You Spin Me Round

Ferris wheel size queens of the world should take note - when the Singapore Flyer stopped spinning, everything else started spinning.

People trapped in the world's largest flyer (on borrowed time) started feeling so hungry they had to eat a lot of pizzas "roped" in by the staff, some had to pee in plastic bags shielded by their family (funny, the capsules are all glass), one's head spun so bad and another puked and both landed in the hospital.

And a Russian tourist, the poor man, missed his flight home to spend a cold and dreary Christmas at home. Instead, he got to spend it on the sunny, balmy shores of Singapore. I wonder who's paying for it.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force had to be roped in to supplement efforts of the designated recovery firm. Hey, that makes me go right round round round because taxpayers money like mine are used to save people have a spin on the wheel when I have not even stepped foot in it!

And Singapore once again gained international infamy when newspapers from Australia to UK to Canada to China to Malaysia (hey, that is AROUND the world, if your geography sucks) reported the unfortunate event.

Even more interesting - the wheel is powered by 6 "rotary" units and can turn as long as 3 are working. This is what Singapore Flyer describes a 100% redundancy. Technical guys love such nonsense speak. But an electrical fire wiped out power to all 6 units. Is the fire at a 100% redundancy too?

Like many things in life, I wish 100% redundancy is so easy to achieve. Like when I lose a kilo of weight, the 100% redundancy rule wipes out 2 kilo when I stand on the weighing machine. When I gain a kilo, it shows up 500g of increase (100% redundancy, in case I really didn't gain a kilo.) Maybe Bernard Madoff also reported a 100% redundancy. He really lost USD 100 billion.

But I digress. As usual. If there is a disaster to be mocked, I must mock it with 100% redundancy. Nothing less. So, I wonder why our commandos were not called in. With their 'elicopters and rappelling skills, they should be able to save the trapped folks. Oh, they are the 100% redundancy that cannot be activated until people start dying in the capsule, I guess.

Of course, the greatest mockery of it all - the SCDF's ladders from their fire engines could reach up to capsules of only a certain height. And for good redundancy. The capsules were EMPTY! And the next capsule up (apparently, the third one up) cannot be reached.

With all these redundancy speak, it's no surprise that my head is spinning round round like a record baby right round round round....