Groucho wouldn't buy an iPhone

It appears I am more rational than my fellow Singaporeans. We are at Day-2 of iPhone availability from SingTel and I'm thinking it's not a club I want to join.

The latest e-mail from SingTel avoided previous faux pas and was text, not an enormous graphic. It was also spam trapped so I didn't even see it for 24 hours. It briefly describes the pricing plans and tariffs that we already know and invites me to book an appointment. This morning, SingTel's website carries the following advice:

Please come on and not before your allocated time. You must have an appointment to pick up your iPhone 3G. Only people with appointments will be able to collect an iPhone. You must be the account holder to collect your iPhone. Please bring with you your ID and your confirmation receipts/emails. Please be prepared for a 2 to 4 hour wait.

So let me get this straight. I have to book an appointment, and I must keep the appointment, but then SingTel will keep me waiting for 2 - 4 hours? At least the queue seems to be real customers. The Polish iPhone launch by Orange has been caught out hiring actors to create fake queues in front of 20 stores to generate a marketing buzz. At least in Singapore, the queue seemed to be genuine with the first buyer waiting 24 hours in line in the tent erected in front of CommCenter.

What continues to puzzle me is the ridiculously low data caps. It's a "3G" iPhone. Its main claim to fame is the increased speed of data download, otherwise it's essentially the same as the 2G (Ok, they did add GPS). If I chose the basic iFlexi tariff, I get 1GB of bundled data. SingTel don't give the overage charge on their website, so I called Customer Services on 1626 and after a hugely irritating message about iPhone delays, repeated in Mandarin, and 3 voice prompts later, I was queued then quickly talking to an efficient and well spoken Indian man.

The overage charge (the amount I pay for data beyond the 1GB) is 0.5 cents per kilo byte. So if I use 2GB of data in a month, I have to pay for the extra 1GB: (0.005 * 1024 * 1024 ) = S$5,242 (£2,011). It's no wonder there is already an online petition about the niggardly data caps.

To his credit, the CSO pointed that for "people who want to use a lot of data", they are better off choosing one of the normal SingTel tariffs and adding a 50GB mobile data plan on (on offer for 30% off). Funny, they don't mention that in the FAQ.

Just wait until you see the fine print. Calling Line Id is free (footnote: for 3 months only). Auto roaming is free (footnote: for 3 months only). Voice mail is free (footnote: for 12 months only). Incoming calls are free (footnote: until Dec 2010 only). Am I the only one who thinks this is borderline bait'n'switch?

You may be wondering are there any phones out there as good as the iPhone? The Samsung Omnia i900 is often mentioned. I tried one at the CommunicAsia show a few months back. Don't bother, it's rubbish. Sure it looks nice but it runs on Windows Mobile with some custom applications so it's schizophrenic, switching between an iPhone-esque touch interface and the underlying Windows madness. I was left dazed after trying to use it for 5 minutes.

I guess my problem is that I don't do Hype. The iPhone is nice and I'm willing to pay for one, but I hate the bullying marketing antics of mobile operators, the oppressive lock in contracts and the scary small print. I reckon StarHub and M1 will have better data tariffs later this year. And perhaps the final realisation is that I no longer want to be associated with the people who are buying iPhones. Groucho Marx would understand.

iPhone Kills Baby Seals

SingTel have stopped sending me e-mails about the iPhone launch; actually it turns out that they are initially targeting existing SingTel customers and I don't have any accounts with them. So only 2 days from the first sale, I have to read in the newspaper about the state of the promotion; only sales to pre-registered buyers for at least the first few days.

So I hot foot over to the SingTel website. Nada. You click around in an increasingly desperate search for any news or even mention of the device. In a sure sign of insanity, you even click on links you've already checked in the forlorn hope the result will be different. It turns out you need to go to the iPhone page, which finally shows the price plans.

