Notes From the Far East

The perspective of a Singaporean on national issues after consumption of Jack Daniels and Heineken.  A view derived from a confluence of sources and social activities such as gossip and credible news reports.  Topics are social political by nature with a tinged of deadpan humour.  E&OE . Singaporeans are a lucky lot so claim many foreign talents and Malaysian workers. Charmed by Singapore Government foreign talent offensive, many billionaires choose to call Singapore home and for the few, assume Singapore citizenship.  The irony of course is that while foreign nationals seem to be happy with the quality of life and government policies here, the electorate has a different view, they are often irate and would not hesitate to lash out at anything, any failure or incident or problem and correlate it to the Government as the underlying cause. This correlation may not be unreasonable since Government policies and attitudes moulds government departmental attitudes which eventu

Problems in Air China Phoenix Miles Portal  I have written in to Air China to express unhappiness over Air China Phoenix Miles Service standards. The note below is an edited version of an email sent to Air China service centre and bears testimony to the amount of effort used in trying to resolve ticketing and Phoenix Miles issues with Air China. Other episode have previously occurred but only the most recent encounters are given herein. The matter concerns the perpetual problem of wrong passenger name record, not correctly capturing Phoenix Miles during check-in process and the inability to update Phoenix Miles post trip and obtain information from the portal. Further to this, there is the problem of not being able to transfer Phoenix Miles to other Star Alliance Member account. Air China has changed its policy unannounced of retrospective crediting of Phoenix Miles from 6 months to 14 days (Notification dated 17 Feb 2012 on Phoenix Miles) resulting in some legs of journeys being