTA has already tried this business model on a smaller scale, by awarding contracts to private operators for the new City Direct Bus Services.  [link]

******

Common sense is on chronic shortage in Singapore. Supply is urgently required. We can't get enough of evidence of this. Just a few weeks ago, I read about the most ineffective policy [link] of 2013. Now this. Coincidentally, Minister Lui Tuck Yew had a hand in both of these remarkably thoughtless policies. No, perhaps that is consistency, not coincidence. If there is one thing to consistent about this current batch of policy makers, it's stupidity.

Prior to this new system, operators were fined for their performance lapse. Yet fine after fine, the situation have not improve. We have to understand a fine system puts any company under pressure to perform. No CEOs or managers will welcome a poor record of being fined under their charge and will undoubtedly do their utmost to minimise such occurrences. If we can assume managers as well as the crew under their charge to be diligent and responsible, I believe no one, right down to the last bus captain, would want to be late on the schedule.

So why are buses still late, why do buses come in twos and threes after a long interval? That is the root of the problem that deserves a in-depth study in order to formulate an effective policy to nip the issue in the bud. However, according to Lui Tuck Yew, the operators did not put enough manpower "at the back end" and that regular arrivals of the buses would be achievable if adequate back enders monitor their buses at their ops centre and give direct instructions to the bus drivers in the front line.

That simple eh? We should have done that a long time ago. 

If Lui Tuck Yew took the bus to work more often, besides that few times after the General Election, he would have notice why buses arrive in twos. Traffic congestion slows down the first bus. By the time bus arrives, there will be more passengers than usual waiting. So the bus will require extra time than planned for boarding at every bus stop until the bus is completely full. Meanwhile, the second or third buses behind gain on the first because there are less or no passengers along the way. The bus drivers themselves know that and very often you hear them calling out, "Wait for the bus behind," or "Behind bus coming!" to encourage frantic passengers to stop their impossible pursue to board the packed bus and further delay the bus from moving out. That situation is as real as it can and any regular user can see that.

So how will pumping more back end staff resolve the situation? When the first bus is already delayed by traffic congestion, why should the back end staff tell the drivers? Ordering the second and third bus drivers to slow down or even stop completely so that buses arrives "on regular intervals"? That may satisfy the KPI but it does not help the situation on the ground at all. Or asking the first driver to drive faster to make up for lost ground? At the risk of safety? Is that even possible during the peak hours congestion? Unless the bus company is willing to plant 3-4 empty buses along different points of the bus route to slot in whenever a bus is delayed, there is only that much the back end team can do. Did not put enough manpower in the back end? I'm afraid Lui Tuck Yew had gone way off the mark. He may actually be better off addressing traffic congestion for buses or engineering a faster system for passengers to board, alight and pay fares.

Now, about the new scheme called "Bus Service Reliability Framework" (similar to a system adopted in London.) Oddly enough, it wasn't too long ago the government boasted it has a World Class public transport system over the likes of London and Toyko. Suddenly, copying a London system has became sexy. How does that work? Rewarding the bus operators for arriving on time and punishing those who didn't. If the bus operators could not achieve any significant improvement despite the old fining system, why can a reward change that? If a reward changes the situation, does that mean that the bus operators didn't give a fuck to perform all along, until they have an incentive of doing so? This doesn't make any sense to me. The motivation to implement such a policy highly suggest the policy makers have absolutely no idea about the root of the problem.

Try telling your boss you need a reward for turning up for work on time. Heck, you need a reward for waking up in the morning at all, to make your boss rich. If that doesn't sound ridiculous to any of you Singaporeans out there, your boss would gladly explain why with his middle finger. Lui Tuck Yew is expecting us tax payers to do otherwise. I don't know who is the greater fool here. The clueless politician or the people who voted him in.

The transport analyst Dr Fan did put up a key factor to the success of the London framework. He said, 

Nothing works better as a motivation than the risk of losing a livelihood. There are many industries that operate on this shape up or ship out mentality. It is nothing new. So why are we making our transport industry an exception? Does a reward system work better than booting an undeserved operator out of the system? Needless to say, the Temasek protected operators would never be allowed to be exposed to the cruel reality of efficiency. Will Lui Tuck Yew's new idea work? Your arm chair transport analyst says the plan is doomed to fail even before it begins.