Category: Singapore

Entries detailing the two years that I lived in Singapore, and any future trips to visit friends.

Half-Height Safety Doors at Singapore MRT Stations

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

I read an article on ChannelNewsAsia’s website saying that by 2012 Singapore will finish installing half-height screens (or safety doors) along the lengths of above-ground MRT stations.

They’re doing this in an attempt to make the stations more safe for passengers.  There have been 92 instances since 2006 where people have fallen onto the tracks, accidentally or otherwise, and it causes a serious disruption to MRT traffic that can last up to an hour while police do investigations.  That may not seem like much, but there is only one line going in most directions, so it can cripple public transportation. Not to mention it’s just not that cool for people to be killing themselves.

Here’s a map of Singapore’s MRT lines, just so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:

So anyway, this all seems like a good thing right?  It’s gonna cost some cash (S$126 million for all 36 stations) but in the long-run it will save lives and prevent costly disruptions.

When polled, most Singaporeans were in favor of the idea, quoting safety reasons.  Some even wanted to see the entirety of the outdoor stations enclosed (and I’m guessing air conditioned, though it wasn’t stated).

However, you can’t please everyone!  Here’s a quote from the original article:

Most commuters 938LIVE spoke to welcomed the addition, as they believe the doors can prevent accidental intrusion onto the tracks.

“When it’s too crowded, and people start to push each other around, then it can stop that from happening,” said a passenger.

However, some raised concerns about ventilation. “I think it’s very unsightly. It just blocks the flow of… the air. (The air) doesn’t flow from left to right. Mainly it’s unsightly,” said another commuter.

They were nice enough to make it sound more like the woman was concerned about ventilation, but as you can see, she mentions first, and then again at the end, that it is “unsightly”.  She even says that it is “mainly” unsightly.

I mean, come on.  What’s more important?  Preventing the loss of human life or aesthetics?  It’s a train station, not an art gallery, and not the Prada or Louis Vuitton store.

Personally, I think these screens are a fantastic addition to the above-ground train stations and will help to prevent accidental loss of life and suicide attempts.

According to the article they were installed at the Pasir Ris MRT station, but I haven’t been through the MRT station since Tuesday, so I’ll have to get over there and check it out!

Buddy Hoagies at Downtown East

Bradley Farless4 Comments

The first time my wife and I saw this place we kinda scoffed at the name.  It sounds pretty lame right?  So, we didn’t bother trying it out.  We didn’t even bother looking it up online.

I was really in the mood to try something new, though, so when a Friday night rolled around and we couldn’t decide where we wanted to go, I said, “Well, how about that Buddy Hoagies at Downtown East?”  My wife couldn’t think of anything she’d rather have, so that’s where we went.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  The first thing I noticed was that the place has a nice ambiance.

Buddy Hoagies at Pasir Ris White Sands / E-Hub
Buddy Hoagies at Pasir Ris White Sands / E-Hub
Buddy Hoagies sitting area.
Buddy Hoagies sitting area.

The place is really relaxed.  The lighting isn’t too bright either, though it seems that way in the second photo.  That’s just a bad shot!  I think it helped that there weren’t too many other people in the place at the time.  It gave the whole dining experience a relaxed feel and was conducive to conversation.

The place also has a fun look to it, with nifty little pictures up on the wall, a cafeteria style bar, and (though you can’t see them in the photo) a section of seating with nice, cushioned seats that help you relax.

The service was pretty good.  I got the impression that our waitress wasn’t having a good day, but she still forced a smile and was passably polite, if a little brusque.

The food itself was another surprise.  For what we paid I wasn’t expecting a miracle, but you definitely get a lot of value for your money.  I was so happy with our food in fact that at the time I snapped these photos on my phone and put them out on Twitter.  Some of my Twitter followers were quite jealous of my meal that night!

Buddy Hoagies sirloin mushroom steak.
Buddy Hoagies sirloin mushroom steak.
Buddy Hoagies sirloin steak.
Buddy Hoagies sirloin steak.

The Sirloin Steak

The veggies were crunchy, the meat was well cooked, and I was actually kinda shocked to see baked potatoes.  I think this was the first time I’d had one in over a year.  Too bad there was no sour cream, chives, and bacon bits to go on it, but hey, can’t have everything right?

