I have to admit, the only reason I joined the Compressport Run was to get the free calf sleeves.
So I was surprised I enjoyed the 10km run yesterday as much as I did, more so than the two Performance Series races.
Yes, it was the same old route around Marina Bay again, but I appreciated how the first few hundred metres of the course along Nicoll Highway was wide enough to accomodate the thousands of runners without much congestion.
This wasn't the case for the two Performance Series runs.
I was also surprised when my NikePlus running app told me this was my fastest 10km ever, which made the run even more enjoyable in retrospect.
I don't know whether I had ever run 10km in under an hour before in my life.
But it's nice to know I can still do it after my 50th birthday last month.
I like the free Compressport calf sleeves too.
Kinda disappointed there was no finisher T-shirt though.
Coincidentally, the last time I ran my "fastest 10k ever" was also in my On Cloudster shoes. They are becoming my 10km good luck charm.
Except I had a painful blister on my left ankle yesterday after the run.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
I didn’t want to write another column making fun of the Land Transport Authority (LTA).
Really.
The last time was in May. It was about how an LTA ad to promote a “car-lite” Singapore showing a woman riding a bicycle with the tagline “Freedom to come and go” resembled a sanitary pad ad.
Someone said to me: “Come on lah, Smong. Didn’t you just write about LTA? Why do you keep picking on those poor buggers? It’s becoming almost like a form of bullying.”
After that, I told myself to lay off LTA and look for someone else to bully, like Jem or Rui En.
To be fair to me, the previous time I wrote about LTA was in March, which was more than two months earlier.
It was to point out the irony of the Government introducing Car-Free Sundays to promote a greener future even as LTA justified plans to build the Cross Island Line across the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, which could make our future a little less green.
Five months before that, I wrote about how a stray aluminium foil helium balloon could cause a train delay and floated the idea of banning balloons from sale in Singapore, like chewing gum, to prevent any more balloon-related incidents.
In that column, I also called out the LTA for faking a train disruption to conduct an exercise testing SMRT’s and SBS Transit’s readiness to deal with a train disruption a day after there was an actual train disruption.
That was in October last year.
So it’s not like I’m picking on those poor buggers every week.
Anyway, this week, it seems that everyone has already beaten me to it.
LTA is getting whacked worse than McDonald’s new salted egg yolk chicken burger after a Hong Kong investigative news organisation called FactWire reported that defective SMRT trains were wrapped in green covers and “secretly” shipped back to the manufacturers in China in the dead of night last month.
It was the biggest thing out of the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China to hit Singapore last week, even bigger than Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun Fat, who was in town to promote his new movie, Cold War 2, and take lots of selfies.
LTA just can’t catch a break. When there are train breakdowns, people complain. When there are no train breakdowns, people also complain.
Just as McDonald’s has addressed the salted egg yolk chicken burger issue by promising “extra sauce”, LTA has since addressed the FactWire report by saying the defects are not “safety-critical”.
The Government also explained that the trains were transported in the dead of night “to minimise obstruction and inconvenience to road users”, and the green covers were to “protect the trains, just as how we would bubble-wrap or enclose in boxes and styrofoam-pad electronic equipment and machinery that we want to transport overseas”.
This reminds me of the time I ordered the six-movie Rocky box set on Blu-ray from Amazon last year.
While I was watching the first movie, the picture suddenly froze. I replayed the movie and the picture froze again at the same point.
Aiyah, what should I do next?
I ordered the Blu-ray online from overseas, so it’s not like I could just go back to the shop and exchange it.
The mere thought of going through the hassle of trying to get a replacement or refund from Amazon was enough to make me just want to write it off.
I imagine LTA must have felt the same way when it learnt about the train defects.
Except I paid maybe 30 bucks for my Rocky box set and LTA paid hundreds of millions for the trains.
LTA definitely couldn’t just write it off.
But should I?
Hey, 30 bucks is 30 bucks.
So I steeled myself with the eye of the tiger and contacted Amazon to get a replacement or refund.
