Tag Archive for 'ERP'

Of cars and such

Published on February 9, 2008 in General, Ramblings and School. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This post was supposed to be posted on chu xi (CNY eve), but I never really got down to typing it. Lazy me as usual. So now, you get this post, plus whatever I have to add on for the past few days! I had to go school on CNY eve, how sad is that? Working people got like half day off and could go home around 12-1pm, but I had lessons from 12-4pm! The lectures were kinda empty, either because people thought that they did not have to go for lectures, or because they blatantly chose to ignore the fact that they had to go for lectures.

Anyway, on my way home, there was a massive traffic jam on the CTE. I thought that it was due to people rushing home for their tuan yuan fan (reunion dinner), or maybe it was because certain roads around chinatown were closed, and so people were forced onto the CTE. It was highly unusual for a traffic jam on CTE at 4pm on normal days. However, when just before the PIE exit, I saw 5-6 cars along the shoulder of the expressway, and most of them weren’t in very good shape. I can only imagine there was a 5-6 chain accident, since most of the cars seem to have either their front or rear or both smashed. I guess that explains the accident. I wonder if the upcoming ERP gantries will prevent jams due to accidents and such. “85% of motorists will have a smoother ride”. “Road tax prices will be reduced”. “CEO prices will be reduced.” What they don’t tell you is ERP gantries will be come up by the dozens, so you should buy a car, pay instalments, and not drive it. One thing the Government is wrong about though, a car is not a luxury item, driving a car is. This podcast from Mr Brown more or less sums it up all.

Also, on my way home, I had to pump petrol, since my tank was already on the reserve fuel and anymore travelling without refueling would need me to get down and push my bike to the nearest petrol station. Going past the petrol stations, I saw many cars trying to turn into the stations, and I was wondering why. Then I realised most of them were turning in to get their car washed, and so promptly went ahead and zoomed into the petrol station to refuel my bike. I wonder why everyone needs to wash their car on the eve of CNY. Is it because of some unspoken tradition, or simply because of a “since everyone else is doing it, I must do it too” mentality. Who cares anyway? My bike is washed my nature, and I don’t really take the effort of washing it :P

Anyway day 1 of CNY was uninteresting. Went Bai Nian-ing at a few places, and proceeded home to sleep. I also tried learning how to play a guitar, since Joanne passed me her guitar. My fingers hurt now, and I’m trying to play Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing At All. Oh well, I can play up to the chorus now, but more practice is definitely needed. I don’t really like playing chords, since it seems like playing twister with my fingers, and my fingers are too fat! :( The 2nd day of CNY wasn’t all the interesting too, but after dinner at my cousin’s place, I got together with my cousins and talked for a few hours about stuff. We only see each other once a year, so the talk was definitely good for catching up and stuff. Anyway, after that we decided to go back to my uncle’s house, where it looked more like a makeshift gambling den. The younger generation (my cousins and I) proved we weren’t that lousy at gambling after all. At the end of the day, I won $40, Mei Ching won $115, and Kian Ann won $15. $40 wasn’t too bad for my 15 rounds of ban luck (chinese version of blackjack) after all…

I Love NUS!

Published on January 17, 2008 in General, Ramblings and School. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Gotta love NUS, for screwing me up over and over again. First it was CORS, but that was nothing. Now it’s the school administration, or the school of computing, or whoever makes decisions that tutorial slots can be changed at their whim or fancy. Yes, they decided to change the tutorial slots available for bidding of one of the modules to some other days. The worse thing was that I didn’t know about it until I decided to browse through the module info page to see my planned slot GONE. And the worser thing was that the only 2 days they had tutorials on were my working days. And the worsest thing was that I had to bid for another module at Round 3B (2nd last round of bidding). And the worserest thing was that I used up ALL my points for a module I could have probably gotten for less than 100 points in earlier rounds. Yes, all 4388 of my points, which leaves me with exactly… 0 points left in my programme account. Oh well, at least I take comfort in the fact that going to school for my Statistics lecture is a good cure for insomnia…

Anyway, I had my wisdom tooth extracted yesterday. All the horror stories I have heard, about the pain and the amount of money you need to spend. Well, I can say that my experience wasn’t that bad. Only paid $77, and the extraction took all of 10 minutes. So, I went to the dentist at around 4:20pm. Sat on the dental chair, and let the dentist do some routine checking. After she checked, she injected me with 2 injections of anaesthetic, and waited for around 5 minutes. After that, she said she would test first, and before I knew it my wisdom tooth was out. I guess I’m one of the luckier ones who don’t have wisdom teeth that grow at odd angles and where you need to cut your gem to get the tooth out.

Also, had my 9 to 6 marathon in school today. Would have had only 1 hour of break at 4pm, but my lab sessions have not started so I had 3 hours of break. Therefore, I went to the computer lab to do some surfing and chatting, and customizing my PortableApps FireFox. PortableApps is a cool idea which lets you install applications on your usb drive which you can bring to different computers to use. But I digress. I was spending most of my time reading http://419eater.com/, which is a site which does scambaiting. Basically it is about how they scam people, mostly those Princes from Nigeria, who send you emails that they want to give you 1 million. So it’s like giving them a taste of their own medicine. Anyway, on my way home, I saw something funny. Something was walking on the expressway pushing his bike in the opposite direction. He was probably pushing it to the exit before, possibly because no one told him that ERP changed and there was a gantry before the Upper Serangoon exit on CTE.

The solution to road problems of Singapore

Published on November 15, 2007 in Ramblings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Came back to school around 6 something. I was riding along CTE when I saw the sign that ERP was from 5.30pm to 10.30pm. Also, last week I noticed that the morning ERP for CTE was extended to 7.00am to 11.00am. Also, if you were to drive a car through the CTE gantries from 8.30am to 9.00am, you would have to pay a whopping $7 when you go past the 2 gantries. To solve the road congestions problems they say it’s for. Alas, I see how it works now! Soon, gantries will be erected just outside your house. That way, no more road congestion problems!