IMHO – Page 19 – laremy.sg

Reward users for loyalty.

Tue, 8 Sep 2009

2 min read

Isn’t the $3 deposit on each card enough to offset costs incurred in Giro service?
Letter from Laremy Lee

I REFER to “EZ-Reload: Convenience, peace of mind” (Sept 7).

I acknowledge that there might be processing costs incurred in the provision of the EZ-Reload by Giro service which the company might need to cover. However, this raises two questions.

According to the EZ-Link website, there are more than 8 million card-based transactions daily.Aren’t EZ-Link’s overall profits based on this volume of users enough to cover said processing costs of the Giro service?

At the same time, EZ-Link users currently need to have a $3 minimum balance on their cards before they can travel.The EZ-Link website also states that it has issued 10 million cards so far. This adds up to about $30 million of latent cash. Doesn’t the interest on this already cover the processing costs?

Using the EZ-Link system is one of only two payment options offered to commuters. In light of this fact, I feel that EZ-Link should consider absorbing the processing costs for the EZ-Reload by Giro so as to reward its customers for their loyalty to the company.

Please be reminded (or at least be aware) that the tone I have adopted in the last paragraph is one of irony.

IMHO

95% of people can guess someone’s sex just from smelling their breath.

Sun, 6 Sep 2009

2 min read

1 Comment

This is from Learn Something Everyday, a new site I discovered from I forgot where.

Anyway, while the site is an interesting and innovative initiative, and the fact in itself is interesting too, my biggest grouse is – how do I verify the authenticity of what’s being said?

I tried searching for the information online but the quote always turns up on its own, without any sources or studies to back it up.

I’m probably not looking hard enough – the last time this happened was when I was working on my research paper and I found this quote about Alfian Sa’at’s One Fierce Hour and how the Straits Times lauded it as “truly a landmark for poetry [in Singapore]”.

Every source I found about the book had the same line, but I couldn’t find the exact article with those words. I remember searching for days on end and wondering if this was one of those things that become truth when you repeat it often enough.

(Who said that line about repeated lies becoming truths, anyway?)

Well, suffice to say, I managed to find the article on RedNano (proved to me that the damn site was good for something), and in case anyone is curious, it was Lee Tzu Pheng who said it in a book review.

So yes – I’m probably not looking hard enough, so if anyone can point me to the actual source where the information about being able to guess someone’s sex from smelling their breath can be found, I’d be very grateful.

Anyway, some tangential information on the Big Lie to sum up what I’ve been thinking about information and credible sources.