Overall, Buddy Hoagies was a great dining experience.  The food was fantastic and the value for the food was great too.  We’ll definitely be going back.

The Search For Great Pizza in Singapore Continues

Bradley Farless11 Comments

One of the things I’ve been unable to do since moving to Singapore is locate a great pizza. I mean a great pizza that tastes like a slice of pizza I could get in New York City. I know that’s not likely to happen, but man, I was hoping for something close at least.

There are Pizza Hut franchises here, but they’re just not the same. They use a different type of tomato sauce and they use a lot of weird ingredients that you’d never find on the menu in the US. I never liked Pizza hut anyway, since it’s so greasy. The last time I ate at a pizza hut was in Alabama and I literally used a napkin to sponge the grease off of it before I ate it.

In the US, my preferred pizza, as far as franchises go, is Papa John’s. That stuff is just plain good!

Here in Singapore, I’d take just about anything.

There’s a Sbarro’s in the Philippines that I ate at. It was great! There’s another restaurant there that looks good too, an Italian place, but I just can’t remember the name of it. I haven’t been able to try it yet, but hopefully the next time I’m there I will. I have a craving for Mexican food too, so hopefully we’ll get to stop by Mexicali. Not sure when that’ll be though, since my next trips are lined up for Phuket and maybe Bali or Sabah.

But… my quest for great pizza in Singapore is still incomplete. I thought I might have found a winner at a restaurant called ‘New York, New York’, but it wasn’t quite up to par either.

To start off with, the pizza was really greasy. You can see that in the photo. The second problem is that the sauce was put on so lightly they might as well have just excluded it from the recipe, and what sauce was on there wasn’t very tasty. I guess they missed the whole part about pizza sauce having spices and being more than just tomato sauce.

The worst part is that we had to pay 13 SGD for this disaster and it was only 9 inches in diameter.

Oh, and speaking of ‘diameter’, our waiter didn’t understand what the word meant. He got so confused that he wound up telling me that they only sold pizza by the slice and that the slice was 9 inches long, and cost 13 SGD. I told him to go get a manager and the manager was able to clarify for me. Plus, I just wanted to point out to him that his waiter should at least know what’s on the menu.

So, ya, ‘New York, New York’ was another fail.

The closest I’ve seen so far is that ‘Canada Pizza’, I think it’s called, but it wasn’t good enough to make me want more.

On a positive note, I heard from another person’s blog (An American Girl in Singapore) that there’s a Dunkin Donuts in the new Ion Mall down on Orchard. That’s GREAT news. The donuts at most shops here in Singapore are just… too much I guess you could say. They’re overdone with icing and overdone with fillings and way too sweet to the point they’re not even good anymore. Some of them are so bad you might as well just be eating a big ball of sugar. The mom and pop bakeries here, on the other hand, don’t put enough and you wind up feeling like you’re just eating plain dough. Dunkin Donuts is a franchise though. They should get it right, because it’s a standard recipe. I can’t wait to get down there and check to see if they have Bavarian Cream!

(A photo of the last Dunkin Donuts we had in Kuala Lumpur’s airport a few months ago)
If you enjoy reading articles about pizza, you might enjoy THIS great article about a Singaporean’s search for good pizza in Italy. It’s quite enjoyable and funny!

Singapore’s National Day

Bradley Farless8 Comments

So, Sunday is August 9th, Singapore’s National Day. The country will be celebrating it’s 44th birthday, it’s 44th year of nationhood, supposedly. I say supposedly because I remember reading recently that the Prime Minister said that Singapore is not yet a nation. I know he was speaking figuratively, but it still can’t be a fun thing to hear if you’re a Singaporean. I’ve seen that same sentiment echoed quite a few times on forums and in blog posts, though. There are plenty of Singaporeans that feel as though Singapore doesn’t belong to the Singaporeans anymore.

Somehow, I can’t blame them. A full third of the population isn’t native. About 68% of the country’s jobs are given to foreigners. The country has been built up quite nicely for just 44 years of self-government, but somehow it has failed to produce people who feel like they belong.

