Pleasures of Air Travel

It’s 10:33am and I have been up for hours. The morning was bright except for some wisps of mist, but now the sunlight is being obscured by a thick mist and I cannot even see across the podium level gardens.

If it’s this misty, it must be Hong Kong in the throes of spring.

But I feel chipper all the same; it’s the sheer luxury of being alone, to do as I like for the rest of the day until I meet my friends for a celebration. Freedom!

Yes, I have things on my “to do” list, but they can wait a couple of days.

Nowadays I don’t enjoy traveling as much as I used to because of the planning and packing (in my case it is not accessorizing clothes but trying not to leave bits of computer and peripheral cables behind).

But once - like yesterday - I set out my hesitation at leaving the ‘old man’ at home evaporates. It helps to have a pleasant ride to the airport and I did, arriving in good time to check in. The SQ Economy check in at Row 3 was a little busy so we were asked to go to Row 6 (Business).

I met Miss New (her badge said ‘I am New’) who was flummoxed because she could not find my name on her computer. Only when she called a colleague over did I realize what it was about and suggested she flip a few pages; I’m not going to go through the hassle of getting a short term biometric passport (mine is good until 2014) for my abbreviated name.

As there was a screen that asked me to rate the service, I asked Miss New about it - and was duly informed that it was not yet in service or wasn’t working, I can’t remember which.

Same thing with the AED (defibrillator) stations in T3 which had signs that said they were not yet in service. So please don’t have a heart episode or attack when using T3. I only noticed it because the AED station was hard by the Information Counter where I had to go to get a slip of paper that facilitated using the ‘free’ wi-fi.

At least this time I only had to hand over my passport; before this I had to fill in a form. A real pain and I do not know what purpose it fills except to keep the bored Information Counter staff bobbing up and down.

A survey lady collared me “for less than a minute” to ask my opinion about the wi-fi registration and she kept her promise. Enough time for me to say it was a waste of time and no bar to terrorists or whatever. Maybe the government is just being a busybody and helping keep residents employed.

I took my time and got to Gate A12, to find it still closed. There were some personnel there but not the full complement and so early birds sat outside until the gate opened around 12:30p for our 1:30p flight.

Sometimes I fall sleep quickly on flights - usually after I am tired out running errands or cleaning house. But since I was reasonably organized, I was rather surprised to be overcome by sleep even before take-off.

Singapore may not be toxic for me, but it must be stressful because I only woke up to have my meal during which I imagined myself trying to eat in a straight jacket. My elbows were pinned to my sides; on my left by a well built man and on my right by the interior panel of the aircraft.

While I know I am expanding sideways, I am still not quite as portly as some and I wondered how they managed in today’s aircraft where there is a huge difference in seat dimensions, ranging from suites in ultra-first, through various configurations of business to ever tighter economy.

Since economy is the bread and butter of the airline business, you wonder when they will realize that there is a limit to how long they can treat passengers like battery chicken while they waste acreage on big spenders.

I liked it when Valuair, the precursor to Jetstar, came on the scene years ago - their one class seats were rather decent.

Anyway, we arrived on schedule at 5:15p although it seemed as if we were taxiing a long way - I asked the fight attendant if we were taxiing to Shenzen but she didn’t understand me at all! How is it that more often than not the male attendants speak better and are more efficient than some of the females who look as if they were cloned in the airline’s training school?

By 5:57p, I was ensconced in the Airport Express to Hong Kong having waited for luggage and then bought my 30-day return ticket.

That beats T3 perhaps because I usually land at the farthest gate, miss the train and then have to wait ages for luggage (I have this notion that economy class luggage is delayed so that Singaporeans can appreciate traveling First, Business or be a high value frequent traveller).

Also at T3, if you are descending to the car park, you have to contend with the world’s slowest lifts which are programmed to be on another floor! With the vast amount of space Singapore affords the air terminals, why didn’t the architects incorporate escalators that accommodate luggage trolleys?

It’s not as if it’s the first airport or terminal we have ever built.

By 6:22p we arrived in Hong Kong and just before 7p I was at home (luckily most of the traffic was in Central or heading down Stubbs Road)! How I wish Singapore had such seamless and quick public transport.

Couldn't believe my ears

Well, I decided to looks for some statistics that would back up what I thought I heard on TV last night. But what I found was different from what I heard!


Here goes:

The population 'bulge' is moving upwards but over 70s are not as big a bloc as I thought I heard the CNA presenters say. My fault!