SingTel have created special iPhone plans called iFlexi (yes, 2 'i's) plans, all 2 year contracts, assuming the 16GB model:

iFlexi Value: S$508 down, then S$56pm, 200 minutes, 500 SMS, 1GB data.
Total = $1852 (£704) over 2yrs

iFlexi Plus: S$208 down, then S$95pm, 500 minutes, 500 SMS, 2GB data.
Total = $2488 (£984) over 2yrs

iFlexi Premium: S$0 down, then S$205pm, 1500 minutes, 1500 SMS, 3GB data.
Total = $4920 (£1871) over 2yrs

Actually, it's more complicated than that, and there is a very detailed FAQ page just for the iPhone. But still, my immediate reaction is No Way.

First, anyone who spends £900 a year on a phone is mad. Secondly, the data caps are pathetically ungenerous; my M1 3G broadband account is S$22pm (£8.30) with no data cap; None; Unlimited. SingTel do the same deal but with a 50GB data cap. To put this in perspective, my domestic broadband usage is about 15GB per month (~14GB downstream and 1GB upstream). So a phone with a 1GB data cap is only 2 days of my normal broadband use. Clearly, this is no substitute for a home broadband connection (even if Apple would allow tethering, which they don't). So I'll have to keep my M1 mobile broadband account as well.

I have a couple of days to decide. I make few calls (probably less than 15mins a month) because I tend to use landlines for outgoing calls. I do use SMS, increasingly so. It's a convenient way to have a conversation in slow-time. Maybe they are in a meeting, or I am. I use it like e-mail for short, non-urgent discussions. But I still only send maybe 30 or 40 a month, tops.

So out of these choices, I'd take the first one (where I effectively buy the phone at cost) and then keep my monthly subscriptions from bankrupting me over the next 2 years.

Or I might wait it out and see what StarHub and M1 offer at the end of the year. I've already waited over a year for the 3G version. Another couple of months won't make any difference. It bemuses me that most buyers of the phone will not make such a calculated or patient purchase decision, which is one reason why Apple's market capitalisation has just past Google's

The Broadband Hustle

When it comes to marketing broadband services, there is no such thing as coincidence. Singapore has a few mobile phone carriers (SingTel, M1, StarHub) and broadband carriers (SingNet, StarHub, Pacific Internet). Now M1 is moving into fixed broadband by re-selling service based on StarHub's cable network.

It's an arrangement familiar in England where BT's OpenReach wholesales aDSL service to many ISPs, including themselves. StarHub will charge $35.71 (£13.27) a month to M1 who will then sell broadband service for up to S$88.50 pm (£32.89).

The wider story is that StarHub and M1 are in one of the two consortiums bidding for the NGNBN (new national fiber network) that is due to be announced any time, although an insider has already tipped it will go to the SingTel consortium.

The non-coincidence is that out of the blue, the Merlion household was cold-called by our existing broadband supplier, StarHub. We have been with them since we arrived 22months ago and have been contract free since the end of the first year. We pay S$59.80 (£22) for an 8Mbps/256kbps service that is Okay.

Given the choice, I'd change to SingNet on aDSL because Starhub do traffic shaping at busy hours. Trying to download (not watch, just download) YouTube videos on a Sunday night just fails, and slows to a crawl during evenings generally. SingNet have a better backend network and indeed use it to stream realtime video for their Mio (said Mee Oh) video on demand (VOD) service.

So when StarHub call and offer 25% off for a 2 year lock-in, I declined faster than a scalded cat. I hate lock-ins and, as is common with most of these deals, the cost to breakout of the deal is to pay the entire outstanding balance up to the end of the lock-in contract.

I haven't moved to SingNet for exactly the same reason. Only their entry level 512kbps aDSL has a 1 year contract term. All the faster plans are 2 years with the usual full penalty breakout. No deal.

The problem is freebies. If I commit to 30months with StarHub, I could get a 'free' laptop. Two years with SingNet gets me mobile discounts or whatever the offer is this month. I can't get a freebie-less deal without the term lock-in because the local market is saturated and stopping subscribers jumping ship at the first whiff of a better deal elsewhere is the main preoccupation of the marketing departments.

This also explains the horrible websites of these providers, especially SingTel [Ed: just re-vamped so looks nice but functionally similar] that, as you may now realise, are not there to inform, but to sell. I go looking for facts and get gypsy carnival style bait'n'switch showmanship. Just read the tiny footnotes if you doubt me.