Here are some quotes I pulled from a blog post’s comment section:

This is just a small sampling. You can visit the blog post itself for more, but this is just to show that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the current situation in Singapore. There were even comments from Singaporeans stating that they planned to wear black on National Day, rather than the national colors, to represent the fact that they’re mourning rather than celebrating.

Still, not everyone was full of doom and gloom. My wife and I walked through Pasir Ris Park tonight and it was packed full of people barbecuing and camping out for the night. There were tents everywhere! It sort of reminded me of parks and neighborhoods in the US on July 4th, with groups of family and friends getting together to celebrate.

From what I’ve read, and I’ll admit it isn’t too much since I try to steer clear of much involving Singapore politics, people have come to believe that National Day in Singapore is more of a celebration of the PAP (People’s Action Party?) than a celebration of the people, and so a large portion of Singaporeans aren’t as enthusiastic about the day as they used to be. It’s pretty sad that many people in Singapore are opposed to celebrating their own national holiday.

Singapore is a young country. It has a lot of maturing and learning to do yet, and I’m sure that in time it will become a place that all Singaporeans are proud to call home. So, here’s hoping for that day. Happy 44th Singapore.

Dead Smiley

Bradley Farless4 Comments

I found this shirt in the mall a few weeks ago and I’ve also seen quite a few people out and about wearing it here in Singapore.

Anyone who has used he internet much has been exposed to “smilies”.  They’re cute icons used to express an emotion in chat.  Sometimes they’re called emoticons.

Given that, what does this shirt say?  A dead smiley = “CHEER YOU UP”?  So, death is the way to be cheered up then is it?

Either people are blissfully unaware of what the smiley means, or there’s just some meaning behind this that I’m totally missing.  It’s not uncommon for Asians who have poor English language ability to wear a shirt with something totally screwy on it, but this should have been pretty easy to steer clear of.

Singapore McDonald’s Seaweed Shaker Fries

Bradley Farless4 Comments

From what I’ve seen, the McDonald’s menu is tailored to the country it’s in, to appeal more to the locals.  In the Philippines there is a longganisa (Filipino sausage) and rice meal, for example.  Up until today I hadn’t noticed anything too different about the meals in Singapore, except for the choice of drinks.  There are different teas offered here, rather than the sweet iced tea you might be accustomed to in the US.

Today though, I saw something that was a big deviation from the norm.  Seaweed shaker fries.  They give you the large fries and a packet with some sort of seaweed flakes / flavoring in it.  They also give you a small paper bag.  You dump the fries and the seaweed flakes / flavoring into the bag and shake it up.  Then you enjoy your ‘seaweed shaker’ fries.  Sounded kinda gross to me, so I passed.  I don’t do the whole ‘up-sizing’ thing anyway.  The regular sized meal is full of enough calories, fat and grease as it is.

The Abuse of Non-Resident Workers in Singapore

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog recently you’ll have read that Singapore can be a pretty rough place for a foreigner.  There’s plenty of racism and discrimination from locals.  Unfortunately, this type of discrimination is also common in the work place.

In Singapore business, appearance is everything.  Companies want to present the best image they can, regardless of the internal cost and that’s usually going to be at someone’s expense, because they want a certain level of service to be rendered but at the same time they don’t want to put forward the capital or manpower required to adequately meet their goals.  Someone winds up suffering, and those someones are typically foreign workers.

You see, being in Singapore on a work permit is a rather unique situation.  People usually apply for jobs in Singapore through recruitment agencies in their home countries.  If they’re approved they receive a card that designates them as being about to legally enter Singapore without needing their passport stamped and remain for the duration of their work contract.  Now, people that do this sort of thing are either looking to improve their lives, or they have financial obligations at home, like a family to support.  Either way, they have to maintain their job.  If a person loses their job they’re only given so many days to find a new one before they have to leave Singapore, and sometimes that time-frame is only 2 weeks.  You see what I’m saying?  There’s a lot of pressure to make sure you stay in your employer’s good graces, because you’re almost guaranteed to have to leave the country if you leave your job.  Moving from one country to another can be a big deal.  It can be even more stressful when your income is cut off and you have obligations to meet.