I was instructed to return the defective item by securely packing it in a box (which I had to supply myself), printing the mailing label and invoice from the website, affixing the mailing label and appropriate amount of postage for shipping to the US on the parcel, and shipping the package from the nearest post office or shipping company of my choice.
Sure, that is nothing compared to wrapping six trains in green covers and transporting them to the shipyard in the dead of night with auxiliary police officers clearing the way, but sending a Blu-ray box set to the US is not cheap too sia.
In the end, I somehow managed to get Amazon to send me a replacement without me having to return anything.
I don’t know whether LTA could do that too — or should even try.
Now I have two Rocky box sets, one of which is defective.
Like me, Mr Bahrom probably doesn’t watch much Channel 8, where Rui En is an award-winning star.
I actually know of Rui En from her Channel 5 shows like the body-switching dramedy Chemistry and inter-racial marriage sitcom Archar!, where she replaced Steph Song in the second season. (Remember her?)
Hard to imagine now but the “ice queen” of Caldecott Hill also used to co-host Gotcha!, the Candid Camera rip-off on Channel 5, long after original host Moe Alkaff left.
It’s conceivable that Mr Bahrom might have seen these Channel 5 shows, but they were on a very long time ago.
So it’s quite understandable that he didn’t know who Rui En was.
But is it possible that when she asked him whether he knew who she was, she didn’t mean “Do you know what a big star I am? Don’t you watch TV?”?
She later explained that what she really meant was: “Do you know who I am, I live upstairs and won’t run.”
She also said that when Mr Bahrom stopped her from driving off, her intention was to “move my car to a traffic-free spot before addressing the matter”.
Despite suffering frostbite from my briefer-than-expected encounter with Rui En during the non-audition, I believe her.
You see, I was once also accused of hitting a parked motorbike and running away.
So I could relate to Rui En too.
What happened to me was, after parking my car in the open-air HDB car park, I ran to my block because it was starting to rain.
Minutes after reaching home, there was a loud banging on my door.
I opened the door to see what I would describe as a small lynch mob out for blood — mine.
It was one of the scariest moments of my life and I’ve watched The Conjuring 2 trailer.
A neighbour had seen me reversing my car into a parked motorcycle which toppled onto another bike. One of the bikes belonged to her relative.
She then saw me running off, which in her mind was proof of my guilt even though I just trying to avoid getting wet.
I wasn’t aware that I had hit anything, a claim which the lynch mob justifiably found hard to believe.
I wanted to point out that if I had really wanted to run away, wouldn’t I have just driven off instead of leaving my car and literally running home on foot?
But I suspect such nuanced logic would be lost on a lynch mob.
To appease them, I let them show me the toppled bikes and I promised to compensate the owners.
I didn’t have to tell them “I live upstairs and won’t run” because as the lynch mob had frighteningly demonstrated, they did know where I lived and I couldn’t run.
In the end, I paid the owners of the bikes a couple of hundred bucks for the damage, which was less than the $700 that Rui En was fined on Friday for careless driving.
I guess I should count myself lucky I wasn’t charged for careless driving too. I’m just grateful I wasn’t lynched.
But just as the mob let me live, I forgive Rui En for her non-audition.
I eventually cast Michelle Chong in the role.
- Published in The New Paper, 3 July 2016
Dear SM,
She tried to run. Only when Mr Bahrom ran after her and knocked on the window of her BMW, did she stop her vehicle. She then exclaimed, "Do you know who I am?"
The question stops there. It is so obvious that she had intended to tell Mr Bahrom who she was not that she lived upstairs and won't run! A sentence does not begin in that manner when you are going to say that you live upstairs............etc!
She was arrogant and not forth coming with her apology. As it was mentioned that the open space car park was not filled with cars or on coming traffic, so when she mentioned that she wanted to move her car to a traffic free spot is a load of rubbish.
Media Corp Stars, a minority of them are living in a Dream World owing to their alevated status and wealth. Humble Themselves!