Singaporeans are mercenary consumers who consider it a statutory obligation to change suppliers to get a better deal and publicly congratulate themselves on their savvy. Most change mobiles every 12 months. In my case, I stay with StarHub not because I'm locked in but because I am not. Lacking clarity of my tenure here in Singapore, I just sit on a contract-free, traffic-shaped StarHub line, paying a little more each month. As they say, Freedom isn't Free.

Singapore gets the iPhone

Having complained only days ago of e-mails from SingTel that consist solely of a single graphic image with no text, I can now report they have been listening. Yesterday's update e-mail, reporting that the iPhone will be on sale in Singapore on the 22nd August contains neither text nor graphics.

Unburdened by such e-mail trivialities as a message body, I can reproduce it here in its full and glorious terseness:

From: iphone@singtel.com
Subject: It's coming on 22 August 2008!
Date: 12 August 2008 17:44:58 SST
To: [redacted]
Reply-To: iphone@singtel.com

The popular & technical press have more coverage but still no indication of pricing although the word is that it will be subsidised so cheaper at the start, but more $ per month.

The other carriers (M1, Starhub) claim they will be offering the gadget before year end so SingTel had better think hard before trying to gouge the early-birds. I'll just pass and buy an unlocked phone in Hong Kong if they get greedy.

iPhone Marketing

My pre-order of an iPhone from SingTel is moving along. They sent me an update e-mail the other day. Well, I say e-mail, there was no text, just a single, stupid graphic file as an attachment which just throws petrol on the fire of my disdain for SingTel's marketing prowess.

Their website is such a cacophony of offers, special offers, circular links and footnotes it's about as useful as taking LSD and discussing astrophysics with Paris Hilton. Anyway, the non-email:

iPhone 3G coming soon

Hello,
First, SingTel brought you the best in coverage. [sic] And now we bring you the Apple iPhone 3G.

We know you're keen to hear more, this is just a quick note to say that we have not forgotten about you.

As you are registered, we will let you know very soon how you can be the first in line to collect your new iPhone!

We will give priority to customers who have registered, at this stage registration is still open but we may not be able to keep this open much longer.

If you have friends who may be interested, they can register now at www.singtel.com/iphone

I will email you next week with more details about how you can get ready for your new iPhone.

Like you, I can't wait to get mine. Watch this space!

With best regards
Wong Soon Nam
Vice President - Consumer Marketing

From this I understand that this veep is fond of exclamation marks and is getting his iPhone first while the rest of us are all somehow going to be "first in line". Still no pricing (I'm expecting over S$1,000 (£372) for the 16GB model) or launch date. I guess I just keep watching out for more such e-mail misuse.

iPhone uPay

The legal route to 3G iPhone ownership in Singapore is becoming clearer. SingTel has the lead with an expected market launch in September, a few months after its US debut in July.

I went ahead and pre-ordered by SingTel's web page:

Thanks for your interest.

Currently iPhones can only be reserved at your local hello! store.

Please don't forget to bring your personal identification documents. (NRIC/Passport/Employment Pass) SingTel will reconfirm your details in-store in order to confirm your reservation for iPhone 3G.

Please click on the this link to find your closest store.

The following terms and conditions are important - please read them carefully
1. The reservation shall commence on 10th June 2008 and shall expire when the phone becomes available in Singapore
2. The Phone is not available in Singapore and is not currently type approved by the IDA for sale and use in Singapore, which approval is mandatory under Singapore laws.
3. This reservation is merely an indication of my interest to purchase the Phone (if and when available) and is not to be construed as an offer, advertisement, invitation to purchase, sale & purchase or as a binding agreement of whatever nature for the sale/purchase of the Phone.
4. The price of the Phone, service packaging options, terms and conditions of sale will only be made known by SingTel Mobile when the Phone is available and type approved by the IDA.
5. I will be given a consideration period of one (1) week from the date of notification by SingTel Mobile that the Phone is available for sale.
6. SingTel Mobile shall not be liable for non-availability of the Phone or non-approval of the Phone or any other cause resulting in the Phone not being made available for sale in Singapore.
7. SingTel Mobile reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions by notice in such manner as SingTel Mobile deems appropriate. These terms and conditions shall be subject to and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Singapore

If you follow the "Find Nearest Store", you get bounced to the generic Apple page even though you have just given them your address? Pretty dump web integration guys and you still need to go down there and queue? <gack> I passed a Hello! store this afternoon but the queue was long and unmoving so I passed.

