The ways and means of urban transportation have a certain inherent appeal.
So cute. It’s trying to hide behind that plant, but it doesn’t realize that just because it can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see it…
I collect sightings of JM Ice trucks because they’re so colorful. I’ve now seen at least 22 of the 38 or more trucks in the fleet.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen #15, though, and it was sitting still so I got a photo!
I thought usually #37 delivered to Chinatown… Ah well.
It was my first ride on one of Singapore’s LRT lines. I went from Bukit Panjang Station on the Downtown MRT line to Choa Chu Kang.
The train I was on had one car; the ones going the other way had two. Looking at the trains going the other way, I wasn’t so sure they were trains. There’s one rail under these things, but they’re not monorail trains. They’ve got rubber wheels on either side and they roll on those. So is this thing a train? A bus? Or what?
It felt like a theme park ride, to be honest. The track seemed bendier in the left-right and up-down directions than the MRT lines, but since I don’t look straight out the front of the MRT trains, maybe I’m overestimating how smooth the tracks are. The platforms at the stations, which were sized like the trains, contribute to the theme-park-ride impression.
It kinda freaked me out that the elevated track didn’t really have edges. It looked like we could just plunge right over the side. The vehicle didn’t really go very fast, though.
When I left Choa Chu Kang during rush hour, by taxi, the driver pointed out to me where one of the LRT trains had broken down on the track over the road. I was glad I’d gotten to experience the LRT in working condition.
This morning on the AYE I saw a yellow truck belonging to a company called Buildables (not to be confused with Build-a-Bear). On the side, the truck said:
We build walls and ceilings faster than the speed of this truck.
I wanted to take a photo, but of course it was gone too fast.
Just now I did a Google search and found the Buildables website. I have no idea whether their products and services are any good, and I’m not in the market for walls or ceilings at the moment, but the design and content of the website was better than I was perhaps expecting.
I’m always fascinated to see products and slogans on vehicles rather than just the company name. Maybe someday I’ll get a photo of one of the trucks that advertises those purple Japanese sweet potatoes or a truck from that moving company whose bee mascot is cross-eyed (!).
This is a hilarious receipt for a taxi ride with Prime Taxi.
For some reason the capital letters that are supposed to be on the far left are appearing on the far right instead. But that’s not what’s funny; what’s funny is the message at the bottom.
In the same parking spot where I saw a red Ferrari, now there’s an orange one. I like the color and shape of this one better.
Update! A fellow member of the Singapore Writers’ Group says this car belongs to one of her neighbors.
Small world island.
This is a sticker on the inside of the window in a taxi. It says:
NO ADMIN FEE & GST
when you pay with Dash!
Even assuming you like the ampersand in this font (I don’t), the conjunction needed here is ‘or’.
(No admin fee) and (no GST) => No (admin fee or GST)
The sign that says “no food and drinks” is also wrong for the same reason.
However, “Don’t leave your handphone & wallet behind”, assuming we find ‘handphone’ acceptable, sounds fine, since ‘handphone’ and ‘wallet’ can easily be considered a pair of items that would be forgotten together.
I would rewrite that as follows.
Records show that 50% of the items reported lost in taxis are mobile phones and wallets.
On the other hand, I like the ampersand on this half of the sign much better. Even if it is crowding the descender on that letter ‘y’.
I wish I had a photo of the map with just the green, red and purple lines, but apparently I don’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it: The circle line totally didn’t even exist in 2008 when we moved to Singapore.
In part because those living in Singapore have to bid for a ten-year “Certificate of Entitlement” that can cost thousands of dollars even before buying a car, the cars tend to be pretty fancy. (If the COE costs $10,000, you’re not going to buy a car worth $20,000, are you? You’re going to buy an expensive one or skip out and rely on public transit instead.)
There are some people with serious money living in Sinagpore. In addition, showing off your money is not necessarily considered to be in poor taste here. I get the impression that prosperity in the form of wealth is not a shameful thing to wish for, or to achieve, in Chinese culture. This especially seems to be the case during Chinese New Year, when people put up decorations featuring traditional forms of money.
I’ve seen more fancy cars in Singapore in the last seven years than I ever thought I’d see in a lifetime. Such as, for example, this one, chillin’ in front of Orchard Parade Hotel.
Once, I saw a car like this (another a red Ferrari) parked in Chinatown on the street where we used to live. It was parallel parked just in front of a backpacker hostel. There’s a combination you don’t see every day: $30 lodgings and a $1,000,000 car within a few feet of each other.
What I don’t understand, aside from how people can ever trust themselves to drive such expensive machines, is why all new cars, not just sports cars, have angry eyebrows. All new cars look mean.
I think it’s more noticeable in Singapore than in other parts of the world because cars here live short lives. Turnover is high. There have been at least three different generations of Toyota taxis in the last 7 years. And the new ones look mean.
When we arrived, there were some really boxy taxis. Then there were some slightly frowny ones. And now they’re full-on mean. See?
The word ‘alight’ didn’t used to really be part of my vocabulary, probably because in the US we had a car and we drove ourselves everywhere we couldn’t walk or fly. In Singapore we use buses, trains and taxis to get around. So now I hear automated announcements that say something like:
The next stop is XXX interchange. Passengers traveling to YYY, please alight at the next station.
Please allow passengers to alight before boarding.
That’s all very well and good. I have nothing against the verb ‘alight’. I don’t think there’s necessarily a better word to use, if you want an expression more formal than ‘get off (or out of) the vehicle’.
No, what amuses me is when ‘alight’ is used transitively to mean ‘drop someone off’. Or when someone means ‘drop you off’ and only says ‘drop you’.
May I alight you here?
May I drop you here?
I don’t think it’s just taxi drivers who use ‘drop’ to mean ‘drop off’, though. I think non-Singaporean native English speakers say that too, don’t we?
This is language evolution in progress. Why shouldn’t any verb be able to take an object? Why shouldn’t we just kill off—I mean, um, kill—all those pesky phrasal verbs? Maybe this is the future.
