Trip to HK was great! Life couldnt be more enjoyable!!
Good food, good sleep and catching up with frens there. Not to mention a enormous crater i below in my wallet after one afternoon at Agnes B. Saw a couple of jacket that were too irresistable. Not to mention the sales gal was extremely helpful and full of matching ideas….
For some reasons, the buyers at HK simply have much better taste than those in Singapore. I can never find anything i particularly like in SG’s stores, but put me in HK and i’ll go crazy within the malls anytime.
I prob should have put up at Conrad rather than Sheraton since i spend almost all my time in Pacific Place and Central area. Would have save me the travel from train. But prob not a good idea since i wont be spending just what i did!! I’ll prob blow my 3 months pay away given another 2 more days!
Everything is more or less abt the same as i last rem. Except the weather was really stinking hot and sticky. God bless the soul who invented Aircon!!!!
Had couple of dinner and lunches with Michelle and some others. The gals told me abt the flesh eating diseases. Apparently its such a good scare that they decide not to venture to the wet market there anymore and stuck to supermkt. We all concluded how lucky Singaporeans really are to be "free" from fear in our day to day life.
During dinner, we laughed about how the "grass always seem greener" on the other end. The ozs and states folks bitch abt their tax, expensive rents, houses and their govt policies. They all love sg. Truly they do and canx wait to be stationed back here. The only thing they lament abt was the lack of interesting jobs in sg. Then we went on abt people in sg who in turn only bitch abt "expensive cars, erp, inflations" etc and asking for more tax break and govt help for themselves. Hey, where’s the sense of proportion and perspective here?!
I guess people are never grateful no matter how much good things you put in. They dun see how lucky they are and the good things they have till they lost it. I guess its fun staying away for a while just to get out of the mono life, but at the end of the day, i cannot imagine how people have so much inane things to b*tch abt sg.
I read in a forum once abt how "expensive" living in sg is. True it isnt as cheap as it used to be, or worse, we canx compare to china, msia and vietnam. We are developed, not developing ctry. Even stuff HK is more expensive than we are in general. I def have no idea where these people got their yard stick of "expensive" from.
Anycase back to HK trip, one thing i have to admit is i really admire their MTR system all these years. Our LTA has really gotto buck up. The HK people thot of everything possible to ease the confusion of trains for visitors.
For one, they have an organised system like ours, but BETTER in a way. They have everything we have and MORE. They have blinking lights on the route panel (with LARGE PICTURE OF ROUTES) and arrow signaling the direction and at what stop you are heading to. They even have an LED on both side of the doors to indicate which side of the doors are opening so that commuters can get ready to alight on the right side! They have announcements in 3 major language (Cantonese, English, Mandarin) whether in verbal or written. Even the guiding stubs on the floor are rubberised to prevent slipping instead of metal like sg’s (apparently our implementor has never taken a train on rainy day to understd the possiblilty of splashing rain and wet floor). For years, singapore has been copying HK in the transportation system and the type of buses we used but we just canx seem to get it right.
What i fail to understand is why do LTA always "copy" half heartedly, and never the useful features? I used copy becoz i would always see the new stuff in HK first before seeing it in sg. HK had the big yellow rail buses and pass card before we do. They had wonderful train design while we are still ploding on with ours.
I thot it would have been really useful to have everything HK had in their MTR for ours. Having different languages and the directional sign routes within the train are great! Didnt we pride ourselves in multilanguage society? While we preach to be multi racial, the language used has always been predominantly English. Why? Its all recorded messages isnt it? Even during a short breakdown, the train driver apologised in cantonese, mandarin and English. And ours? Only in some muffled English.
But what impresses me the most are the people. They too have arrows on the floor. There wasnt a need for any reminder (like sg) for the people to allow comnuters to alight first. People simply Q at the door and automatically waited till most have alighted before going in. Despite the higher traffic volume and much much bigger crowd, no one shove me during peak hours. No one threw me dirty looks as if she is the greatest queen that all must make way. No one hogs the entrance and becomes a physical hinderance to everyone else. Everyone simply just walked into teh train as much as they could and if they couldnt, they just stop in line and wait for the next train. It was like a dream sg is trying to achieve for years and still fail somehow… i havent figure out how they did it yet but i was mighty impressed i tell u. I hope someday, for once, we can be better at service orientation than other countries i have come back from. Afterall, there really isnt anything to hold us back is there?
heee
Terrible Hoax!"