The bad news is that while SingTel's rivals (StarHub and M1) are expected to have the phone after SingTel's launch, SingTel's pricing will have a significant price premium for early adopters, probably over S$500 plus a hefty monthly fee and an 18 month lock in.

Point #2 reminds us IDA approval is technically a legal requirement but only for phones sold here (otherwise Singapore's 9m annual visitors would be unable to use their mobiles). The real purpose is to put fear and doubt in the minds of people who are thinking of buying an unlocked phone from, say, hmmm, Australia or Hong Kong?

Second Coming in Singapore

It might even be rapture, depending upon the calling plan prices. Local availability of the Jesus phone, so called because of the worshiping of Apple fans, has been announced by SingTel and Apple as part of the worldwide announcement of the iPhone v2.

One enterprising chap has already posted on Craigslist that he is taking pre-orders for network unlocked (jail broken) iPhones priced at S$420 (£156) for the 8 GB model and S$550 (£208) for 16 GB one. That might be a bold move considering the new iPhone software hasn't been released yet, let alone jail broken but it's a fair bet it will be by the time punters come knocking.

SingTel is also taking pre-orders and as usual you have to give them lots of marketing information. If you balk at an actual order (probably not legally binding on either party given there's no price stated) you can elect to be informed of developments. That requires to answer the following questions:

• Name
• NRIC/Foreign ID
• Age
• Gender
• Address
• Postal Code
• Email Address
• Mobile Number
• Which is your mobile service provider?
• Are you currently contracted to your mobile service provider?
• When did you last sign a mobile phone contract with your service provider?

There are more questions; those are just the mandatory ones. It's a fact of life here that the state and commercial institutions demand and get very detailed personal information. Locals don't bother to fight it and (legal) foreigners like me probably just grumble. I might have to give in and pre-order because there's likely to be a big queue.

Expensive Suckers

Singapore seems caught up in the global vacuum cleaner conspiracy. Local evidence was found during an aimless wander around a hardware store in Vivocity, the shopping mall down at the harbour front. Such stores are pretty rubbish by my standards; all bubble packs and finished goods with few raw materials. Anyway, they had a vacuum cleaner on display, nothing super fancy, a drag along the floor model on casters with a hose. The ad copy went "Why spend twice as much?" Sticker price: S$1,760 (£660).

I've seen this design before with a glass bowl holding water that has some beneficial filtering properties. The paper has a gwai loh writing a regular column (not as good as this blog, I assume you) and a recent article related his inability to resist door to door sales people and how his wife hastily intervened before he bought a $3,000 vacuum cleaner, a snip at $50 a month on the drip feed.

I had woman peddling Hoovers at my door. She didn't have it with her, I imagine it was downstairs until she got a prospect, so I don't know what it was like but for investigative purposes I'm sorry I didn't pursue it.

I've heard similar tales in England. My ex boss' son (nice but a tad on the delinquent side), sold a deluxe £800 model for a while. It claimed a cast iron case with heavy duty motor and a special nozzle; you set it in the corner of a room with the nozzle blowing air down one wall. After a while, it sets up a circulating air current which cleans the dust out of the room's air.

Reality check: a vacuum cleaner consists of an electric motor driving a fan, a (plastic) casing, hose and optionally, a filter. At the factory gates in China, we are looking at less than £10. For me, Dysons are pushing it; every one I've ever used clogged then broke. A sales lady in John Lewis once confided that most Dysons were bought by men (flashy, macho design you see). Personally, I have some hope invested in those robot ones that scuttle around all day annoying cats. They're a bit fragile and underpowered at the moment but seem ideal for hard wood flooring.

