I Was At The Budget Terminal

This School Is On A Junket To Melbourne
Wow! A "school trip" to Melbourne for this group of students studying at Changkat Changi. And they are flying on a SIA plane.

From snatches of conversations I got, the teacher-in-charge mouthed something about being on a similar trip to Cairns.

And schools must be flushed with money to spend it like that.

I got a call for a "hardship" posting to teach Qingdao students for a month, starting this weekend. A measly $4 daily food allowance but with lodging thrown in and a salary of S$2500 a month. She quipped about standard of living and so on.

Balls to you, Man!

Contrast the two and tell me what you think.


"System Upgrade"
This is a laugh. After what the Bishan community library has billed it to be. Although it now has a nice opening screen with cool graphics and a well laid-out menu, the connection speed still sucks and toggling between windows lag so badly that when you type, the alphabets only come out after a certain delay.

The whole system is so slow and very unresponsive. The new screens dont come on fast enough. I think it needs a major overhaul and another "upgrade". The old system at the other libraries is faster and more responsive.

Hiro Is Gone - In A Jiffy And Just Like That
Hiro has upped and left. He has given me some inkling of what is to come when we ran into each other. What with all the snivel levelled at him, I can't really blame him. But then again he isn't exactly the cleanest or tidiest person or has the prettiest toilet habits. But neither is the house.

To think he spent 5 years here in that room. He must have spent some $15000 in all that time here. I thought he deserved better, not only in terms of furnishings but also in treatment and the way Tim and his mother snivel about him. All that vile and bile.

I took a look at it when it was vacated. The mattress had its spread cover torn and tattered, the furniture weren't exactly plush nor useable. But what I think was really bad were clumps of black dirt right below the air-conditioner signalling that it hasnt been serviced for a very long time.

And that room - halfway tiled on the walls, part of the window view blocked by a slab of concrete outside, obliterating light, view and pervading doom and gloom.

And it is SO SMALL for the price he pays. He could have gotten a better deal. Bigger room. Better furnishings. A newer estate. Etc, etc.

Ewwwww.......and all that health concerns and health scare. Doesn't anyone has a code on this? Some basic decent health standard for a minimum of air-conditioner maintenance?

The United Nations
Well, of course, another area our international public relations mill must have done pretty well, is to have brought in most, if not all, 193 countries of the world to be based here either at the ambassadorial or legation or whatever level. Another foreign policy of sorts.

As Tired As A Panda
I didn't know I was that tired untill I nodded my head and dozed off at the community library the other day. I caught forty winks or more, I think. After that short siesta, I woke up refreshed.

Just yesterday, my neck and back were stiff as rocks while I had these black rings round my eyes and they were watering really bad and I yawned so many times, flies could have made their home in my open cavity.

All those nights of sleeping in one kama sutraic position on a single bed, cramming my movement, and sleeping very late at night because of the caffeine in my tea or the nicotine in my ciggies didn't help either, I suppose.

Budget Terminal
Changi Airport T2 has nice skylights now which tend to brighten up things a little bit more. I visited the Budget Terminal and was pleasantly surprised by the modern, contemporary decor: clean, spartan, bright, quite colorful and airy. The word "budget" was fonted red and curvy on roadposts and on the terminal's wall.

Instead of being on two floors, one on top of the other, the arrival and departure halls are laid back to back, next to each other. There is only ONE cafe here and about the only things you can do here is sit around. No viewing gallery, no shopping, no nothing.

But it was kinda fun watching the countless motorists playing hide-and-seek with the CISCO auxillaries at the car parking lot as they zoom off or have to be told to scoot off or risk a parking ticket.

I hung around and took in the sights while observing the arrival of tourists/locals from Haikou. In fact the destinations that fly here are of south-east asian or asian origins like Taipei or Padang or Clark, Manila.

Danny Boy From Darwin
He must be Charles Darwin's fan, hailing from that part of town, or is it countryside, of Australia. I struck up a conversation and we got round to talking on a myriad of topics like the Subic Bay (the Americans have left the base some 18 months ago) where he had just arrived from (and oh, by the way, he was stranded when he missed his connecting flight and had to spend a day here in Singapore), Steve Irwin and his third, or is it fourth time, here at the Budget Terminal.

I handed him about the only "Uniquely Singapore" brochure cum map written in English (apart from the Little India Walking Tour and the Shopping Guide - the rest of the brocks were in Japanese, Malay or Chinese) to help him move around here and promised him I will drop him an email.

The Fabulously Rich And Maybe Famous?
All these big branded cars like the Mercs and the BMWs (oh, I spotted a Malay ex-MP driving off in a Merc on the eastern side of Singapore after buying home a meal from a Malay coffee-shop where I was dining on a $2 worth of roti-john - and yes, oh my GOSH, food portion can be BIG at some places so I shared my roti-john and gave away my $2 fries to an elderly news-magazines vendor at Hougang ) were pulling up to pick up passengers at T2's Arrival Hall. It was quite a sight to watch these rich and perhaps famous people, all togged out, stepping in and out of their marques as I sucked and drew on my ciggies.

In fact most of the people at the airport were fabulously rigged out, fabulously beautiful and seemingly rich. There were Asian Indians, Caucasians and Asian Koreans, Japanese or Chinese (whoever they are).

A Victorian Code And Happy Feet
"Singapore: The Encyclopaedia" has rightly acknowledged the penal code on homosexuality as a dinosauric Victorian code imposed on a populace living in the 2lst century. Incidentally Queen Victoria's bust got symbolically smashed to smithereens in the animated movie "Flushed Away".

Doesn't "Happy Feet" purvey enough undercurrents on being different, singing and dancing to a different tune in life and on absurd religious fanaticism in lieu of human intervention and effort in the face of calamity to warrant a parallel human look in our own lives?

What about the BIGGEST EVIL in the world - that is us humans if you don't already know - who destroys about almost anything in its path to conquest of every and any available resource for our human consumption and industry greed?

The penguins' food chain was seriously threatened when the antarctic oceans were overfished.

Just think about it - it is time Man Is Abolished.