It starts off with me waking up at 10:30 am on Wednesday, which was rather early considering the fact that I slept till 1 pm before most of my recent duties. After a full night without sleep, I was then expected to report back at work by 2 pm the day following my night duty after being let of at 8:30 am. Squeezing in about two hours of sleep, I somehow managed to get a bath and pack a simple meal and prepare myself for a long day ahead.

It was then back to (not really) work. There was this change of command ceremony which I thought would take up to a few hours, but to my pleasant surprise, it only took twenty minutes at most. However, the post ceremony portion dragged on till way past the time I would normally stay in office. It was only about a quarter of an hour later we were allowed to sneak out. And the drama started to unfold.

Upon approaching Comfort Driving Centre at airport road, I spotted the bus I wanted to take. In fact, there were two of them queueing up to turn right just a few cars apart. I was rather relieved to see those buses because I was beginning to worry if I would be able to get to NUS in time for the rehearsal. The first bus made it to the bus stop before the lights turned red. As the bus approached, there was the usual crowd gathering at the spots they expect the bus to stop but the bus stopped way before that, as if there was already an invisible bus at the bus stop and refused to open its doors. The driver then stepped out of his seat and opened up what used to be the farecard machine and did some things. Seeing that it may take quite some time before the driver would allow anyone aboard, I decided to flag down the bus that was coming when the lights turned green again. To my disgust, and the disgust of another man who also tried flagging the bus down, it simply went past. Not only did it go past without stopping, the driver glared at us. I wonder if this is what SBS Transit Bus Captains are trained to do. I think that it is totally unprofessional that the driver did not stop even after having at least two people flag it, even without the glare. As for the driver of the first bus, he finally allowed us on board. The ez link machine was displaying an error message. I thought that the driver would have the brains to catch up with the bus in front and allow us to all transfer to that bus instead but the driver was so caught up in his own world that he drove at a snail's pace. The first thing he did right was to contact the support stuff using the control for the ez link card readers. And did someone previously tell me that the moment you praise someone, that person will disappoint? Well, it has been proven true in this case. He stopped at the next stop, refusing to open the doors again. After trying for a while, he opened both the front and back doors and paced to the rear exit then back to the front, still on the line with the support staff. He then got off the bus without saying a word. Did that amazed you? The bus driver getting off the bus at a bus stop without saying a word to any of the passengers? He did not even attempt to explain to the passengers about the situation nor instruct the passengers to alight and wait for the next bus and whether or not the next bus would arrive soon. These are the minimum he should do if the card readers refuse to work. No form of apology was made to the already agitated passengers who were obviously rushing to get to their destinations, having seen the next bus overtake it and not being able to do a thing about it. Of course the angry passengers got off in the end, but that is not the point I am trying to bring across. SBS Transit is probably the largest bus operator (or service provider) in Singapore. It is really a disappointment that some of its bus captains are only trained in driving. To think that they are set for yet another fare hike next month, it is truly unbelievable. SBS Transit should give their bus captains proper and thorough training so that they are fit to be referred to as bus captains and to provide service to the people. Probably the can justify the fare increase to send such drivers for training. Those drivers should switch companies and work for a delivery company where only goods are transported from one place to another. At least the goods will not mind if the driver explains to them that he is experiencing a technical problem. By the way the above mentioned drivers were driving bus service 151 in the direction of Kent Ridge at approximately 5:50pm on 20 September.

My fingers are tired. I shall continue about the long day later on.