So there's established precedent for aspirational vacuum cleaner sales though I wonder about the psychological sub-text: "My house is dirty, ergo I am unworthy. Spend a lot of money in penance and I can be rid of my sin." You'd be better off donating money towards genetic research into reducing human skin cell production but I suppose if you insist on spending £1,000 on a vacuum cleaner, it might as well be for spiritual reasons.

HK Streetlife

Hong Kong. It feels like the monoogue at the start of Apocalypse Now where Captain Willard talks about Saigon and the dread of being in the jungle only being equalled but the dread of not being there. Last time I was here, the red letterboxes had Royal crests and Governor Chris Patten was talking up democratic reforms with his Legislative Council (LegCo). Now as a Special Administrative Zone with China, both are gone, interestingly, to no obvious ill-effect.

There's new parking meters (nice digital ones where you select the left or right parking bay so you only need half the number of meters). The airport staff have a mainland-like surly authority and the roads and pavements have the same ruts and ridges. Hong Kong puts function over form; there's little aspiration to beauty except for the space 1" from the ground to about 12' up. The shops go for light and neon to hawk their wares, but above is a tangle of old business signs, window air con units, balconies converted to granny flats and tatty facades. The Star Ferry hasn't changed so much as a rivet and is still a fun ride for HK$2.2 (44p) although you can now use an RFID touch card called Octopus that has been retrofitted into the old mechanical turnstiles.

There are the Indian guys standing on street corners and outside shops offering tailored suits and shirts - for around £70 you can get a suit, trousers, couple of shirts. To my surprise, there was even a guy offering cheap Rolex knockoffs at pretty much the same corner of Nathan Granville that I remember from pre-unification. It's the same technique that the drug dealers in the Casablanca medina use, a half-whispered "watches", "Rolex" just as you pass leaving you unsure if you really heard anything at all. Total deniability. Counterfeit watches and software were readily available in the mid nineties but the authorities had even then pushed the merchandise out of sight leaving just a salesman on a street corner or a shop with pictures.

The electronic shops are still here. You can get a unlocked (jail broken) iPhone for HK$3150 (£210), an Apple iPod Touch 32GB for HK$4000 (£260) and an Apple iMac 24" 2.4GHz HK$14,500 (£967). That's pre-haggling prices but still pretty much parity with Singapore.

If Hong Kong was a person, it would be Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses. A bit wide, always on the lookout for a deal, desparate to be rich and famous, but with a heart of gold. Singapore is more like an estate agent. Still trying to cut a deal but with class and respectability in mind. I can see why people like Hong Kong and describe Singapore as uptight. For sure, if you want to slum it for a bit, HK is the place to go but I'd be loath to leave SIngapore's excellent administration and security behind.

HK is almost all Chinese, whereas Singapore is over 20% Indian and Malay. This makes Singapore natively far more cosmopolitan. HK is Cantonese, Singapore is Mandarin and Hokkien and there's cultural differences galore. There are a few non-Chinese HKers; Indians came and stayed years ago and I remember meeting one working on the Star Ferry years ago speaking fluent Cantonese to a passenger, which is as remarkable a juxtaposition as hearing a dog miow.

Vague Nibble of the iClones

The Times ran a light-weight piece about the first iClones (iPhone copies) available in Singapore. Bylined "Attack of the iClones", the tone is of cheap sensationalism and hyperbole; they describe the iPhone as a much-hyped gizmo. Reality check: Apple is now in the top 10 phone manufacturers after only 9 months of sales. And hype means excessive or intensive publicity; or exaggerated claims made in advertising; the official Apple advertising is notably simple and extremely unusual for mobile phones as it entirely consists of demonstrating the device is use.

There are a few imported iPhones in Singapore already. Indeed the world-wide trade in them is brisk since it's only officially sold in about 6 countries (US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Ireland?). China Mobile says there are over 400,000 in use on their network alone and it's never been sold there.

