Premium or Private Bus Services to Changi Business Park

Another week @ CBP and few more complaints from my colleagues who end up late due to this morning rain.

I did some complaining couple of weeks back on the lack of public transport facilities to CBP here, and just realized that even the LTA website Publictransport doesn't show all the premium bus services to CBP. So I started watching around me and given my little work load (thanks to the early CNY holiday mood) I end up with below table.

Most of these buses end up @ the same place at CBP. Also I didn't updated the return trip but they are available in the evening around 5.30 ++++. If you are one of those lucky guys / girls staying around Sengkang you can find plenty of buses till 9. 

Also most of the buses accept Flashpay cards or the new EZlink cards. By the way in my observation the old SMRT Creditcard (EZ-Link) failed to work. So better keep some cash :).

Try to take the earliest bus (you need to wake up few min earlier) as these buses tend to be crowd free. The last buses or peak period buses are pretty busy and often I see people standing (??) which is not allowed as per LTA. But seems people prefer to stand for 30-45 min rather than getting squeezed for hours in MRT.

Also take note of morning traffic jams along TPE (Now a days it seems a MUST between Jalan Kayu to Pasir Ris). So give some buffer if you've options. 

On top of these services, there are plenty of small buses or vans carrying 10-15 people. May be these are adhoc services or kind of carpool or vanpool services.

I'l update as and when the latest info is available or if I see some new services.

Happy traveling :)

Operator Name	Bus No	Time	Starting	Ending	Interim Stops	Price	Comments
http://smartbus.com.sg/	N.A	8:15	Sengkang	CBP		$-	No bus number now. Will update if there is any
	N.A	8:20	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:40	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:45	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:00	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:05	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:25	Hougang	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:30	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:00	Punggol	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:25	Punggol	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:45	Punggol	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:05	Punggol	CBP		$-
	N.A	9:20	Punggol	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:30	Sembawang	CBP	Yishun, Khatib	$-
	N.A	8:30	Pasir Ris	CBP	Simei	$-
	N.A	8:15	Braddel	CBP	Toa Payoh	$-
www.mybus.com.sg	740	7:30	Sembawang	CBP	Yishun, Khatib	$3.50
	740	7:40	Sembawang	CBP	Yishun, Khatib	$3.50
	740	7:50	Sembawang	CBP	Yishun, Khatib	$3.50
	741	7:30	Yio Chu Kang	CBP	Ang Mo Kio	$3.00
	741	7:50	Yio Chu Kang	CBP	Ang Mo Kio	$3.00
	741	8:00	Yio Chu Kang	CBP	Ang Mo Kio	$3.00
	742	7:25	Serangoon North	CBP	Hougang, Sengkang, Punggol	$3.00
	742	7:40	Serangoon North	CBP	Hougang, Sengkang, Punggol	$3.00
	742	7:55	Serangoon North	CBP	Hougang, Sengkang, Punggol	$3.00
	742	9:00	Sengkang	CBP	Hougang, Sengkang, Punggol	$3.00
	728	7:30	Sengkang	CBP		$3.00
	728	7:50	Sengkang	CBP		$3.00
	728	8:50	Sengkang	CBP		$3.00
	593	7:35	Punggol	CBP		$3.00
	593	8:05	Punggol	CBP		$3.00
	593	8:50	Punggol	CBP		$3.00
	593	9:20	Punggol	CBP		$3.00
	593	9:50	Punggol	CBP		$3.00
http://www.ss-hub.com.sg	N.A	8:00	Buangkok	CBP	Sengkang	$-	No bus number now. Will update if there is any
	N.A	9:05	Sengkang	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:40	Buangkok	CBP	Sengkang	$-
	N.A	8:30	Woodlands	CBP	Admiralty, Sembawang, Yishun, Khatib	$-
	N.A	8:15	Jurong East	CBP	Bt Batok, Bt Gombak	$-
	N.A	7:10	Chao Chu Kang	CBP	Giant Tampines	$-
	N.A	9:00	Pasir Ris	CBP		$-
	N.A	8:45	Simei	CBP		$-

Smart (?) way to cover up the faulty network - SingTel to offer free minutes during festive period (CNY)

Source: SingTel

I am one of those frustrated mobile users in Singapore. Things were not so bad few years ago and I used to show my brand new iPhone which can be used to 'make calls' to my American friends. Then slowly the smart phone became a show device which can be used to listen to music, messaging and snapping pictures.

That's it. Atleast for the last two years majority of Singaporean mobile phone users experienced dropped calls, coverage issues, terrible voice quality, cross talk and what not.

Call me cynical, but the above offer from SingTel doesn't make me happy. With such crappy coverage and experience who wants to use mobile phone unless if there is no option. For me, the good old Skype does a great job.

SingTel, you can't throw things under carpet by giving free minutes. You'll still get complaints from people that the quality sucks these days.

Revolving Credit - Singapore. Staggering 5 Billion or 5,000 per average card holder

OCBC introduced some improvements to it's customers. Whether you are a savings bank customer or checking customer you might have seen it in their Internet banking.

First and foremost, I should give the credit to OCBC management team to think about user friendliness and to improve their IT systems. I can see their efforts and I should comment their engineers and managers. Kudos OCBC.

I can say this is the best interface among the singapore banks

Now, the interesting item is "where do I stand" thingy. So here goes couple of screenshots I copied from OCBC. They are showing based on different profiles what is the average debt on Credit cards or overdraft. So it's really shocking to see the debt of SGD 5,000+ average.

