Joo Koon collision – 10 sec to react

This is the excuse or explanation given on the train collision at Joon Koon. I don’t think this is a necessary exercise and the people should not try to pin the fault at the driver. Let me try to recreate the situation, just my thought and not necessary the whole truth. The train came to a stop as expected. Everything was normal and the driver could be trying to do something or may even try to stand up to open the door or to move from his seat. The driver would not expect that a train that had stopped would suddenly pull off on its own to hit a stationary train ahead. It never happened before and it was not meant to be like that. This is just abnormal, like a twilight zone event. No driver in his right mind would expect this to happen. So please leave the driver alone. The 10 sec was just too brief for him to react if he was off his seat or was doing something, maybe communicating with the station.
 
What was relevant to this accident in my view are three things. One, the merging of two software and hardware systems to work seamlessly as one. Was this fully understood, that the protocol and interfaces would work smoothly without problems? Were these tested fully to ensure that it would be the case before implementation?
 
Two, how could a lapse or fault cause a trip in the system for the software to read differently and malfunction?
 
Three, why was there such a thing as a 3 carriage train when all our trains are 6 carriages? A 6 carriage train must be the default programme, not a 3 carriage train. How did this 3 carriage train sneaked into the programme? This is a serious flaw in the system. Thales better explain.
 
Now, is this 3 carriage train programme completely removed and deleted from the system and would not be a source of another accident? There must be a full debugging of the software to rid this 3 carriage thing from the system. If this is not removed, it is going to cause another accident of the same nature sometime in the future. Murphy said so. This bug must be taken care of for good. It must not remain in the programme. Period.
 
My 2 cent worth commentary.
 
PS. While Thales, the French provider of the signaling system had apologized for the signaling fault that caused the accident, many sicko sinkies in TRE are still putting the blame on train carriages supposedly Made in China. Were these the cause of the accident? By the way, China’s high speed trains are criss crossing the Asian and African continent in the thousands daily. At those speed the quality of the trains, the signaling system, the tracks, engines, maintenance etc etc the whole system are under real time test. Any faulty part or system would not stand the test of time. On record they have performed extremely well, for any minor mistake or fault would be blown out of proportion in the western media.
 
The Americans would be the next big customer of Chinese high speed trains when Trump decides to rebuild the ailing train system in the USA.
 
Oh by the way, are those injured compensated?

USA, the world’s number one terrorist state holding court

The world’s number one terrorist state, the USA, harbouring the world’s number one terrorist organization, the CIA, got the cheek to accuse and brand North Korea as a terrorist state and acting like they are Gods, all virtuous! Can you believe that? All the evils committed by terrorists around the world have their source in the CIA and the USA. The bombing and demolition of the World Trade Centre in 911 have been conclusively proven that it was an American job but putting the blame on Osama and a few Arabs that are still alive. The killings of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were two state sponsored terrorist acts committed by the evil Empire, conspired and fabricated in the White House and no one dares to take the terrorists in the White House for trial for crime against humanity?
 
And the biggest joke of all, the rest of world believing or accepting the world’s number one terrorist state passing judgement on North Korea and other countries and organizations as terrorists without question? They accepted this fait accompli meekly, afraid to ask question, or unthinkingly accepting these as the American truth.
 
What the hell is going on to the people of the world? Where is their conscience and sense of justice? Satan is ruling the earth and they pray to Satan as their new God. Unbelieveable but this is the situation today. The devil is in charge and branding everyone the devil dislike as devil and all the unthinking people of the world would say aye, aye sir and went about screaming at the victims.
 
Who is the biggest devil that is supporting and giving birth to all the terrorist organizations in the world? Who has been financing them, training them and arming them? Who has been fomenting and provoking acts of terrorism around the world which they called it war to legitimize the killings of the innocents?
 
No prizes for the correct answer. It is definitely not North Korea. The criminals of the world are passing judgement on other states. They assume the role of judge, jury and executioner and the daft of the world meekly accepted this fate and worse, some even happily and voluntarily bowed to this world number one terrorist and willing to do its bidding and went about screaming North Korea is a terrorist state.
 
Stupidity has no cure. Or is it criminals will flock together to commit crimes together?
The series of accidents involving the naval boats and aircraft of the evil Empire is God’s way of dealing with this devil. The accidents would not stop and more American boys and girls will die under mysterious situation, not in war. Be warned!

The temple of God is not in the White House. The White House is the throne of Satan.

What, raising taxes again?

After so many tax hikes, grabbing more CPF money, higher ERP fees, higher COEs, 30% fee water hike, still want to tax more? What is happening, our treasury drying up? Something must be seriously wrong with our finances. With more tax revenue, with the huge profits of GIC and Temasek bringing in billions, still not enough meh?
 
What about cutting down on the grandeur items, on frivolous expenditure that is not necessary, not essential like the F1 and the fake garden and the free scholarships given to foreigners, just to name a few? What about cutting down on the hiring of so many foreigners in the academia and so called think tank agencies? When money runs out, isn’t it the first thing to do should be to look at the expenditure, cost cutting? What about cutting down on military toys and extravagance and stop spending as if we have a mountain of gold and money is not important, endless supply?
 
What about improving productivity, from the top down? Why is there a need for so many ministers, two ministers plus so many ministers of states, etc etc to helm a ministry, so many mayors? Is this productive or counter productive? What about the many million dollar jobs that may not be necessary or justified? Not every ministry is the same, not every stats board is the same, not every GLC is the same. It is time to cut down on extravagance and frivolous million dollar salary. If jobs do not justify a million dollar pay, then the incumbent should not be paid in millions. Let the highly qualified incumbents that could command million dollar salaries to go where they could be paid justly for their contributions. Anyone earning million dollar salary must account and justify by his contribution. Did they produce goods or services that are worth more than their million dollar salary? Million dollar salary in public service must not be a given. It is taxpayers’ money and derived from taxes, a big burden on the people.
 
