It is done. I have finally uploaded all the Italy photos! Now… I have to sit down and write up a blog entry on the trip! I was planning on doing one entry per city but I don’t know if I am that ambitious now. Anyway… expect something on Candice and my honeymoon trip soon! (If you can’t help yourself you can take a sneak peak over at Flickr here [flickr.com].)
Category: ranting
Random thoughts, frustrations, ideas and opinions. Quality not guaranteed, consume only under adult supervision
I can’t stand the cab system in Singapore.
It constantly drives me crazy. Between cab drivers who don’t understand, very simple, slowly spoken English, cab drivers who can’t get the car out of second gear –even on the expressway– and the classic ‘can show me? I new driver lah. Don’t know. Sorry!’ (which translates to either, ‘I can’t understand your accent’ or ‘I don’t know my way around Singapore.’)
I just spent… oh, 36 minutes by the clock on my phone, on the corner of my block (a major road by the way) trying to hail a taxi. During that time about 150 to 200 cabs went by. I finally gave up and just called off going to meet some mates for a drink because I’m too mad at this point about the whole cab system here in Singapore.
Why? Because it’s the most fucked up cab system I’ve ever been forced to use. To be honest I don’t really like cabs in general, but it’s the most efficient way to get around Singapore most of the day (with the exception of closing times: office closing times (about 6 in Singapore,) shop closing time (about 9pm) and bar closing time (which stretches from about midnight to 3am.)
Unfortunately for me my 36 minutes minutes falls just before midnight. So after 36 minutes standing on the street corner like some gigello with my arm saluting mein fuehrer I still did not have a cab. About 70% of the cabs I saw were hired. Another 20% were ‘on call.’ Which still leave about 10% but it’s the cabs in that 10% that make me so mad.
I saw one guy, in a blue Hyundai ‘comfort cab’ go around the block four times with his for hire sign on talking on his mobile.
I saw one guy in a while Mercedes cab pass me three times looking right at me and then keep driving. This is typical… they see a white guy and they assume if they circle the block he will call for a cab and they can get an extra four bucks for call.
Several other cabs with their for hire signs illuminated just speed on by like I did not exist—no doubt waiting for a call since it’s cab rush hour.
At least six cabs turned their ‘for hire’ sign off, or switched to ‘busy’ (which I assume means ‘I really need to take a crap… so I can’t pick anyone up.’) when they saw me. I guess they forgot to switch the roof signal off when the last passenger got out.
A bunch of cabs were on ‘shift change.’ Which is the biggest socialist nanny state screw up I’ve ever dealt with! Shift change came about because cab drivers say they can’t make enough money (cab rental is paid by the day, at least by most divers) so several guys team up to share a single cab. This means that, for example, one guy drives during the day for eight hour, then switches with another guy who drives for eight hour. The second guy switches with a third guy for the last 8 hours and the third guy returns the car to the first guy. The problem is that when they are going to switch drivers drivers will only pick you up if you are going somewhere near where they are switching with the other driver. Inevitably these guys don’t switch anywhere near town and so they are all headed to the Singapore boondocks for the switch. Which means 90% of the time they are not going your direction, but they still pull over to ask. And it never fails that while they are asking and then saying ‘no thanks’ to you empty, not of shift change cabs pass right by! This will make a kind, tree-hugging, bleeding heart liberal into a Nazi who wants to euthanize all the cab drivers in Singapore in oh, about 2 seconds.
And then… there are the cabs who do stop. But not for me. It went down like this (and this is typical): A couple or group walking along the side walk will pass me or come out of the door next to me, look at me and walk down the side walk against traffic. There they will wait, 20 meters from me for a cab! And every time they get a damn cab! Tonight there were 4 times this happened. First a group of four party kids (2 girls and 2 guys) dressed in bright colors, then a couple both in all blue and black, then a woman and her 2 kids and maid, and finally a couple of guys in way too tight cloths! 3 of the 4 groups got cabs that were dropping someone else off, all of them came to the sidewalk after me and all of them clearly saw me… in fact everyone but the mom looked at me as the cab drove off like it was a big joke.
The last straw was the silver cab that pulled up about five meters from me to drop some guy off and then after I walked over and before the guy got out pulled back into the street and drove on 20 meters to drop the guy off. As soon as the guy got out another guy standing there got in.
Un–fucking–believable.
They just busted a bunch of taxi drivers here for running an off-the-meter racket. Nights like tonight make me want to get tickets to see them caned. (We’ll not really…)
Categories
Back once again…
I never posted anything to indicate that I was away so in retrospect I should announce that Candice and I (finally) went on our oft postponed Honeymoon to Italy in November. Thee weeks of Roman and Catholic ruins, good food and wine, and of course more Madonna and Child and Adoration of the Magi paintings than you can shake a stick at… But more on that in the next week or so as I get the photos cleaned up. I’ll save the adventures (and one major mis-adventure) for future posts. In this post it is suffice to say that we are back in action in Singapore.