Then I did a search and found out from a news article in ASIAONE, that the average debt is SGD 5,034 in 2012. Total roll over is almost SGD 5 Billion.

On 5000 rollover, a person end up paying 2% interest charge per month which is equal to SGD 100/month. No wonder banks are such profitable entities. I won't blame them but the people who spend money unnecessarily should be responsible for their actions. There are cases where there is a real need and as a last option people may have used credit but in general, don't use rollover credit. It's worse than slavery. Just avoid it and reach out the Gov. I'm sure our gov can help people who are in real need. Go for it or talk to friends, relatives.

FDI - Investment in to India compared with Singapore, Hongkong

Source: World Bank

Here is a screenshot from worldbank. It shows the FDI data based on 2011. I guess it'd take a while to compile the statistics for 2012. When I looked at 2011, that info is sufficient enough to think about the state of Indian system.
India is such an enormous country with wonderful talents, rich with heritage and culture; Highly skilled Indians are driving the internet world and you can see them almost in every technology company.
But what is wrong with India within?

Few key concerns. I won't blame the politicians but blame the people. First and foremost people started to accept that this is the 'norm' be it the simple things like stopping at red signal or billion $ corruption scandals.

It really worries me and no wonder not only the people but the firms loosing confidence in the system. God bless India.

Premium bus services from Private Operators( Mybus etc) - Problem with display, stops.

It is really puzzling me to see why can't premium bus service operation details printed at bus stops. For example, I see SBS Transit, SMRT numbers (e.g. 541, 548, 549) been published at all bus stops and even online tools like gothere.sg or google maps show the numbers.
But when we see premium buses (LTA Website with routes), I don't seem in the display or online tools.

Places like Changi Business Park (CBP) which I say are mainly using these premium buses are not doing their part too.If you enter CBP, there is no proper bus stop or display for info. It is just based on verbal or look in to LTA site to explore yourself. The updates in LTA site seems not very accurate. Atleast I can say one example where 741 runs two services in the morning in reality while the website shows as one.

Is it the problem with premium operators who cannot commit to long term or is it simply we vs them? If it is the latter i'd be very worried. As the end user I'd want to see a seamless if not near seamless public transport connectivity. Hopefully LTA would improve the situation.

HP ProLiant Micro Server (N40L) in Singapore

Specs & Info here

Finally I've got my own home server from USA. I've upgraded the box with some extra memory, ATI and 2x2TB HDD.

I am using this box for only a week or so, but I can see how worthwhile to spend my money on this box. At 500+ this is not a cheap box but certainly a Value-for-money home server.

I still wonder, why HP is not selling this in Singapore. I've seen this in HWZ forums, and at the homes of many of my friends. There could be some silly/stupid reason why HP decided not to make some money from the local + regional market.

SVCC or Sitamma Vakitlo Sirimalle chettu

 I recall reading some lines in Yandamuri. Real happyness is like godavari, slow but steady, calm and forever. Gratification due to some other material reasons are like a brook or creek, Like a surge but goes to zero pretty fast.

Some of my friends used to compare this with Ilayaraja mustic vs A.R.Rahman music. Many of the Ilayaraja songs are alive today across generations. But those instant successes from A.R were forgotten (though A.R gave wonderful melodies).

The movie, SVCC is quite similar to the above if we compare this with Dookudu or Pokiri. It is going to be an evergreen movie for Sankranti. There are no sumo blasts, or talks about vamsam (lineage) or skin show or songs shot in expensive sets or foreign locations, and no routing comedy.

It is a simple, middle class drama which we all have experienced at some part of our life. Be it as a son or brother or dad or wife, sister, mom.

Appreciation must go to the entire team but especially to the Director who made this happened. Great job.

SingTel Website down - or is it my computer problems??

Just an hour ago, SingTel website was dead and it simply showed an error message. It even showed some junk page filled with ads for a couple of seconds. Don't think it is an outage. At least not at this hour (~11.30AM)

Or it could be my laptop having some issues. Not very sure but within 5 min the website was back and it is working fine. 

CITI Bank, Singapore - A Global bank that can't get technology right

If you guys ever used CITI bank internet in Singapore, you'd agree with me. Their internet banking be it for Savings or Credit Card sucks big time.
I've a minor problem and I tried to reach them via "contact us". That's where my pain started. So after typing all the content it simply displays a weird and painfully sarcastic message saying that there is a "invalid character " in the message (??) and moves to a different page.

The error message is classic too.

Sorry. One of the characters you entered is not allowed by the system for security reasons. For your protection, your request has been stopped.

It says that "your protection". It's a smart way of saying, CITI IT system is centuries old and no one knows how to make it work. So the system crashed or the database can't understand what to do. So we'll kick you out but to make it look good, we'll put a sweet message.

So after that if you try again by thinking may be the database can't handle characters like "" or ' or ; or () you are wrong. I've removed all the special characters but the error remains the same. By the way did I say that right after the error message it'll kick you out. So you need to login again on the slowest ever banking system in Singapore to face the same issue


Is it a smart way to discourage people from reaching CITI Bank? or simply the IT department stopped believing in upgrading?

In any case the experience made me so frustrated that it became the final straw. Seems like Stan Chart or home grown OCBC are much better in terms of support / service.

Singapore - Summer is here. Today @ 39C real feel..

Source: Accuweather

Some how today felt like May. It's early Jan but sunset @ 1930, hot noons, bright evenings and warm nights doesn't feel like in Jan.