SMRT disruption – Commuters are so lucky

After the biggest train disruption in the history of SMRT, the original suspicion on the root cause of the problem was an ageing train system. And there were recommendations that it was time to replace the train system with a new system and have a fresh new start. A brand new system would likely to be free from breakdowns for the first 20 years. The present system is starting to breakdown after 30 years.

Thankfully  or not thankfully, the team of experts have found the root cause of the disruption. I quote from Business Times, 

‘LTA, SMRT and five overseas experts carried out comprehensive system-wide checks across more than 200 km of train track and components such as the third rail, power cables and the signalling system to identify the root cause of the disruption. They also checked all 141 trains and analysed train logs from the day of the incident.

Their conclusion: a confluence of factors triggered the incident.

In the tunnel between Tanjong Pagar and Raffles Place, water was found dripping onto the third-rail cover near an insulator. Tests on a sample on the cover and on water collected from the tunnel leak found mineral deposits with a high chloride content. The presence of chloride on the insulator, coupled with a wet environment, would have significantly reduced the effectiveness of the insulator.’

Let me put it simply, rain water dripped on the third rail cover near an insulator, or was it over an insulator, and the water contained high level of chloride that caused a power leakage, reducing the effectiveness of the insulator.  And the solution,

‘To minimise the possibility of a similar recurrence, it has started replacing third-rail insulators, starting with those showing signs of electrical resistance weakness. The remaining insulators will be changed under a planned renewal of the third-rail system, to be completed by the first quarter of 2017.’

I confess that I am not an engineer and find it difficult to rationalise the solution to the cause of the problem. There was water seepage, which means either the cover was not covering properly or there was a hole somewhere for water to seep through. If this was an isolated incident, not all the covers were affected, and there was no other seepage of water elsewhere, would it be sufficient to just replace the cover or ensure that the cover is covering the insulator properly to prevent a seepage, or to make sure rain water did not leak into the insulator. Also, how come rain water contained so much chloride or salt equivalent? Normal, natural?

What I don’t understand is that why were there so much salt in the rain water just after a rain? Could it be someone or animal urinated on it? How many pieces were affected? Why not replace the cover at fault? Why the need to change all the insulators if it was the cover that was giving problem? Wasn’t the root cause due to water that contained too much chloride, and if no chloride, even the water would not affect the insulators? Why was it necessary to change all the insulators if the insulators were functioning well without chloride? I heard some comments about weak resistance of the insulators. Are these insulators meant for heavy duty works? A little water or chloride can cause severe system breakdowns?

What is the problem, cover not covering properly, water or chloride and where did the chloride came from? Or was it the insulator that was giving problem? Would it be effective if the source of water is removed or the source of chloride is removed or prevented from contacting the insulators?

Why the need to change all the insulators? I am just asking layman questions. When a switch in the house does not work, you don’t have to change all the switches. If someone spilled water on the switch, you don’t have to change all the switches. I think like a layman and using a layman’s logic. If I want to use power logic or the logic of having a lot of OPM, I can change all the trains too because of some water found with high content of chloride that seeped through a bad cover.

Singaporean beaten by a foreigner

I copied this picture from TRE. This Singaporean was beaten by a foreigner when the foreigner shafted his car into a parking lot he was waiting for in East Coast Park. The case would be heard in court on 25 Aug.

It is so depressing to see Singaporeans being repeatedly beaten by foreigners in Singapore. Where is the Singaporean identity and where is the pride to be a Singaporean when foreigners coming here to make a living has no qualms and hesitation to beat up a Singaporean?

While we are going to celebrate SG50, think about this face.

It was reported that the attacker, a John Duncan Tasker, a PR, is a grassroot leader, a vice chairman of a Neighbourhood Committee.

Sino Indian relations – Time to wipe off the silly myth of a China threat

Bloomberg has this article ‘India sends China stern message with naval build up’ reprinted in the Today paper on 30 Jul 15.  What stern message? China must be shivering in its pants. Remember 1962? Anyway the message is very clear, India and China are military rivals and India is gaining on China and telling China not to mess around with India. The western media has been playing up the rivalry and hostility between two nations like they are arch enemies, China trying to swallow up India and India in a hurry to fend off an aggressive China? How true is this myth?

The Indian media and the mentality of its leaders did not help either to dispel this myth. They want to believe that China is going to invade and take over India like the Americans telling themselves of Chinese wading ashore along the western American states to take over America. What is the truth? It was America and western countries that invaded China and turned China into a semi colony. And the West has been bullying China and trying to contain China by building military alliances to ring China when not a single Chinese soldier is outside China. Modern China has never invaded any country but being invaded by the colonial powers of Japan and the West. But China is demonized by the West as an ambitious and aggressive power trying to conquer its neighbouring countries when it was the West and Japan that conquered and colonized these countries and China.