Our Sun Times finally arrived and so we could have our Sunday 'read'.  

Back to Boring

Woke up to more of the same. 

On the surface nothing has changed in post-Presidential Elections Singapore of August 28, 2011.

Toadie Tan won by a margin slimmer than a skimping restaurant’s slice of jamon iberico.

But hope springs eternal and I hope that the ruling party and government do not continue to deny the presence of the elephant in the room.

It has grown from little Dumbo to a huge Jumbo.

The people of Singapore want more value for their money and less elitism; the Pyramid Club is not the only society with brains and ability. In part, thanks for this must go to our new citizens.

I suspect that my fellow Singaporeans are not going to be satisfied with the status quo.

Toadie was expected to win comfortably but the margin suggests that even new Singaporeans think before they cast their votes.

The majority of old, the very rich, the inner circle, the kiasu continue to vote for the ‘safe’ choice. 

Paradoxically, the "uncles and aunties"  form a significant bloc (CNA said last night that The 70+ or 75+ years of age account for something like 25 or more percent of Singaporeans). 

I say that because this is the group that has a less than  comfortable old age - having trouble making ends meet  -evIdenced by many of them working clearing tables in food centres.

A win by Dr Tan Cheng Bock (“Doc”) would have meant a new spring in our collective step. 

Hobbled though the Presidency might be, he would have brought fresh air into our our tightly controlled bubble.

This election also showed that the obedient mainstream media was not a match for the updates from the likes of Facebook (I don’t tweet). 

The paucity of news at 7:00am this morning and the feed was from the wire services shows what a lack of competition can do.

No doubt editors were hotly debating headlines and photographs but in the meantime early risers had themselves for company at coffee shops on our tiny speck of an island.

Singapore Airlines web site emulates Icarus?

It's been a busy few months and I have NOT been short of thought starters for this blog. But yesterday, the most urgent and appalling topic kept me awake all night. Well jet lag too!


Everyone thinks of Singapore Airlines as one of the best airlines in the world and as a national icon it ranks up there with the Marina Bay Sands building for foreigners who speak of Singapore today.

The Home Page (above) is hardly impressive - and as a baby boomer I wish they had used larger fonts. And LESS variety - it's an "Ah Beng" goes to town look with font variations galore. Distracting rather than functional.

And what large calendars with small typefaces - wasted use of precious space.

When I got frustrated with the web site and what I was trying to achieve, I clicked on SQCorporate (see top of the page) to find it was not about the company - instead the link leads to their corporate travel web site! (I had been looking for someone to email about my trials and tribulations.)

Somewhere along my route through their web site, I came across the web page (below):

Again, wasted space as there is needless repetition. The first mention of "Sign Up for our newsletter" doesn't take one anywhere, although the second one does.

And see those dots - we are meant to do the work to find where they might lead us. Who has time to go on a treasure hunt these days?

The grey panel at the bottom - could have been better laid out so that we oldies need not strain our eyes to read the 'small print'.

Anyway, all this is subjective and there will be eloquent defenders of the cause! But what is unforgivable is that the web site is almost unusable, at least in my case.

In my defense, when I gave up and called the Singapore Krisflyer number from Hong Kong, their automated answering service acknowledged that there were problems with their Web site and warned of large call volumes which might affect the waiting time. So it isn't just me.

When I tried to change my flight for a later one on the same day, it offered a flight that I selected. However it rejected my Krisflyer number (the same one I have had for years and with which I accessed the site) and would not implement the change.

That's when I called Krisflyer and spoke to Ms Cardoz who verified my details and then informed me that yes, it was possible to change my fight but I would have to pay more. (The web page I visited said that I did NOT have to pay more). I could, however, be put on a wait list.

This morning (22 June), just out if curiosity,I visited the site and was informed that the flight I requested was available for selection. The hitch being that only my current flight had a little circle for selection; not the flight I wanted and on which I am waitlisted! 

Being Singaporean, I sense a kind of Singapore logic at work here in the writing of the code for the site - and that leads to some of the dead ends I encountered.

I don't know why we proud Singaporeans don't just examine some of the leading airline web sites and do what they do - and in some case, improve on what they do. Why reinvent the wheel? It's not as if there aren't enough good alloy wheels to copy instead of starting with raw metal, an anvil and a hammer?