The main thrust of the article was to introduce the D800i HiPhone, at first glance a striking fascimile of the iPhone. I had a play with one in Sim Lim recently and I can tell you straight, Apple has nothing to fear; it's rubbish. They were asking S$320 (£110) and it is a conventional tri-band phone with a removable battery, look-a-like touch screen and music player (max 2GB micro SD card). But a clone it certainly is not. A clone is a biological term and even the everyday meaning is that of an exact copy. I'd say a facsimile, from the Latin fac simile, "to make similar", is a bit of a reach as well.

The HiPhone doesn't have WiFI or a web browser, just a WAP browser, so this really is just a phone, not a hand held Internet device. The limited flash memory for music barely exceeds the smallest, £35 iPod Shuffle and is woeful against the lowest configuration iPhone that has 8GB. The screen is fuzzy with muddy colours. They copied some of the screen icons but they mean different things; they have to because so many features are missing. The other software is strictly a box-ticking exercise to claim features with a user interface (surely the one thing they should have cloned) a series of nightmarish design shortcuts.

At least Samsung's new Instinct looks the part even if it is similarly cobbled together. If you are still tempted, be aware that T-Mobile is clearing the low-end iPhones for EUR99 and industry insiders are tipping SingTel to launch a new 3G iPhone here in September. Anyone buying one of these fakes is going to look embarrassed very soon.

Whyless@SG

I should be a huge fan of wireless@SG, but I'm really not. Not yet anyway. Wireless@SG is the Government sponsored WiFI network that was launched last year. It is not, as is often reported, an island-wide network, but rather a collection of hotzones around MRT stations and shopping centres intended for use while on-the-go. It certainly doesn't reach anywhere near my house. The closest would be the McDonalds either at Khatib or Northpoint.

It provides a free, unlimited use, basic Internet service running at (up to) 512kbps downlink, but you can chip in and pay for a premium service. The free service is subsidised (until 2010 at the moment) by the Government to promote wireless services and devices. They divvied up the contract to 3 operators who each cover about one third of the island. You have to register to use the network but a login account on any of the 3 operators works everywhere. Some locations automatically SMS you the URL when you come in range of a hotzone which is great for tourists and visiting business types.

My first experience was pretty poor. I applied online but used my home phone number. You were supposed to provide your mobile so they could SMS you the password so I needed a frustrating support call to get going. Pretty poor show as mobile numbers begin with "9" and landlines begin with "6" so the software should have caught that one.

In use, my major gripe is that it hardly ever works when / where I need it. Sure, sat in the lobby of SingTel CommCenter you get fantastic signal strength but elsewhere it becomes theoretical. Portable devices like phones & laptops don't have great antennas and may not even run at full transmit power so you really need to be close in to a node.

It's a pity you can't change your password so I have to remember 8 or 9 random letters and numbers. Logging in is done by portal page which captures your first web access. This is very common, but you need a full browser and keyboard. Until you login in, other IP services such as remote login won't work.

The last minor gripe is the incessant marketing. Every time you login, (with SingTel at least) you are asked to answer 2 personal questions. I positively refuse to volunteer information which is going to be used against me so I always get prompted with the questions. They are trying to provide location based services, but still the full list is mind-bogglingly intrusive:

"Imagine you can see promotions based on your preference around you when you log on to SingTel Wireless@SG! Isn't that fantastic?! No pop ups, mass email spamming or SMS alerts! All you need to do is to fill in the following questions so that we can serve you better."