What about the fabricated fears of a hostile China invading India? Historically China had never invaded India nor conduct wars of aggression against India. There was this recognition that land over the other side of the Himalayas was not part of dynastic China. What about the Sino Indian border war in 1962?

The Indians have been harping till today that it was China who invaded India when they knew that it was the opposite. The invasion of China, to seize Chinese territories, was an Indian game plan with the formation of a 4^th Indian Army Corp specifically for this purpose. And to move back a few centuries in Indian history, there was really no India for centuries until the British conquered, colonized and consolidated all the loosely held kingdoms in the subcontinent under British rule. The British Empire went further to carve out Chinese territories as theirs at a time when China was weak and broken up.

A formal Indian state came into existence in 1947 when it was given independence by the British. And India claimed that all the land carved out by the British from China is part of India. The border areas were territory snatched from China. China did not attempt to reclaim the land by force. It was an ambitious and ego inflated India that thought it could seize the land by force when China was a weak new country under communist rule in 1962.  The rest is history.

Till today, the Indians are putting on a false front accusing China of invading India. The fact, China repelled the invading Indian 4^th Army Corp, marched to the outskirt of New Delhi, and then withdrew. Would an invading army do that, would an aggressive China harbouring an intent of conquering India withdrew from a defeated enemy on the run? China treated tens of thousands of Indian POWs like lost boy scouts, treated their injuries, fed and clothed them, clean and polished up all the captured weapons and returned the POWs and the weapons to India.  What did all this said about a hostile China?

India should stop its nonsensical accusation of China and the myth that China is waiting to invade India. In 1962 China could over run New Delhi in pursuit of the defeated Indian Army but did not, voluntarily withdrew without looting and raping or burning India along the way. India got away too lightly for its invasion of China.

In today’s geopolitics, conquest and colonizing another country is no longer acceptable and feasible as an option to global ambition. Only the Americans think so. China has no bad intent or ambition to want to have a war with India, to conquer India. All the Indian talks about building intercontinental missiles, aircraft and aircraft carriers and now submarines to defend an imaginary China running over India is simply hogwash. Too much toddy in the head.

India and China should continue to build economic ties and friendly relations and grow economically and military powerful as big countries. There is nothing wrong for the India to harbour wild ambitions to be the most powerful nation in Asia or in the world. But to build a straw man that China is its arch enemy and India must do everything it could to counter a China military threat is simply silly.

Stop drinking toddy and come to your senses, build your military machine for whatever purposes, but don’t create a myth that China is India’s enemy. There is no reason for China to want to invade India or any neighbouring country. North Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and many central Asian states with common borders with China have not been invaded nor have any border dispute with China. The Indians should negotiate with the Chinese and return the land carved away by the British warlord from China peacefully.

China is not asking for more land, not an inch of an India created by the British Empire. If there is going to be war between India and China, it would be the Indians conniving with the Americans to attack China, not the other way. The hostile and aggressive country is India and its superpower ambition. China is already a super power in its own right by trading and manufacturing and helping countries building infrastructures, without having to go to war, not invading or conquering any country. China is now a superpower without having to grab any country’s land by force. What for?

GE2015 – A hand with no aces

The past PMs used to hold a hand of aces and kings and queens during an election. And they could simply throw in an ace or a king in a weak constituency or when the opposition mounts a serious challenge. There was no problem when every minister was an ace, a king or queen. If one minister is not enough, throw in another one or get a heftier minister and the constituency was won. It was as simple as that. And PAP’ strategy was a strategy based on strength. And they went to battle to rout the opposition. There was no contest when a minister was thrown into a GRC.

Today, when Hsien Loong holds up his cards, he cannot imagine that the cards are so weak. No aces, maybe a few kings and queens, a number of 2s and 3s and the rest of the pack are the 6s and 7s. How to play with such a weak hand? How to go into an election with a hand of cards that spells losers?

I can imagine the strategy for this election would be drastically different from the past. It would be a defensive strategy on how to save and protect the weak ministers? Hsien Loong would have a hard time trying to place them to save them and keep them in his cabinet. The East is a sea of blue. Too dangerous.  The mentioning of Aljunied would send fear to potential PAP candidates. Where are the safe GRCs to hide the weak ministers and to prevent a GRC from being overran?

The end result would be considered good if lesser ministers were lost in battle. Notice the change, from a minister taking the fight to the enemy to a situation where ministers would have to be carefully placed to prevent losing them and losing the GRC?

Are there still gungho ministers daring to go to the East or to a GRC helmed by strong opposition candidates? Anyone up to it to volunteer to fight in Aljunied or in Marine Parade or in East Coast, or even in Tanjong Pagar?

