Taxi in Singapore during Peak Hour

There is always peak crowd — human and traffic jam — on Fridays, especially at Orchard Road.

We queued for a cab at Paragon Taxi Q for roughly 40 minutes.
To Paragon's credit, they make sure their taxi stand area is pleasantly landscaped, and efficiently manned by queue wardens.

Despite our heavy carriers of shopping bags, we should have walked a bit to the Orchard MRT Station or the Somerset Station, though.

Because this is the bill we got travelling in a cab from Paragon to Changi City Point:-

START JOURNEY .............. 25 January 2013 @ 1850 Hours

DISTANCE RUN - 18.2 KM
TRAFFIC CONDITION - Heavy Traffic along 3-quarters of the journey

METER FARE ..................... = $16.40
ERP ...................................... = $  1.00
CITY AREA SURCHARGE = $  3.00
PEAK HOUR 25% .............. = $  4.10

TOTAL FARE ..................... = $24.50

AMOUNT PAID = $24.40

Fainted.

National Library Board

In Singapore, we frequent the library less these days since we are readily bombarded with a multitude other media.

Our love of books remains of course. 

Today, we were about to order some books from Amazon.com.  That reminded us that we should check it out with our own libraries first.  If the books are available, it'd be faster, quicker access to the information we wanted.

A call to the hotline was quickly picked up by a friendly customer service officer at NLB (National Library Board) who guided us to the Search Catalogue.  A few swift input on our keyboard and viola! there's our book, not loaned by anybody yet.

The website has been revamped.  So user-friendly.  We rang thinking it's one of those convulated websites many organizations have.

We can now troop down to the correct library branch where the target is.

If the book is a rare, you might like to reserve @ $1.55 per book, upto 6 books per I.D. card holder for a loan duration of 3 weeks.  NLB will have the book sent to your preferred branch.

It's when you needed some information from the books and find that it is available right here at our own library, that you realise what a crucial public service NLB is providing.

The $ saved is significant for a lot of families struggling with the high cost of living.

This is good social contribution from NLB.  Hope NLB would keep tabs on the popular books in sites like Amazon.com when restocking.