MRT - Another stupidity has no cure thing

'Like travelers at airports, MRT commuters will be required to walk through a metal detector and put their belongings through X-ray scanners. Security officers at MRT stations will soon also be equipped with handheld metal detectors to scan commuters.
Such security equipment was first deployed at emergency exercises in Feb this year. According to a senior LTA official who spoke to TODAY, it took an estimated eight to ten minutes to organise and clear each commuter, before they were allowed to go through the fare gates.'

The above quote is from theindependent on the 6 month security check trial by the MRT. I am not going to discuss the rationale and goodness of this exercise. I am just amazed by the decision based on the numbers to contend with. Imagine that commuters take more than 2m trips daily. If each commuter were to take 10 minutes before going through the gates,  this would mean 20m minutes of time needed to clear each commuter. Let's convert this to hours, ie 20,000,000/60 or more than 3 million hours would be needed or wasted.

Ok, MRT is not going to put the trial on every station, just 6 stations at a time. How many passengers would be affected? How much time would be needed for each commuter to add to their travelling time? Assuming this is conducted in off peak hours, with this kind of delay, every commuter is likely to be in a queue of at least 20 people. This would mean having to wait for 200 minutes before clearing. Does t make sense?

Then look at the problem during peak hours. The queue could easily be a 100 people at least and building up very quickly. If one is in a 100 man queue and each one takes 10 minutes to clear the gate, that would mean a 1,000 minute wait. This is more than 16 hours of waiting time to get through the gate.

I think if this is going to be the case, MRT should make an announcement to warn commuters that travelling time will be longer, and they need to start their journey one day ahead to be sure of getting to their destination on time.

Perhaps MRT could foresee this problem and cut the clearing time by half, ie 5 minutes. It would still take 8 hours at least, during peak hours, to clear through a gate. Of course I am calculating this only on paper and it may not be accurate plus and minus a few hours.

What do you think?

Some nitwits may say it can be done at the airports, why not the trains? Go figure. If you can add 1+1=2, you will not be too far off.

PS. If 10 gates are reduced to one gate, even without the screening, the stations would not be able to cope. With this screening process added on, how long would be the queue?

Better for senior citizens to have 2 flu jabs a year

A study by the National Centre for Infectious Diseases and Tan Tock Seng Hospital has recommended that the elderly should go for 2 vaccinations annually against flu and respiratory illnesses. This is a good advice as flu attack seems so common especially for the elderly and for me. This is one of the irritating things that happens to me regularly and I have tried many methods to prevent this from happening. With so many foreigners from little corners of the world, Singaporeans are now exposed to many funny and strange viruses that were not here before the open leg policy.
I dunno how much it would cost for the two jabs and for the pain that is part of poking a needle into the skin and flesh. Two instead of one jab would definitely be better as a protection. It was reported in thenewpaper that the second jab would provide better protection against 3 influenza strains.
 
I think protecting against 3 strains may not be enough given the number of foreigners from all corners of the world in our midst. Instead of going for the 2 jabs to be protected against the 3 strains, I have chosen to be exposed to more strains and getting free vaccinations without the pain and the cost, by taking public transport, especially the crowded trains. I am daily being vaccinated and should be protected by the numerous strains in the air in the confined space of trains when one has to share the air with everyone in the train. And if one is lucky to stand or sit beside someone with a running nose, the impact and exposure would be several hundred times more.
 
I know as it would hit me almost immediately. My experiment with these unwelcome attacks in the train is to pop a couple of paraceptamol the moment I reached the office. Sometimes I may need another two or four tablets to make sure the free vaccinations did not turn into a full blown flu attack. So far it has worked. Instead of having to suffer two weeks of flu, headache, slight fever and general discomfort and a couple of dozens of paraceptamol, so far I could make do with 2 to 8 tablets to keep the flu from becoming full blown.
 
What I know from my personal experience and experiment is that there must be many more strains in the train/air. This is confirmed by the discomfort and earlier signs of a flu attack everytime I sit/stand beside someone with flu/running nose, in the train.
 
Hopefully after a year or two of daily vaccination in the train, my antibody level will be high to protect me from all strains of flu. Unfortunately, after so many years being vaccinated in the train, the attack keeps coming on. I can only conclude that there must be many strains of flu due to the constant changing of foreigners from our open leg policy and the constant mutation of the flu viruses.
 
The only comfort from my experiment is that I did not have to keep going for jabs and to pay for them. I have them free, in the train, daily, being exposed to the latest strains when they arrived, in the train. And these are live viruses, not the dead viruses used in vaccination. Think my resistance system should be stronger, with stronger antibodies. But I am still being hit very often.
 
If being exposed to these deadly viruses daily, twice a day, and I am still getting the flu, would exposing to 3 strains of dead viruses help? Or would the daily exposure would be more than is needed than being exposed twice a year with vaccination jabs?

When speaking the truth is spreading fake news

When Najib was in power, no one dare to question the truth about 1MDB and Altantuya's murder. Anyone saying otherwise would be charged, prosecuted or threatened by the law and likely to end up behind bars. Najib had his courts and judges and prosecutors lined up to take on anyone who dare to challenge his truth. With his power gone, every Najib truth is now being overturned by the new power in Mahathir. Mahathir is going to dig to the bottom of all the cases that were unquestionable truths.