• Name
• Family Name
• ID Type [I/C (pink or blue), FIN, Passport (foreigners only)]
• ID No.
• Date of Birth
• House No/Blk/Tower
• Street Name
• Floor / Unit No
• Building Name
• Postal Code
• Dwelling Type [ HDB | Private Property ]
• Email Address
• Mobile Number
• Home Phone
• Office Phone
• Fax
• Gender [ Male | Female ]
• Marital Status [ Single | Married | Others ]
If married, do you have any children? [ Yes | No ]
• Educational Level [ Below Secondary | Secondary| Post Secondary | University | Post Graduate ]
• Occupation [ Professionals / Managers / Executives | Proprietor / Business Owner / Company Owner | White Collar | Skilled Worker | Semi-skilled Worker | Students | Homemakers | Retired | Others ]
• Industry [ Manufacturing | Construction | Wholesale & Retail | Transport & Storage | Hotels & Restaurants | Information & Communications | Financial Services | Real Estate & Leasing Services | Professional Services | Admin & Support Services | Community, Social & Professional Services ]
• Personal Income [ No income | Less than S$1,500 | S$1,500 – S$2,499 | S$2,500 – S$3,999 | S$4,000 – S$5,999 | S$6,000 – S$9,999 | S$10,000 & above ]
• Household Income
• Which of the following are of interest to you: [ Entertainment |
Sports/Fitness/Health | Dine/Wine/Night Life/Clubs/Pubs | Fashion/Arts/Culture | Travel/Lifestyle | Business/Computers | Movies/Music | Gaming ]

Crikey, bad survey alert! Another major Singaporean organisation too timid to use the word sex and fluffs it with gender and then compounds the error by not using Masculine & Feminine. Who has a marital status of Other? Apparently they are only interested in your children if you are Married. Funny there's no "Do I want to avoid all market research: Yes/No". It's too depressing.

Still, it's free, unlimited, decently quick, increasingly available and when I get an iPhone, I'm hoping for the best but I expect to need 3G cellular data service as well for the majority of time when I'm out of range.

Bend over to Pay

Starhub (a cable and mobile operator) has joined up with EZlink for a mobile payment scheme where you can use a special mobile phone (with a near field communications - NFC) chip to pay at trains, buses, libraries, and so on. SingTel is working on a similar trial with slightly different technology but same result.

I see a problem - it's a 'near field' system; you have to touch the phone to the reader, say at a bus exit door, on a station turnstile or on a counter top. How are you going to do this while using the phone?

I foresee comical gymnastics at MRT turnstiles and buses as people nod down with their heads to pay while talking, trying to look out of the corner of their eyes to check the display.

Of course, many people have the dreaded hands free style where people hold their phones near their heads and talk in a semi-handsfree mode. If you've ever been on the receiving end of this style you would have wondered why the caller always seemed to be standing on a busy railway platform, such is the background noise. Or maybe it will trigger greater use of those farcical Bluetooth wireless headsets (a la Nathan Barley). Whatever, it should be fun to watch.

Hallowe'en

I was vaguely wondering what Halloween would be like in Singapore. We already know the Chinese like communicating with their ghosts so one might expect some decent, cross-cultural bleed over. (They like setting fires as well so we'll see what Guy Fawkes night brings).

In retrospect, nothing happened. I have a flyer from the local shopping center which had Halloween Treats and the usual Lucky Draw but apart from the pumpkin jack-o-lanterns and bat silhouette theme, there was precious little actual ghost activity.

No trick or treating either, although I did have a lanky young lad wander up and ask me if I had StarHub cable TV "because I'm from StarHub and they are doing a deal at the moment". You have to imagine a school kid in jeans and a T-shirt wandering the hallways with his mate claiming to represent the major cable TV, broadband and mobile phone operator. Word has probably got out that there's a tough ang mo customer in this block and not wishing to disappoint:

Me: "You are from StarHub?!"

Sticking to his story he continued his sales pitch: "Do you have cable TV?"

"I don't watch television"

(stunned pause, but recovering well) "What about your family?"

"We don't watch television"

"Uh ... err .... but StarHub .... oh err ... right thanks"

The only reason he came over was that his mate had a phone call and was sat on the stairs, announcing his private life to the world. I'm trying to get used to this but conversations, meetings and even full on sales pitches are just awkward interruptions to the endless stream of mobile phone calls that obviously make Singaporean's lives so rich and fulfilling.

Right Leg Ringxiety

Singapore has a modern mobile phone culture and I carrying mine pretty much 100%. I've adopted what Nokia's user survey identified as the middle-aged, male, mobile-on-belt style with the phone set to vibrate and ring. [The survey also found that most women put their mobile in their handbag (us: purse), and missed 50% of calls]. Devotees of this phone-on-the-belt style suffer phantom vibrations that you think are the phone. Indeed, some suffers of this ringxiety syndrome have reported this when they are not even wearing the phone, like an amputee's ghost limb.

