Snippet Of My Life Episode 11 – Of Coffee Bean Muffins, Singapore Budget Terminal, Sudoku, 1-800-CALL-NEA, and IPO

I swear things are getting more expensive in Singapore.  Just couldn’t pinpoint the exact figure as I am lousy in numbers until one morning, I was devastated to see my beloved muffin at Coffee Bean is now selling at S$3.50, up from S$2.70.  That is a 30% hike over the weekend.  That’s it, no more muffin breakfast for the poor me.  The staff looked at me in sympathy and sighed, “Only salary doesn’t go up”.  I agreed.
 
So I shall go budget.  Cynthia went budget for a totally different reason (last minute flight booking).  I enjoy sending Cynthia off to the airport in the morning.  A break from the routine travel on the CTE and a chance to see the Singapore Flyer up close and personal, I love the Daytona highway ride in around that area too.  We have not been to the Budget Terminal before and joked that we may be able to drive up to where the plane parked.  Nothing like that of course.  The Budget Terminal, to me, looks pretty much like the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal from the outside.
 
Today was the first time I visited the Budget Terminal.  Today was also the first time I played Sudoku!  I have always been tempted to try it out.  The rules are actually a lot simpler than I thought.  Sudoku is pretty much like my favorite Minesweeper game – either a direct solve for a cell or a solution by elimination.  It is therapeutic and while I was playing it on Today (the free newspaper), I was more fascinated in how I can create a Sudoku puzzle and how I can write a program to solve a Sudoku puzzle using artificial intelligence.  Who knows?  Granted that many may have done that, I may actually do that myself.
 
Besides Sudoku, in today’s Today forum, there was an official government response on a complaint made against motorists who leave the engines on while idling on the roadside: call 1-800-CALL-NEA.  All we need to do is to provide NEA with the date, time, location, vehicle registration number, and the brief description and NEA will take action from there.  I have no qualm over that because many times while I was jogging on the street, I see motorists taking naps inside their air-conditioned vehicles with their engines on.  Singapore is an unique country whereby citizens and residents are mobilized from catching irresponsible motorists to the participation of the manhunt activity.  Imagine one day we could call 1-800-CALL-CWO (corrective work order) for the spotting of litterbugs.  Or another 1-800 number to call CASE for a muffin hike not unlike the one at Coffee Bean.

In the middle of Raffle Place, where my office is, I often see up to three IPO counters ‘competing’ for attention.  9 out of 10 counters will have a pair of attractive young girls … distributing booklets.  Part of the advertising strategy perhaps?  One of my friends agreed, “Ain’t no pretty girls, ain’t no IPO”.

Talking about IPO, Benny emailed me this morning and said, “I feel for you bro”.  You feel for me how what who where?!  He was referring to my HWT share that continues to head south.  The price was so stagnant that I gave up staring at the same figure day after day.  Is there such a thing as: too late to sell?  Oh well …

So I lost S$600 on paper.  And I needed a retail therapy.  I bought tons of rare CDs from HMV with one that costs as much as S$52.95. 

Things are getting more expensive in Singapore, I swear.