Maybe I have been away, but I have not noticed many complaints or even coverage in our diligent main stream media bringing SQ's shortcomings to light. Perhaps I am the only complainer in Singapore - or are we a nation so used to being treated like spittoons (I did not make this one up, I read it; a sportswriter recently said that of one T. Woods' attitude to writers and the public)?

On battling insurance bureaucracy or pushing a rock uphill.....

Time flies, but it also drags. We've had some qualified good news in that Lin's white blood cells have recovered sufficiently for us to pack our bags.


But we're still in limbo because he's now scheduled for a consult with the endoscopy specialist (this coming Monday) and until he's had his colonoscopy his feet are still nailed to the floor here in Singapore.


Thus far I have made some flight bookings and the ETD from Hong Kong is March 30th, 2011, with arrival in Ponte Vedra early April! Unless something untoward happens we should be able to make that deadline. It's the Singapore-HKG leg that is the moveable feast.


Prof. Wong is quite pleased that Lin has put on some weight. Unfortunately for me, I too have put on some weight - about 4 kilos since September last year! Must be the stress and keeping him company coaxing him to eat!


I have not been good about keeping all of you posted in recent weeks and I have wondered why. Is this experience starting to become tiresome? Yes, somewhat. Look at it this way, sometimes pushing a rock uphill calls for short rests!


But it is probably more about battling health insurance bureaucracy, in this case BUPA HK and the beady-eyed bods in their Claims Department.


After a hectic few months I settled down enough to put together the bits of paper we had accumulated from hospitals and such and sent them off for reimbursement. And that marked the beginning of a long and tedious trek to fulfill their requirements; the list of supporting documents looks innocuous enough at first glance. But be forewarned - or as we learn the hard way, get yourself a decent insurance broker.


Their claims forms are confusing (starting with trying to decide WHICH form is the correct form)  and belie the amount of information that is needed - we have spent months shuffling from pillar to post to satisfy the Claims tartars.


Now I believe it when I read that doctors in some countries have quit practicing because of the amount of red tape they have to deal with in between treating the sick. That and the malpractice insurance premiums, no doubt.


In Hong Kong (and even in the USA) some doctors refuse to accept any form of health insurance - it's strictly cash, cheque, VISA or Mastercard. Or any combination of the foregoing. And I don't blame them having tried to walk the walk with the paperwork.


This saga began in September (about the time I started to put on weight so that puts the kibosh on me being fat when happy!). We had to appeal to have some claims accepted for review because some of our earlier bills missed the 90 day deadline for filing.


It seems most unfair that when one is least prepared to tackle (and has the least time for assembling and submitting) health insurance reimbursements is the time they must be in the clutches of the Claims Department. 90 days is too short a time when the family is dealing with a major illness or injury.


Anyway, getting hold of the same person at the end of the phone is like being in pursuit of the holy grail and Lin wasted much time recounting the situation to successive customer service personnel. In the end we managed (through divine intervention?) to transition to corresponding by email with the same person and that has been a help in recent months. What a relief!


I also discovered (who checks out these things when all is well?) that Lin's health insurance policy was being handled directly by one of Bupa HK's office sales staff with whom we had not exchanged a word with all this time, so long story short we switched to using an insurance broker recommended by a friend.


The only time we heard from this individual was when he emailed us to confirm whether if was Lin's intention to switch to a broker.


By the time that the switch was confirmed by Bupa the bulk of our claims were already in the pipeline so I continued rolling the rock uphill.


The system at the hospital means that we routinely obtained tax invoices and credit card charge slips. Having paid by Medisave and our credit card, we did not know to ask for the official receipts. Bupa would not accept the tax invoices accompanied by the credit card slips; they demanded receipts too.


And if we forgot or did not obtain an invoice when we left the hospital, we could ask for and were issued duplicate tax invoices at the next visit. These were not acceptable (Bupa seems to think that the presence of the word 'duplicate' means that their clients have tendered the originals to another insurance company!).


In the last month, the customer relations officer we have been liasing with at Bupa managed to contact the central finance and administration office at NUH and asked for receipts - that's how I learned where to go for them. What a revelation - it was the key log in easing that logjam!


Then, unknown to us, the Claims Department - a law unto itself - kept sending letters by snail mail to our Hong Kong address to ask for more details (despite us having spoken and written to Bupa to contact us in Singapore). These demands required that the submission be made within a month; not exactly easy when we do not receive our HK mail here in Singapore.


