SMRT – Revisited

During our stay in Singapore this time round, I didn’t want be stuck in town especially during the holiday seasons. With a million vehicles around, its a tad fastidious especially having a pillion behind, adding to the stress.

Thus, we had to rely more on public transportation like the urban train, SMRT.

First things first though, was to get a ezlink pass! With these, we could tap and go! ™ Tap to boardat the entry and tap again when leaving to deduct the correct fare inside the card.

Our old ones were so old (it was purchased 2 years ago) that we couldn’t even replace them for these new ones! Ah well. In a couple of years it’ll become a collector’s item. Looks sturdier these new cards. It even survived an accidental washing machine cycle.

Anyway entering the train, I was extremely confused for at least a full 5 minutes when looking at direction because for the longest time, I thought that Boon Lay was the final stop. Joo Koon? What on earth is Joo Koon? Where did Boon Lay go to?

I didn’t realise that Boon Lay wasn’t the final stop anymore! Haha! But that was not the only change that I saw, as what used to be three lines – red, green and purple, now had an additional yellow line.

With 4 lines, tis still pretty understandable at the moment, not yet to the Japanese train of about 20 lines!

Anyway, one thing that I quite liked was that each train exits, there are signs like these :

For every destination that it is at, there are light flashes at the current stop as well as the stops that it has passed. There are also lights letting you know which exit to go to.  Very useful really, because prior to this, I’d always had to crane my neck outside of the window to peer at the black signs to see which stop I was currently at.

But what’s this?

I’ve never seen these borders before. I suppose its been erected due to the increasing amount of suicides, yes? What a way to go.  The odd thing is that not every station had them. <morbid>I suppose people in Boon Lay have a better state of well being since the station has no borders compared to Lakeside and Chinese Garden </morbid>

Nevertheless, our journeys with the train are pretty uneventful more or less. While there have been nice upgrades, it’ll be nice to be able to have a seat every now and then. The trains always seem so full like 9/10 times we were there.

The only sad thing is that Cart and I arrived too late to be able to see the Dimsum dollies sing the MRT song. Was it so annoying? Oh well. MRT song is gone ….  TV Mobile is gone … What else