How did the mighty PAP reach this point when every minister is no longer an ace and with so many no better than a 6 or 7, with some obviously 2s or 3s? Has the tea party gone wrong? Why is the tea party not turning up aces or kings and queens? What happens to all the good men and women? Why are they not appearing at the tea parties to be selected and to stand for the PAP? The few potential that have become the ‘knowns’ are a far cry from what the PAP used to have.  Is it that the good men and women are seeing things that they are not comfortable with, that they did not want to be associated with?

What is the real problem with the PAP? Or I am just having wild imagination, that Hsien Loong is holding a hand of aces and kings and queens and the GE would be just another walkover?

The only ace in the PAP game plan, and the only trump card it has and using furiously, is a man of the past.

Ecuador, a China show piece

The New York Times has an article posted in the Today paper titled ‘China extends global reach with loans and strings attached’ giving a pretty good picture of what China is doing in Ecuador. While the South East Asian countries are still shying away from Chinese infrastructure development, due to centuries of western demonization of China, the picture is very different in Latin America and Africa. The southern American countries have had enough of western colonization, domination and American Imperialism and are striking out on their own to be free. They are embracing China’s offer of trade and development with open arms, better to pay a little more interest than to be robbed by the colonialists and imperialists. Both did not charge higher interest rates, they just came and carted away whatever resources from these countries for free. Which is a better deal?

The Latin Americans are not stupid. They negotiated freely with China for loans and infrastructure development. And they are paying in kind, mainly oil, and other raw material, that the Chinese would have to pump up themselves. In turn, the Chinese have pumped in billions of dollars into Latin American countries. Ecuador alone is receiving tens of billion in dam building that would provide enough electricity to light up one third of the country, according to the NYT article. China is also helping Ecuador to build an oil refinery that would make Ecuador ‘a global player in gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products’. Bad deal, cheated by China?

The Chinese are also building ‘roads, highways, bridges, hospitals, even a network of surveillance cameras stretching to the Galapagos islands’. These infrastructure developments are badly needed by Ecuador to transform itself into a modern industrialized country, something that the west and their formal colonial masters refused to do while extracting all the natural resources for free.

When Ecuador takes off, it would be a show piece to show to the world what Chinese money, technology and engineering could do to rebuild a country. Singapore taught the Chinese how to build an industrial park. China learnt from it and is helping the world to rebuild their countries’ infrastructure and industrial parks. China is helping the developing nations to move up the economic ladder on fair and equitable terms. China is doing everything, providing financing, technology and manpower. The West would not do that. Obama just visited Kenya and talked about helping Africa to develop after the West had colonized and looted African for centuries. And they are the good guys.

The NYT did not miss the opportunity to sabo the Chinese effort in these countries by playing up on higher interest rate, which was anytime better than letting the western powers robbed them for free and meddling with their domestic politics. It also complained about Chinese methodology that would harm the environment and what not. The NYT is assuming that the Latin Americans are daft and could not understand what they are going into and their agreements signed with Chinese companies. If these were bad deals, why would they agree to them when China did not bring their warships and guns like the colonialist and the Americans?

The hard truth, and testimonies to the value Chinese companies are offering to the rest of the world was when they held an economic development conference in Beijing.  Global financial and corporate elite and heads of major banks and pharma, auto and oil companies came to mingle with the Chinese officials. And according to Christine Lagarde, MD of IMF, China’s effort to engage globally through investment and trade and economic reforms, ‘is good for China and good for the world – their fates are intertwined’.

China is all over the world investing in infrastructural developments. Just to quote a para from the NYT article, ‘Chinese companies are at the centre of a worldwide construction boom, mostly financed by Chinese banks.  They are building power plants in Serbia, glass and cement factories in Ethiopia, low income housing in Venezuela, and natural gas pipelines in Uzbekistan.

Not really all over the world as many South East Asian countries are still pondering on what China could offer under the dark cloud of doubts spun by their former colonial masters and the West, that China is bad, China is bad like Red Indians were bad, Red Indians bad. They could not remember that the centuries of colonialism and western domination did not do them much good except being robbed by the very robbers that are telling them China is bad and filled them with imaginary fears and hate against China.  On the other hand, the rest of the world, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America did not have the same fear and apprehension and are welcoming Chinese developments in full force on a complimentary basis. The West are telling the South East Asian countries to demand China to go it for free, and China to pay for it as well.

It would take a long time before the South East Asian countries could break free from their colonial mindset, fixed and implanted by their colonial masters and the West over centuries to look at China objectively. China is not there to colonise them but to trade, to help them rebuild their countries with a proven blue print, successfully implemented in China and now sharing with the rest of the world. What did their colonial masters left them after centuries of colonial rule and looting? What have their colonial masters and the West to offer them today other than military pacts and more weapons of war?

The joke, they trust their ex colonial masters more than a China that has never stepped foot on their shores. They trust their conquerors more than China that never had a soldier in their land nor kill any of their people.