Earlier today, while travelling on the (in)famous train service to NUS (as usual), I saw the potential of ordinary Singaporeans transforming themselves to become amazing SOC (not School of Computing, read: Hell) sprinters just as the platform doors are about to close. Yeap. He managed to clear the 'platform door' obstacle, but (either due to lack of judegment or IQ, though I think it's more of the latter), he was trapped between the train doors like someone being "taupok-ed" from the sides. This 5 second of fame had better make him feel embarrassed or that would mean he's either really thick-skinned or really shameless.
Thanks to the close-loop feedback control system, the doors were opened again for him (much to the disgust of
all other passengers on the train). Literally wasted 3 minutes of my time, but do note that total time wastage = 3 * 100 minutes(assuming 100 passengers though I'm sure there's more.)
It's not everytday that I get irked by strangers.
I just can't fathom the 'fun' one gets by trying to squeeze thru' the train doors just when it's about to close. Is one really in such a hurry that he can't even wait for the next train which would arrive approximately 5 minutes after? And even so, why didn't this
bugger plan his time early aka plan for unexpected delays? Sometimes I do do wonder why NEL has to constantly remind passengers like him never to 'rush into the trains' when doors are about to close.
And I thought only young children/elderly who tend to forget things easily, must be reminded to look out for their safety.
As such, to prevent nonsense like this from happening and to reduce time wastage on such
scums of society again, let me suggest the introduction of the newly engineered
North-east
Electric
Line:
For this to happen, first and foremost, we would require that all train doors have this open-loop control such that anyone who attempts to walk through the doors and get caught would be simply left there and transported to the next stop squished up.
Argh, for the rest of it, I suggest you look at what I drew and wrote for the new train and platform doors as shown below:
And just in case the words aren't really clear in the diagrams (since I didn't know how to use the lousy collecting-dust scanner I have and resorted to the lazy way of simply capturing whatever I wanted to say on camera), let me state it here
legibly.
"
How it works: (platform doors)1. Upon
warning 'gentle reminder' that doors are closing, infrared sensors will be activated.
2. Doors begin to close.
3. If either of the sensors are interrupted ('intelligent beings' aka humans cutting through the doors), a sharp spray of permanent paint containing 1mA of current (enough to shock but not kill) will be passed to the other side of the door, electrifying whatever that in its way. (fig 2 & 3)
* this should 'teach' these inconsiderate people something the hard way as their office attire gets stained with
permanent ink and being mildly shocked.
How it works: (train doors)* Due to the nature of
thin nature of the train doors, I could only think of 1 mechanism to combat this nonsense.
1. Same story as 1 above, just that this time, upon 'doors closing', the X-ray scanning doors start to activate, scanning whatever that in its way (like a scanner) and even through clothes like what they have in some airports which created some wooha somehow. =P (fig. 4)
2. Whatever that was scanned would be screened on the 'irritating commercial TV' (to be coined as 'PORNO' in time to come) located in the train (fig. 1) for all passengers to see.=p (left for the entire day till another passenger does the same thing) If nothing is detected, nothing will be screened.
3. After which, these monthly offenders clips would be compiled and sent to the well-known "Discovery Channel" for 'Educational purposes'. "
For the entire Friday, despite being with my friends wading around pools and slides in Jurong Swimming pool, the thought that kept me thinking was: How do I improve the design of the doors? In fact, when I showed them this design over a light lunch at KFC, JH asked what if there's someone who has problems with walking fast to clear the platform gap became 1 of the passgengers? To that, I was observing how quick train doors open and close during the trip from Chinese Garden to Dhoby Ghaut. Amazingly, everyone was able to clear the platform gap within 3 seconds which is almost 1/5 of the time the doors stay open at each station on average. And if I were to conduct an experiment using, say, 1,000,000 passengers as my sample size, according to Tchebesheff's theorem (or however you spell that).... ...
dot dot dot... GO read your stats notes if you are so interested in reading this.
