i like the nel. *beam* i went to outram today (22mins) met minyin, took it back to chinatown (1min) to see the tan swie hian calligraphy, continued to dhoby ghaut (4min) and plaza sing, and then to kovan (14min) for lunch at sakae, to sengkang (8min) to take the lrt, and then back to hougang. (5min) not a single hitch. ooh. minyin decides she's not impressed, although my father, taking the nel everywhere, wouldn't hear a word against it. tjan's been on it too, and says that dhoby ghaut resembles a sci-fi space hub! oh all ye, look on the northeast line and despair!

i don't really understand, however, why the new system seems to be presenting so many difficulties to the elderly and the chinese educated. zaobao carried some complaints, and i seem to be rescuing them more times than i can ever remember. a pair of old ladies at outram alighted from the northeast line, followed the crowd to the north-south line, and then were appalled when they emerged onto the platform, exclaiming, hah? boy sai chuk ke ah?! and had to be redirected to the exit. various old ladies ask me to tell them to get off because they claim they don't understand the annoucements and can't read the english signs. the most bemusing incident was at sengkang this afternoon, where i was accosted by an elderly couple who began speaking to me in teochew. teochew! when i told the story to my parents later, my dad said that with my teochew, i probably sent them to the other end of the world from where they meant to go, which is very unfair, even though he is right about the state of my teochew. the old man would not tell me where he wished to go, but seemed to want to know how to get *anywhere*, and given we were at sengkang, this could mean nearly anything. i had no idea if they were looking for the chiah tao (bus terminal) which was one level up, or the light rail (keng something ti i forgot the term he used) two levels up, or, as we are all standing on the mrt platform, which direction they wanted to go in (ou nam park is not good teochew is it? sigh. von tell me how to say park.) or punggol. it was a desperate situation: the conversation was getting nowhere, they didn't seem to want to go off to ask someone else, and my teochew sure wasn't going to improve magically in the next 5 minutes. i missed one train (most rueful about it as i watched it go) because i was still gesticulating wildly at system maps and escalators and dredging up teochew while minyin was most unhelpful even though she can speak pretty good hokkien as i remember. *scrowl*