In other words, there’s really no wriggle-room.  You work, or you get put out and you have to leave the country.

Being the pricks they are, people like to take advantage of that here.  They create unrealistic expectations in their KPIs.  They ask employees to stay longer hours, often unpaid, to do more work, even if that employee has exceeded the target set for the day.  This is done so that the company can get around hiring more people to manage the workload more effectively, but is an abuse to the worker.  In the case of maids, I’m sure there are far worse abuses that happen despite the strict rules regulating maids in Singapore.

Regardless, there’s no much of a recourse for these foreign workers.  If they decline the request to work the longer hours too many times, they’ll simply be let go and they’ll have to pack up the life they’ve made in Singapore and return to their country, often with not much to show for their efforts and no immediate prospects for work.  If they file a complaint with the company?  Same result.  File a complaint with MoM?  Well, something might happen in the future but the company would find a reason to fire that person.    Change their job?  Well, it’s not always that easy.  Most foreigners come to Singapore on a contract, so they can’t change jobs.  If they can, it could be hard to find one, and if they do, and there’s even the slightest delay in the paperwork, they could have to pack up and leave the country and then come back once the new contract is approved.

You see what I’m getting at here?  The labor laws in Singapore regarding foreigners are either not strict enough or they’re not being properly enforced to protect the interests of the foreign workers that are being hired.  These people are employees, not slightly paid slave labor.

(Image Source)

Undisciplined Children on a Singapore Bus

Bradley Farless11 Comments

On Friday afternoon I was on the bus, heading to the MRT station so I could meet my wife for dinner. I was on a single story bus in the standing area, leaning against the padded rest.

(For those of you not familiar with Singapore buses, I found the photo at left on Jom Naik Bas!, which seems to be a blog dedicated to reviewing modes of transportation, mostly in the Malaysia/Singapore area.)

So, anyway, I was standing there, leaning against that rest and chatting with my wife via SMS. There were two kids playing around in front of me (towards the rear of the bus). I wasn’t paying much attention to them, but after a brief stop, when the bus lurched back into motion, the kids stumbled. Like I said, they were goofing off, being noisy, and they weren’t holding onto anything. So, one of the kids stumbles and stomps down on my foot. I was only wearing slippers (flip-flops), and the boy had rubber shoes on, so it hurt. I wasn’t that upset about it because it was an accident, so I stood there, looking at the kid, waiting.

What was I waiting for? Can you guess? Well, apparently the boy didn’t know or care, because instead of doing what was proper, he glanced at me briefly and then went back to playing. His mother, who was sitting to my right and saw the whole thing, didn’t bother to speak up either.

Why did I have to be the boy’s parent for a few minutes on the bus that day? Why did I have to teach him a lesson his mother should have already taught him, and should have scolded him for forgetting?

I closed the cover on my iPhone and put it in my pocket and then I leaned towards the boy and said, loudly enough for his failure of a mother to hear as well, “You know, the polite thing to do when you step on someone’s foot is to apologize.“

The kid looked at me as if he were shocked. Is it so uncommon a thing to ask people to be polite to each other? No reaction from the mother. Perhaps she doesn’t care about what her child learns? I bet she would have reacted if I had simply reached out and smacked the boy in the back of the head. That probably would have made headlines here. I can see it now: “Ang moh asshole abuses boy on bus for stomping his foot and not saying sorry.”

Anyhow, the boy looked at me, all shocked, and said, “Oh, sorry.” Then returned to playing with his friend. I was satisfied at the time, but later I would remember that honorifics are used in this country. I don’t exactly think of myself as an “uncle“, though I’ve been referred to that way before by kids that are about 10, but a “Sorry, sir” or a “Sorry, uncle” would have sounded much more convincing to me.

The kid is probably already spoiled if he’s that indifferent to other people’s space, or to the fact that he caused injury to another person. I blame his parents, and I blame society. This is where it starts. The kid doing something wrong and the parent not correcting them, or no one correcting them. This leads to a self-centered “me me me” attitude that produces kids who think they walk on water, foreigners are trash, and anyone who does an “un-glam” job is a failure.

There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when that bubble bursts.