So, for the last few days it’s looked pretty dreary out:

Basically, the farmers in Sumatra get their fields ready for planting by burning all the old stuff off of them.  Then the smoke/haze blows over here for a week or two.

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/singapore/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4408302

It looks like a chilly Fall day outside, until you go there and find out it’s 35 degrees ( that’s 95 in metric ) and humid.  However, the haze didn’t stop me from playing golf in Indonesia yesterday.  You have to stand up to this stuff!

In Singapore public transportation works.  It’s an easy, clean, inexpensive, safe and convenient way to get from one place to another – more or less.

That said, new public transportation on any scale in the United States will always be an absolute failure.  It will waste hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to cover just a small percentage of an area.  As a country, we’d be better off investing in fuel-efficient diesel-hybrid engines, thorium reactors, and quick-charge batteries than anything that sounds like streetcars, light or high-speed rail. 

However, if you’re city or region is considering this option, here are some questions that should be asked:

1.   If you look up in the sky, can you see it?  If you can see the sky, the trains will be empty because not enough people live where you want to put the train.  Only build these things where you CAN’T see the sky because of all the tall buildings, otherwise it will FAIL.

2.  Are people in  your area polite to one another and do they respect people they do not know?  Will the people in your area leave the train clean?  Will they not listen to loud music and scream into their cell phones?  Will they give up their seat for the elderly, pregnant women, or small children?  Are pickpockets caught, prosecuted, caned, and jailed?  If you cannot answer yes to all these questions, it will FAIL.

3.  Is traffic COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY gridlocked?  If you don’t have COMPLETE AND TOTAL gridlock twenty-four hours a day, you don’t need public transportation.  If you think you have a lot of traffic only during the morning and evening rush hours and your city officials want to build light rail to alleviate the congestion, the new system will FAIL.

4.  If your city wants to build public transportation to help the environment, it will FAIL.  Just wanting a smaller carbon footprint is no reason to waste $1 billion taxpayer dollars.  It would make more sense to buy 40,000 residents a new VW Jetta TDI.  ( Buying 40,000 of that Prius thing would just make things worse.  http://hubpages.com/hub/Prius )

5.  Are you going to use the public transportation to get your residents to a new casino?  http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101015/NEWS0108/10160328/1055/NEWS/Streetcar-groundwork-to-start–   Do you really want it to succeed?  Yes, casinos are arguably entertainment, but they are also a tax on folks who can’t do math.  The casinos will win in the long run and the street cars will FAIL.

6.  Do all your stores have parking lots?  If they do, public transportation will FAIL.  A walk across a Target parking lot is longer than the one between the two bus stops on our street.  That means, best case, public transportation drops you at the traffic light and you have a 5-10 minutes walk to your destination, just to cross the parking lot.  Then you need to walk back to the bus stop with your purchase and hope you return home before the milk turns to mayonnaise.

7.  Are the proponents of the public transportation system trying to renew an urban area that has suffered from neglect, crime, decreasing populations and blight?  Then it will FAIL.  Public transportation will only make a good and growing area better, it will not reverse the tides of decades of bad civic decision-making.  A subway or light rail is a luxury that only a successful city should even consider investing in.  Otherwise, the system just provides criminals with another escape route and more victims.

8.  Do you have roads that already offer an efficient solution?  If so, your public transportation system will FAIL.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Hub   Why would I take the train from Cincinnati to Columbus when I can drive it in 90 minutes?  When I reach Columbus do I need to rent a car to get to my final destination?  How is that efficient?

9.  Are the passengers you are trying to transport Americans?  If so, it will FAIL.  Americans are independent and don’t like to adhere to schedules.  We like the individuality our cars provide and the ability to change our plans at the last-minute.  We don’t like to wait in lines, sit next to people we don’t know, or hear other people’s kids ask if we are there yet.  Imagine what happens when the TSA folks from the airport are put in charge of the rail system.  You’ll need to get to the train station two hours early, leave your nail clippers at home, then you can check your luggage and conveniently wait 45 minutes in Columbus to find out your bag went to Toledo.

Public transporation can work, it just depends on the area.  Communities need to remember these simple questions before the boondoggle begins.

A couple of weekends ago, Mrs. Stockdale and I went to the one of the practice sessions for the Singapore Grand Prix (that is metric for Formula 1 car racing).   It was one of the loudest and coolest and awesomest things I’ve ever seen, until I saw something even louder and even cooler and even more awesomest that same day.

First the F1 thing (click on link at top for this post to embiggen):

Our F1 tickets gave us access to the entertainment venue where you could purchase small cups for beer for only $10 and some stuff that resembled food for $15.  Mrs. Stockdale had heard that ‘Daltrey’ was playing on the F1 stage and I was mildly interested.  Even though he had been in ‘The Who’, I figured Roger was a washed up rock star with too much plastic surgery playing the county fair circuit to make ends meet till his drug habit finally sent him to an early grave. 

I cannot begin to communicate the level of excitement that overwhelmed the core of my being when Mrs. Stockdale informed me that it wasn’t Roger Daltrey from ‘The Who’ it was Daughtry from (as she called it) ‘that show that makes people famous.’