Muhammed Ibrahim, the ex Bank Negara governor is being questioned by anti graft agency probing the 1MDB case. They are trying to follow the money trail of RM2 billion from land sales that were transferred to the Finance Ministry to service IMDB’s debt obligations. It looks like the ex governor knows a lot of things that the graft agency or Mahathir wants to know.
The big question is how involved was the ex governor in the money trail and his roles, if there is any, that are connected with the on goings of 1MDB. As the money involved in the 1MDB case is big, only very senior people would be entrusted to handle such money, to transfer them or to place them with interested parties.
 
Assuming that the ex governor had a hand in the case, just assuming, and if Mahathir makes an offer to remove him from the hook, would he then squeal and let everything out, like who he met, spoke to and the transactions involved? Someone in this web that is central to processes like Jho Low or the Goldman Sach officers that are players in the case may be offered amnesty or pardon to tell the truth. If none is prepared to talk, it would be a tough case to crack.
 
Once someone decides to save his skin, many names would be thrown up and many people could be embarrassed or even charged as part of the conspiracy. Those people involved better pray hard that none of the senior people involved is willing to take the pardon offer. Given so many people involved, the truth is just a matter of days away.
 
Hope no name from this side of the Causeway is mentioned. Knowing Mahathir, he is going to make sure that no stone is left unturned.

More worms would start crawling when Mahathir is done with this ex governor and other top govt officials or even within the top UMNO echelon of gangsters.

China and US must stop this trade war

What kind of statement is this? Who is responsible for this trade war? Who started this trade war and keep escalating? Casual readers reading this statement without understanding how the trade war started would give the impression that China is as guilty as a party to the trade war launched by the American Trump.
It is important to get the facts right and say things that are factually correct. China cannot be blamed for this trade war. The European countries and those countries under attacked by the Americans cannot be blamed for this trade war. This is a unilateral declaration of war by the Americans against the rest of the world for trading under the American designed world order and trading system.
 
The whole trading system is designed by the Americans under WTO and other American controlled agencies and was working well, at least in the interest of the Americans since its beginning. The Americans were the main beneficiary of the international trading system as they are the one that designed and fixed it to their advantage. It was Pax Americana, with the Americans as the undeclared but de facto Empire feeding on the rest of the world.
 
The situation started to go against the American interest when they over indulged in their consumption and expenditure in conducting wars and more wars, in building a huge military complex around the world that they could not longer afford except to print more fiat paper money. The Americans would not whisper a word of dissatisfaction if they have not incurred trillions of debt that they know they could not repay and continuing with the printing of paper money would eventually turn the US dollar into a worthless banana currency.
 
Now they want the rest of the world to pay them to remain as the Empire to rule the world under their new terms. Why would the rest of the world continue to pay to support an Empire to rule over them? Why would the world allow the Americans to continue to print money to support their extravagant lifestyle, military adventurism, building a huge military arsenal to threaten and bully every country at their whims and fancy?
 
The Americans are desperate to clear their debt before the USA becomes officially bankrupt and the US dollar becomes junk paper. They want the rest of the world to continue to feed them and pay for all their expenses as the dominant power and in conducting wars. Can you believe that, the rest of the world must pay the Americans for building military bases everywhere, for maintaining all the naval fleets with aircraft carriers to attack any country at will, for keeping the biggest nuclear arsenal to use against them if they did not listen to and obey the Empire?
 
China did not start this war and is only reacting and responding to the attacks by the Americans. Or should China just do nothing and allow the Americans to slam them at will, cannot retaliate? It is the Americans that must stop this war. Once the Americans did that, there will be no wars, just like if they stop all their military wars all over the world, there will be no wars.
 
The Americans are the warmongers! The Americans are to be blamed for this trade war and all the wars all over the world. Why afraid to tell the Americans to stop their wars, trade wars and wars of invasion?

PAP knows or dunno?

Below are some comments taken from Roy Ngerng's post in the TRE blaming the PAP for Singaporeans unable to retire because not enough money in the CPF.


Thus when Singaporeans cannot retire today, the fault lies squarely on the PAP.
(A) The PAP knew that flats prices will become zero, but still made Singaporeans use their CPF to inflate resale flat prices.
(B) The PAP knew that flat prices will become zero, but still made Singaporeans pay market prices for the land that the flats sit on.
(C) The PAP knows that flat prices will become zero, and decline in value, but still tell Singaporeans they will introduce a VERS which will not help much.
(D) The PAP knows that flat prices will become zero, and decline in value after 20 years, so they say they will introduce VERS after 20 years, because by then, VERS will not cost them much to them anyway – the PAP is kicking the problem down the road.

Finally, CPF changes, the Medisave, Medishield and increases to university fees were all started in the 1980s when PAP changed course. All these happened 30 years ago but it took about 30 years for the effects to finally unravel and be felt by Singaporeans today.
So, what will you do?

Roy Ngerng


I think Roy Ngerng got it all wrong, giving them too much credit or thinking that they are really smart and know everything. I think they really dunno what they were saying, like  HDB flat value will always go up. That's why they came up with asset enhancement scheme to continue to improve and raise the value of the HDB flats. And the latest, VERS, is supposed to do the same, to protect the value of the HDB flat even if the lease is left with 20 years. VERs could keep the value from falling. Just believe. If only they know that whatever they do, when the lease expires, the value must be zero, they would not want to waste so much money on a depreciating asset. But it is good if the govt is going to pay for the upgrading at least to keep the flats looking good and not turning into a rundown estate.

If one is still convinced that they know, then one may be accused of saying that they must be lying right? How can they know and still say different things and do different things against the hard truth.  This is why I confidently conclude that they are not that smart after all. They dunno!

Another way of looking at this is that they think the people are really daft.

What do you think?