“In the U.S., there is this brutal workaholic streak and the Americans are much, much more politically correct. The British deal with crises with more of a sense of humor.”
Lucy Kellaway, from The Office: how to negotiate the daily minefield [reuters.com]
Everybody outside the US always tells me I am full of it when I tell them Americans work more hours and take less vacation than anyone else on average. Now here is a Brit backing me up… I think Americans boast about how much they work and how little they sleep. It’s like a badge of honor. I know I have been and am still sometimes guilty of this. I think the Spanish have life figured out and are laughing at the rest of us during their siestas.
Take a look at this photo page [flickr.com] on Flickr. The photos shows an image of an outdoor ad on a bus stop in Australia by Virgin Mobile with the phrases “dump you pen friend” (or pen pal) and “free text virgin to virgin.” In the bottom corner of the ad is an attribution to the photographer and the location of the original photo used in the ad from Flickr.
Now take a look at the comments.
The first comment is “hey that’s me! no joke. i think i’m being insulted…can you tell me where this was taken.” Posted by the girl in the photo. Let’s ignore the “i’m being insulted” as I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone would be insulted by the photo or it’s tag line—displeased that their photo was being used in an advertisement I can understand but being insulted? That make me doubt my faith that people are generally good hearted and intelligent. How much of an uptight Christian with serious problems talking about sex or anything to do with sex do you have to be to find “free text virgin to virgin” insulting? It’s and ad for ‘Virgin’ mobile!
The second comment is by the photographer. He wants to know if Virgin will give him free stuff.
So in the first two comments, by the subject of the photos (let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and call her the model since it is being use in an advertisement) and the photographer we have some lovely feelings on display: Embarrassment and anger on the part of the model and greed on the part of the photographer.
If you read the rest of the comments you will run across the models brother displaying anger and a lot of concerned Flickr users pointing out the basics of copyright. Finally after quite a number of comments you will come across the real item of interest: the lawsuit.
The model and her family and the photographer are suing. Suing Virgin Australia, Virgin’s US operation and Creative Commons—the authors of the license (selected by the photographer!). Read the FAQ written by Creative Commons on their blog here [creativecommons.org] and a post by Lawrence Lessig, the CEO if Creative Commons, on his site here [lessig.org]. (There is also a longer discussion on Flickr, here [flickr.com].
The lawsuit against the Virgin companies does not bother me much, in fact, almost not at all. If Virgin, a company that deals with models for ad campaigns on a regular basis did not check the terms of the license regarding publicity rights then it’s their own stupidity and they should be liable. It is noted in the FAQ on the Creative Commons site that the license only deals with ‘Copyright’ and not at all with ‘Publicity Rights.’ And I cannot imagine a lawyer signing off on this type of thing without readying the terms and details of the license, and I find it even harder to believe that there were no lawyer involved with an ad campaign by a big company.
The fact that Creative Commons is being named as a defendant and the photographer a plaintiff really bothers me. From what I can read on the suit the complaint charges that Creative Commons did not properly educate the photographer on the terms of the license.
This complaint against the Creative Commons is, like too many complaints filed in the US, just pain silly. It shows either a disgusting greed, overwhelming stupidity or a disturbing lack of personal responsibility on the part of the photographer.
Since by default photos posted by user on Flickr are under the default ‘all rights reserved’ traditional copyright license and the photographer would have to manually choose to license his photos under a Creative Commons license I suspect that the photographer just does not want to own up to having made that choice. He, like too many other people in the world, suffers from the great malady of the times: a lack of personal responsibility. He seems to thank that it is the responsibility of Creative Commons to that this happened. But he choose the license! Flickr explains, in clear English the details of the license and provides a link to the Creative Commons site that further explains the terms.
I think the complaint against the Creative Commons grows out of the second comment on the photo page, the first comment by the photographer; “where was this? do you think virgin mobile will give me stuff?” Such a sad world we live in. I guess since he is not getting paid he is lashing out at everyone. Why isn’t he suing Flickr and Yahoo!?
Since all my public photos on Flickr are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License, I will have to follow the court case. I take a lot of photos on people and the outcome of the case could affect the license I use for photos where people are the main subject.
I believe I understand the terms of the license I have chosen. I even set the content of this website under a Creative Commons Attribution license (here [confusion.cc] and the ‘CC’ button at the bottom of the page.)
I truly hope the complaint against the Creative Commons is dismissed outright and I hope the photographer learns to take some responsibility for his actions and choices rather then continuing to blame others.