The musical power of this man cannot be expressed by a mere mortal in words alone.  Only truly experiencing his rhythmic beauty in person can one truly understand Daughtry’s art.  I even hesitate to refer to his enchanting melodies as only music.  It is truly so much more than can be described.  It must be experienced.

Please listen for yourself.  If you are at work,  you should make sure your boss is at lunch (so you can sing along), unless you are fortunate enough to work for a Daughtry fan (we are everywhere, so you might).

You can see the power he has over me!  I should have saw it coming a long, long time ago.

Before we knew it, Daughtry was finished.  The brief time I spent in his presence will truly transform my life in Singapore and beyond.  I am a different person because of him.  If only he’d be my friend, then I would gladly join Facebook.

Please note the monkeys have begun their plans for invasion and domination of our world.  Where is Charlton Heston when we need him?

Over the weekend, Mrs. Stockdale and I went to Oktoberfest at the Swiss Club.  I could try to describe the whole thing, but instead  I’ll just let the poorly snapped pictures and videos I took on my phone describe the experience.  ( You’ll need to click the above link to enbiggen and watch the movies. )

First obey the rules.

Then, enjoy the music.

That football ( metric soccer ) classic:    ‘Ole – Ole – Ole – Ole’.

Then there is Mrs. Stockdale’s doing the Chicken Dance.

When I think German music, I think ’99 Luft Balloons’.

And, of course, Sweet Home Alabama.

And what Oktoberfest would complete without ‘YMCA’?

Or, ‘Hang On Sloopy’?  ( Please note Mrs. Stockdale attempting to spell O-H-I-O. )

Oh, and then there was the Rob Stewart impersonator.

Is that a pomelo on the crazy little Stockdale’s head or is she just happy to see me?

A pomelo is a cross between a grapefruit and a watermelon.  Otherwise, why would you wear it like a hat?

There is a reason they put those silly snake signs up.

Just when I get to the point where I think that I can’t see anything stranger than whatever goofy thing I saw last week, I see stuff like this:

This is a hen ( metric chicken ) that I saw walking down the street, followed by a bunch of baby hens ( metric chicks ).  There were no farms around.  It was just a normal urban street surrounded by cars, buses, and lots of people.  Yep, makes sense to me.

You can outsource a call center to India.  You can contract manufacturing to rural China.  But, did you know you can outsource even the most cherished parental responsibilities?

For the last few years, I’ve been attempting to teach the middle little Stockdale how to ride a tw0-wheeler.  While she responds reasonably well to her teachers, the middle little Stockdale completely refuses to learn ANYTHING from Mrs. Stockdale and I.  Regardless of what we are trying to convey to her, she wants nothing to do with it.  Actually, I don’t blame her, but that is beside the point.

One of the guys I play golf with told me about Mr. Edmunds at Hon Kah Trading.  ( www.cyclinglesson.com.sg )  For the low,low price of $200SGD you get four one hour bike riding lessons and a guarantee that you child will be riding on two wheels.  Let’s just say this guy is a genius on many levels.

Basically, he pads the kids up, sticks them on the bike, he gets on his bike next to them and away they go!  At first he pulls them along by holding onto their handle bars.  Within about five minutes the middle little Stockdale was riding on her own.  By the end of her first lesson, she was almost self-sufficient.  By the end of the last lesson, she was a fully functional little kid on a two-wheeler.   Granted the only place she can really ride in Singapore is in the parking garage under our building, but at least she can ride while it is raining.

The other interesting part of the bike lessons was getting a closer view of life for the ordinary Singaporean.  Most of the population live in what are known as HDB ( Housing Development Board ) flats.  These are four and five-room apartments that are sold to residents through a partnership between private developers, banks, and the government.  Relative to the private property market, these flats are reasonably priced ($250,000 – $500,000 USD) and come with mortgages in the 1-2% range.  There are a variety of income requirements, residency restrictions, and rules around the system.  Regardless it works pretty well in Singapore.  Most newly married couples in Singapore live for a short period with one of their parents and then purchase an HDB flat.  The HDB flat is the closest thing to the suburbs you will find in Singapore.

Mr. Edmunds bike shop is at the bottom of an HDB development.  Most of these have a small amount of retail on the first level.  These include grocery stores ( 7/11’s are EVERYWHERE ), restaurants, tutors ( tutors are EVERYWHERE ), and random things like bike shops.  Mr. Edmunds seems like a local hero his building.  He keeps a bunch of old bikes outside his shop for the kids to ride and I have a feeling my tuition payment was subsidizing the bicycle riding skills of the entire neighborhood.

While growing up in something like an HDB flat in the States would be terrible because of loud neighbors, litter, and the crime that always seems to follow high population densities.  In Singapore, it works.  The place looked clean, safe, and everyone seemed to know each other.

Singapore is successful, in large part, because it’s residents respect each other, at least at the basic levels.  I’m not saying there aren’t problems or that everyone is friends, but I would say problems are isolated and dealt with accordingly.