vinyarb

like, what is legit anymore?

The state of our transportation systems today

Dec
17


This is all one big conspiracy I’m telling you. Recently, Singapore’s transportation systems have failed, one after another.

First, a series of train disruptions caused trains to be stuck in tunnels with the air-condition and lights turned off. This resulted in someone taking a fire extinguisher to the window to keep ventilation going.

Then this morning, the bridging bus service broke down while ferrying stranded passengers from the MRT stations.

And earlier today, an incident happened at Sengkang MRT. Apparently, a ceiling slab fell and hit a man. It looks really serious, and I hope the man will turn out fine.

Lastly, a few days back, while walking home, an overturned taxi greeted me.

Is this all a giant conspiracy to tell us to get our own damn cars? But COE is so high! Looks like the holy trinity of SMRT, LTA and the Minister for Transport are in for a rough last few days of 2011!

*update: apparently, the man fell from height while cleaning the area outside the mrt station.

 

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Spider-webbed Trees in Pakistan

Dec
15
Spiderman's practice grounds

National Geographic

In the 2nd half of 2010, Pakistan experienced some strong monsoon rains that resulted in a huge area being flooded. It was estimated that the floods affected 20million people, with close to 2,000 deaths. Damages to structures were estimated at about USD 4 billion.

In the aftermath of the flooding, these photos reveal the impact the flooding has had on the insect population. As flood waters rose, it drove thousands of spiders and other insects up to higher ground, including trees.

With the flood waters slow to recede, the spiders had no choice but to do their thing right up there on the trees, making for these beautifully haunting photos.

Another plus to this story: in areas where the spiders have scaled the trees, there have been fewer reports of malaria spread by mosquitos.

Either that, or Andrew Garfield’s been practising his web spinning chops over at Pakistan.

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a do-over

Dec
15

So, over the past year, its been a great deal of fun writing about various things that were close to my heart. Alas, my hosting server hasn’t been kind to me, and ran into all kinds of trouble, from frequent outage to being hacked.

So, as I shift over to a new hosting server, it has provided me with a chance to do-over, keep things fresh.

Maybe without the burden of writings past, I may then be free of the shackles to write better? Maybe.

So that was my do-over button, and i’d just pressed it.

 

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