The people have been squeezed dry to the bones. Even their CPF savings are said to be not their money and people can anyhow make them pay by compulsion for things they did not want nor agree to pay.
 
The belt tightening should be at the top, aim at those with a 50 inch girth than the lean and bony citizens that have nothing much left to be taxed. Take away a few hundred thousand dollars from a million dollar man is nothing compare to taking a few dollars from a pauper. Stop being so mean to the less able. They are poor but not idiots, not fools. Stop squeezing them so very often. Where is your heart?
 
Do you think raising taxes would raise cost of living and would turn this place uncompetitive and bad for the economy? Who cares? What is important is that high taxes mean that there will be enough money for big bonuses, for more pay hikes, and continued to be paid in the millions. You die your business?

Japan should stop sneering at our world class SMRT

An article in thenewpaper on 20 Nov by a SM Ong took offence at an apology issued by the Japanese MRT for a slight hitch in the departure of its train. SM Ong was incensed, felt insulted because the apology was not because the Japanese MRT had a ponding problem, not because their MRT had regular and frequent breakdown, not because their train had a collision. The apology was because their train departed a mere 20 seconds earlier than it was supposed to. How would 20 seconds affect the lives of the commuters? This is like a case of perfectionist mindset, a privilege only a perfectly efficient system can brag about. But they were not bragging, it is just their culture, something very different from our SMRT culture. Want to blame them for having an efficient culture?
 
By the way, the Japanese apology was reported in the Japanese media for Japanese consumption. How did it appear in our local media? Who did this and what was his agenda? If this is done by the Japanese, then it is right to feel offended for rubbing in on our serious train problems. But if the Japanese did not do it, instead it was done by a Singaporean or new Singaporean, or a local, then it is very unfair to blame the Japanese for it. It is misplaced anger that is typical of daft Singaporeans.
 
I quote SM Ong, ‘So we don’t need you, Japan, to make us feel worse about it. We don’t need your Japanese CEO of your Japanese car company Nissan to say last Friday that he will return part of his salary after an inspection scandal led to a recall of 1.2 million Nissan vehicles…Our transport minister, Mr Khaw, once said: “In Japan, the chairman, the CEO will call a press conference and take a deep bow, and in the good old days, they may even commit hara-kiri.”’
 
Now, aren’t this going too far and being overly sensitive? Actually we have a lot to learn from the Japanese if we adopt a healthy and positive mindset. We should be striving to be like the Japanese in terms of efficiency, be on time, not every day apologizing for delays and breakdowns. We should learn from their culture of accountability, failure to perform, return the salary for not performing, and…ok perhaps committing hara-kiri is demanding too much. Just simply resign may be an honourable thing to do.
 
This is a case of failure to see the real problem, refusing to see the problem and beating the messenger for bringing the bad news. This is our daft culture, a nation heading from first world to third world and behaving like third world people.
 
The decline is evident and very assured. And in the article SM Ong quoted Hsien Loong saying that our SMRT is among the top 4 cities in the world and Japan not even mentioned. Is this the same as bragging that our local universities are ranked among the best in the world while Japan’s are not so highly ranked, so we are better than Japan, our SMRT are better than Japan’s?
 
Oh my God. 无药可救. No medicine can help liao.
If one takes into consideration lightning strike and one SMRT train captain was injured, be mindful, be very mindful that HE is watching and obviously not happy with how things are developing. When the collision hit, I was asking what can be worse. Now lightning struck. What can be worse after this.
 
Someone suggested that commuters should think seriously of getting travel insurance. I hope no clown would jump onto this and suggest making this compulsory and using CPF money.

When multi million dollar pay produces nothing

When the scheme to pay multi million dollar salary to govt scholars was introduced it was only a small dent in the budget. There were only a handful of such scholars to talk about and to be paid. No big deal. Today there are thousands of such scholars floating around waiting to be put into multi million dollar jobs, or was it thousands of scholars being paid multi million dollar salary but with only a few multi million dollar jobs available? In the end jobs that do not need to be paid multi million dollar salary would still have to pay multi million dollar salary because the incumbents have to be paid multi million dollar salary regardless of the jobs?
 
How did we end up in such a situation? How can this be sustainable? In a production and manufacturing economy, the people being paid multi million dollar salary earned their keeps. They created values, sell goods and services that brought in the revenue and profits. What did our multi million dollar scholars produce that are of value, what did they do that brought in the dole? Practically everyone is involved in pen pushing jobs, unproductive, no real value added jobs. They did not do anything of real value. They produced nothing. They are unproductive.
 
Oh, they raised taxes, raised fees, raised rentals, create COEs and ERPs. Oh they raised the values of properties in asset enhancements to make everyone a millionaire property owner. They are also very good at creating demands and turning them into revenue and profits by using the savings of CPF members by legislation. They are also very good at holding the people’s savings in the CPF forever. They are also very good at telling the people to put in more money into the CPF. Are these really productive work, work with real value?
 
Seriously, did they create or produce anything of real value, commercial value, goods and products like mobile phones and online businesses? Did they do anything that is real, of economic value to deserve being paid in the millions? What have they produced, the thousands of multi million dollar salary scholars in public services?
 
Do they deserve to be paid in the millions for being unproductive in real economic sense, for producing nothing of real economic value? How can an economy survive and sustain itself with so many thousands of people being paid multi million dollar salary but not producing a thing of real value, without producing anything that is useful economically? Can you believe that?
 
Here is a quote from Teo Ser Luck, MP, former minister, now a happy entrepreneur. ‘It gives me great satisfaction to see that I have created something and that it is helpful and beneficial of others. That to me is very fulfilling.’