Sunday, September 25, 2011

Changi..

Just landed at Changi after few weeks of travel. What a great feeling to be back to home. Within the first week of my travel, I started missing the 'simplified services' of Singapore, efficiency of public service/transport. Most importantly the 'distance'. i.e. travel distance or driving distance from one place to another place. I love this very much in Singapore and being a city state, the country offers 30 min drive to any corner of the island :)

Oh yeah, I missed another 'unique' stuff which is sleeping without air conditioner :). I explored the option of sleeping with my windows open and with a fan. Trust me, I can have a wonderful sleep and the my mornings were wonderful too. 

Power sockets.. Hotels

I am travelling quite extensively these days and I'm quite surprised at one simple thing. This is with the power sockets in the hotels.
As you may know or experienced in the past, different countries use different kinds of power sockets. I'm not quite sure why they need to or what're the political/technical reasons behind that (you may refer to wikipedia if you are interested to find more)

Most of the hotels are happy to supply power adapters/converters but in the first place why can't they simply implement universal sockets where travelers doesn't have to bother about connecting the ugly and bulky adapters.
I'm sure the costs outweigh benefits in the user satisfaction and compared to the amount of money/resources these hotels waste, I'm sure the change doesn't cost a lot. I was quite happy when I saw the EU decision to standardize mobile phone chargers. In the same way, hope there will be some standardization on the other commonly used electronics to simplify our lives.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

SingTel 3G network down again..

Source: CNA

SingTel mobile customers have been experiencing intermittent difficulty in making calls and accessing the 3G network since Tuesday. The cause of the problem has been traced to a software glitch.

Not again dear SingTel. As if the 3G network is almost unusable in the city area with frequent handovers between 3G-2G. I remember the excellent coverage and great quality SingTel offered not long ago. Not sure what's wrong with the network or people it went terribly wrong. Now a days, I don't even connect continuously for 10 min on a 3G network in City area be it in building or on the street.

Hopefully singtel'll wake up before people start to change service providers.