So what’s new? NEL was hit by lengthy delays on Friday. I arrived at Punggol MRT station at about 7.30am. The station was unusually crowded. I figured that if Punggol was this crowded, the situation at the other stations further down must be much worse. So I took a bus back home and had breakfast. The incident was reported on Channel News Asia.

By 9.00am, I thought things would have settled down a bit. But the train was still very crowded, stopping for 5-10 minutes at almost every station. I got off at Serangoon and changed to the Circle Line. No bus bridging services were offered because the trains were still running. Many people must have been late for work.

Anticipating problems during evening peak hours, I left my office early. Though the trains didn’t stop at every station anymore, frequency was low, at about 7.5 – 9 minutes. That’s because to restore the NEL completely, the traction power system has to be shut down in order for engineers to enter the tunnel to replace the broken bolt. Had this taken place during revenue service, it would have caused “massive inconvenience” to commuters as there would be no train services between HarbourFront and Dhoby Ghaut for a period of time, said SBS Transit.

That must have been the “big news” on that day, right? Wrong. Lianhe Wanbao had other ideas. I saw a woman reading it on the MRT this morning. The report on the glitch on the NEL was in a smaller typeface than another report. 19 year old PRC singer moon-lighting as freelance prostitute in Singapore. Is that surprising? Is that more newsworthy than a glitch in the NEL affecting thousands of people?

Well, apparently, a singer from China (singing in Singapore) made some posting in a “women looking for men” site and one curious reporter decided to befriend her, only to find out that she’s asking for money. That became front page news on Lianhe Wanbao. A shocking discovery? Come on. It’s not that we don’t know that such things exist. But mentioning it will only cause these women to go into hiding, depriving our men of one important source of entertainment apart from the singing. Anyway, her singing probably sucks (no pun intended). Leave these girls alone to do what they are good at.

© Chan Joon Yee

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