On the one hand I'm glad it's not just me, but probably gastric movement or femoral blood flow. My new found journalistic drive is a bit annoyed that I didn't write about it earlier as now it looks like a "me too" article. But it got me wondering that if a vibrating phone can cause you to become aware of such background body signals, what else could we wear to make us more self-aware?

It seems logical that a passive object wouldn't work. A ring doesn't make you think about marriage all the time. I imagine a cross hung around the neck doesn't induce spiritual thoughts. Glasses don't make you think about your eyes. We blank these passive objects out of our conscious thoughts as they fade into the backdrop of our senses. The brain is wired to look for differences, for novelty. It begs the question, would a placebo heart pacemaker work as a device to focus our attention after we were trained to worry about it's alarms?

Pause

I was watching Wallace & Gromit, Curse of the Were Rabbit on DVD again the other day and was playing around with the freeze frame and frame-by-frame advance. Apart from being simply better than any multi-headed VHS player, this game is especially neat with such stop-motion animation because it reveals the detail of the animator's craft.

Checkout the Lady-Rabbit-Hits-Bridge and the Airbag sequences especially. It's what the creator's would want as there's so much loving attention to detail in the action. Repeat with Monsters Inc, The Incredibles or any Pixar title actually.

This sort of segues into what I wanted to talk about. It's a common sight here: on a train, bus, in a meeting or elevator, someone's mobile phone rings. (No, this isn't a grumpy rant on mobiles, as such). What interests me is not the Annoying Frog(tm) or electronic jingle at 65dBa, not the fact that everyone can hear it and is possibly fumbling in their pockets themselves. No, none of these.

Why is it that they pull out the mobile and stare at the screen for a while before answering the call? They always do answer the call. so it's not screening. Conscious of being a public noise nuisance, I always answer the phone immediately, but I'm clearly rushing the experience and the opportunity to spread a little ringtone joy.

Note, if you want a rant, tell me why the latest phones don't even have a simple brrr, brrr ringtone anymore? Label it Classic if you want but make sure it's there. Here's a tip - keep those old mobiles, some will become classics in a few years.

Man Picks Nose

This week's venerable Straits Times featured an expose of bad behavior in public libraries. The lurid piece of journalism, complete with pixelated photographs, described no-nos such as ear digging, nose picking and feet on chairs. Moving up the disgusting scale was beard plucking while reading a newspaper.

Which got me thinking about the behaviors that disturbed (tho' not necessarily disgusted) me on my last visit to the excellent Sembawang facility:

1. Mobile phones. Separating a Singaporean from their mobile would be classed as cruel and unusual punsihment, if you could achieve it. It just doesn't matter where people are, if the phone rings, it gets answered


2. Kids playing combat video game on the public computers. Actually, they were doing a very good job of keeping a boisterous activity pretty quiet, but still, video killing game in a library?


3. People sprawled on the floor between bookshelves as there aren't really enough chairs and very few tables. It's common for school children to use libraries as a cool (ie aircon'd) place to work. But it's hard to browse when you can't walk on the floor


4. Tannoy recorded annoucements exhorting quiet and peaceful use of the facility. D'oh.

Not exactly a Little Shop of Horrors. All libraries I have visited were cool, fairly quiet and exceedingly well run. Book checkout is self-serve using your library card and a chip reader. Returns are fully automatic; just slide the book down the chute at the entrance and the book's chip is read and marked as returned. Payments and fines are cashless using your EZ Link card (train & bus rfid card). Book searches and renewals are online and they stay open until late.

If you want social faux pas, it would be the old lady sat next to me on the MRT using nail clippers to methodically depilate the back of her hands, complete with squeaky sound effects.

The ST article was a lightweight poke at petty rudeness and an attempt to shame into extinction some social errors. It almost certainly missed the mark. The stunningly successful, free, Chinese-language My Paper has the mass readership and has, arguably, taken over as the people's paper.