Anyway, another piece of mindless bureaucracy is the requirement that each claim must be accompanied by a letter from the doctor stating the diagnosis and the treatment! Surely any human being with a modicum of commonsense would accept that the diagnosis was made in April when the cancer was first detected - and had not changed.


As for treatment, surely that was obvious from the invoices and receipts which stated what was done. But no, the doctors have to provide covering letters.


In the end Prof. Wong wrote a letter summarising what had happened between May 24 and December, which he kindly provided. Thank goodness the Prof. has been most understanding.


Since then we have periodically submitted lists (signed by the Prof.) headed  with the description of the condition followed by the dates and treatment or diagnostic tests ordered (all this merely repeated what the other bits of paper had to say).


The 'war' is not over yet.


We appear to have surpassed the annual or other limits for some of the claims. Again it doesn't make sense because the benefit limit for diagnostics is really rather low so that when one has more than two or three scans and various tests, including blood tests, the budget's blown.


So how's the doctor going to monitor the progress of the treatment and to see if anything else is brewing?


If it's been boring and exhausting to read this, you can well imagine what it's been like to live it, all 4 kilos worth.

What Can I Say?

The BBC recently released a four-part series "What Can I Say?" which explores freedom of speech and democracy in South East Asia. Presenter Gary Bryson travelled to Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore to meet people who are trying to find a voice for their village, their culture or their nation. You can listen to the podcast here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2011/01/110131_what_can_i_say.shtml

Listen and make up your own mind.

Continuing my sex education - in Singapore

We've been in Singapore since the end of May and except for a few trips to Hong Kong that I sneaked in to alleviate "rock fever", this is by far the longest stretch of time I have spent in my home country since the mid-80's. A lot has changed, both for better and for worse.


Yesterday, I had curry lunch with two of my cousins and it proved to be an eye opener for me.


While munching our way through a hot and spicy lunch, we carried on a conversation about - what else - but food. Discussing where to get good noodles and seafood without paying an arm and a leg, Geylang and Katong cropped up as places to find decent food at reasonable prices.


For those of you who have not visited and/or do not know Singapore, Geylang is an area famous for its eating places; and almost equally infamous for its brothels (according to web pages I looked at last night, prostitution is legal here but pimping and operating a house of ill repute are not).


As if on cue, one of my cousins fished his cellphone out of his pocket and muttered, "I don't know how they got hold of my cellphone number but I get messages like this everyday", showing me a screen that was identical to the one below, except for the date which is today's date (easily explained). 


When, later, I asked him to forward me the message, he said he'd already deleted it but would send this morning's to me, which he did:

There is more, but this screenshot suffices to capture the essence of the message he received. It contained attachments featuring photographs of the girls, accompanied by their professional names, nationality, vital statistics and - need I say it - titillating descriptions of the girls and their services.


I am far from being a prude and consider myself reasonably worldy, but I have to say that some of the acronyms are beyond my ken! And I shall have to have lunch with my cousins again, if only to ask them for a much needed lesson in the glossary of sex services available here.


As I was writing this, I recalled an incident a few months earlier; we had dinner with friends, one of whom was visiting from Hong Kong. After dinner and a long chat we all walked her 'home' to her hotel on Tanglin Road.


On our way there, we had to pass Orchard Towers which is often referred to in conversation and on the web as the "four floors of whores" for its many massage parlours, KTV lounges and bars.


As I often walk past or into the two buildings that comprise Orchard Towers (they do have legitimate businesses there and I believe in supporting local businesses),  the sight of scantily clad women of all ages, nationalities, shapes and sizes in that vicinity seems quite normal to me.


Outside, they stroll on the sidewalk, lean against railings and pose on the the steps of the buildings along the road although they are less evident in the daylight hours.


However, our friend from HK was caught unawares by their obvious presence in the 'tony' Orchard Road area and remarked that in Wanchai the 'working girls' stayed close to the entrances of their bars and clubs.


What made it remarkable for her is that this happens In 'squeaky clean' Singapore. It made her mind boggle.


It just goes to show that life is not starkly black and white, but various shades of grey. And this is a surprise in Singapore only because of the image that the government tries to project.


Given that people - all over the world - have had greater exposure (thanks to visitors and immigrants, to studying, working and travelling abroad, and are better educated than before) there is case for dropping pretences and calling a  spade a spade?


In the meantime, I am eagerly awaiting my next family lunch when I can learn even more about the Singapore that I do not know!