In school today, i attended 2 lectures, um, addresses, by STB-Tourism Board, Singapore & SQ- Singapore Airlines. Although it is made compulsory for all JC2 Econs students to attend, the LT wasnt even 1/2 occupied (considering some JC1 students were also required to attend). It was pretty interesting i felt, although they are Econs lectures, but many other areas related or unrelated were covered, to a broader scale like career opportunities.

It started off with the lady from STB-Catherine McNacc-she claimed she's the only ang moh in STB. haha. She asked a question seeking for an answer, my Christian mate (Barnabas) bravely rose to the microphone. By doing so, he won himself 4 tickets to Night Safari! how cool is that! we were like so so surprised. & she was saying 'always negotiate, don't take things at face value, if you're unhappy with the tix, you can always exchange for another 1', then she left her name card behind for Barny to contact her so she can mail him the tix. ha. after her talk i dashed up to Barny and asked him to get more tix from her, but he said he gotta put his family 1st :), so see how the negotitation goes.. hahaha, see, these big guns can just rifle out anything as prizes.

Interesting points: last year, 8.9 million visitors into Spore, a record high- our population 3-4 million. Their vision is for Tourism industry to be the main engine of the economy, diminishing the manufacturing sector by 2015. You know, the Singapore government is very smart, using the MICE structure to generate tourism. I really enjoyed the talk, but cant remember most of it already.

SQ talk after lunch was also as good. He's really a high-ranked staff in SQ, coz i've seen him on TV a number of times. btw, he's Stephen Forshaw-VP of public affairs. One thing that is brought across in both of these talks is how diligent & smart & foresighted these people are, they are opportunistic & resourceful, very brilliant people. SQ talk was quite corporate style, can sense his sarcasm & discontent when he brought out the hot issue with the Aussie govt over open skies agreement. ha. then, he mentioned that a couple of years down the road, SQ is gonna recruit 180-200 cabin crew each month, so to the metrosexuals & bimbos, look out for that. haha. then he revealed that SQ is increasing flights to Shanghai coming October coz a PRC student was asking during Q &A whether SQ can increase its frequency of Shanghai flights coz its always fully booked, then he said 'yes, we'll do it specially for you' hahahaha, so funny. He covered how SIA is able to maintain & uphold their premier reputation & competitiveness despite the rise of low-cost carriers & prices dipping etc.

you know SIA is the launch customer of A380 coming Nov? it just further enhances SIA's image & credibility. A380 will be used to service dense routes like to London, Sydney & Tokyo, where every flight out now is packed to capacity, where demand exceeds supply :)

i'm so proud of Singapore
vin