Air Asia flight bound for Singapore lost contact with air traffic

[dr.wailing]

Sinkie aviation authority is complicit in AirAsia's Sunday flight crash

According to BBC America, Indonesian civil aviation authorities had revealed that AirAsia did not have the license to operate flights out of Surabaya to Sinkieland on Sundays.

According to American aviation experts interviewed on some US channels, as Sinkie aviation authorities have been allowing AirAsia flights from Surabaya to land at Changi airport for years before last Sunday's tragedy, the former is complicit in the illegal air traffic engineered by AirAsia. What this means is Sinkie civil aviation authorities may be named as a defendant in any claims for compensation filed by the victims' family members.

N.B.: It's about 2200 hours where I live. I'm off to bed now. See you later.

 

[tanakow]

Re: Sinkie aviation authority is complicit in AirAsia's Sunday flight crash

If an unlicensed JB bus driver causes an accident in Singapore, should LTA be responsible.?

According to BBC America, Indonesian civil aviation authorities had revealed that AirAsia did not have the license to operate flights out of Surabaya to Sinkieland on Sundays.

According to American aviation experts interviewed on some US channels, as Sinkie aviation authorities have been allowing AirAsia flights from Surabaya to land at Changi airport for years before last Sunday's tragedy, the former is complicit in the illegal air traffic engineered by AirAsia. What this means is Sinkie civil aviation authorities may be named as a defendant in any claims for compensation filed by the victims' family members.

N.B.: It's about 2200 hours where I live. I'm off to bed now. See you later.

 

[Area51]

'Two big parts' of AirAsia plane found on seabed as officials reveal flight had taken unauthorised route

Two ships carrying sophisticated hydrophones battle bad weather and four metre waves to survey the seabed as 30 bodies are recovered

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 03 January, 2015, 3:16am
UPDATED : Saturday, 03 January, 2015, 12:13pm

Agence France-Presse and Reuters in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia

Officials carry what is believed to be debris from the crashed AirAsia plane after it arrives in Pangkalan Bun yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Indonesian searchers have located two "big objects" in the Java Sea which the search agency chief says are parts of the downed AirAsia flight QZ8501.

“With the discovery of an oil spill and two big parts of the aircraft, I can assure you these are the parts of the AirAsia plane we have been looking for,” search and rescue national agency chief Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo said.

The development came as Indonesia's transport ministry announced the flight had taken an "unauthorised" schedule, prompting it to freeze AirAsia's permission to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route.

The two objects are around 30 metres underwater and the search agency is attempting to get images using remotely operated underwater vehicles, Soelistyo added.

He said the larger of the objects was around 10 metres by five metres in size. The second is 7.2 metres by 0.5 metres, he said.

"As I speak we are lowering an ROV [remotely operated underwater vehicle] to get an actual picture of the objects detected on the sea floor. All are at the depth of 30 metres,” Soelistyo said. He added however that a strong current was making it difficult to operate the ROV.

Rough weather in recent days has hampered the search for the fuselage and black boxes of the Airbus A320-200.

Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) personnel prepare diving equipment in the hunt for more victims of the crash. Photo: Xinhua

Despite rough seas, Indonesian recovery teams yesterday recovered 30 bodies, some still strapped together in their seats.

Two South Korean Orion surveillance planes spotted six bodies yesterday, Indonesian air force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto said.

"After sweeping the area for more than two hours, at 11.58 the [Orions] found three bodies sitting in one row," he said, and another three just minutes later.

French and Singaporean investigators joined the search for the Airbus A320-200, which went missing en route from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board on Sunday.

Authorities dscovered AirAsia was not permitted to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sundays and had not asked to change its schedule, A statement from transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said.

Director general of air transport Djoko Murjatmodjo said the plane took a flight time that had not been cleared by officials.

“It violated the route permit given, the schedule given, that’s the problem,” he said. “AirAsia’s permit for the route has been frozen because it violated the route permit given.”

He said the freeze would be imposed until investigations were completed.

International investigators with sophisticated acoustic detection devices have joined the hunt for AirAsia Flight QZ8501 as teams continue to battle monsoon rains to recover bodies and debris from the plane, which disappeared from radar during a storm.

Twenty-nine ships and 17 aircraft scoured the now-narrower search area southwest of Pangkalan Bun.

The search zone spans 1,575 square nautical miles - one-tenth of the size of Thursday’s search.

An Indonesian man prays for the victims in Surabaya. Photo: AP

Two ships carrying hydrophones, or underwater listening devices, left the southern Borneo port of Pangkalan Bun yesterday.

They are using sonar and ping locators to fine-tune their search for the plane's black boxes - the flight data and cockpit voice recorders - which are crucial to determining the why the plane crashed into the Java Sea off Borneo.

"There are two main tasks in this priority sector - first, to locate the biggest part of the plane's body," Soelistyo said.

"The second task is to find the position of the black boxes, or flight recorders, which will be carried out by the KNKT [National Transportation Safety Committee] which start working today."

KNKT chief Tatang Kurniadi said 40 divers, including 20 deep sea experts, had arrived from Russia to help, along with two planes.

Meanwhile, relatives were preparing to hold funerals after three more victims were identified, including flight attendant Khairunisa Haidar Fauzi, who had posted an Instagram picture with the message "I love you from 38,000 ft" for her boyfriend.

"I'm arriving in Surabaya to take Nisa (Fauzi) home to Palembang. I cannot describe how I feel. There are no words," AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes tweeted.

Also named was Grayson Herbert Linaksita, 11, who was travelling with his parents and 12-year-old sister for a holiday.

His great-uncle Bagyono Linaksita, 73, said he was dreading breaking the news to the children's grandmother, who was still on holiday in the Czech Republic. "We have not told her the news that the whole family had died in a plane crash. Grayson was her favourite grandchild. She will certainly faint."

The pilot of Flight QZ8501, Captain Iriyanto, had asked for permission to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a storm but his request was not approved

Due to other planes above him on the popular route, according to Indonesia's air traffic control. All contact was lost about 40 minutes after the plane had taken off.

Most of the passengers were Indonesian and the co-pilot Remi Plesel was French.

 

[streetcry]

About 60 ships and 20 aircraft are involved in the search for QZ8501 debris and bodies today. A Russian amphibious plane will join the operation.

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[THE_CHANSTER]

Media outlets are now reporting that the Air Asia flight was not authorised to fly the route on Sundays (although it was authorised for four other days of the week).

Is this just an administrative oversight by Air Asia or was it their intention to maximise revenue by avoiding/ignoring Indonesian government channels?

Either way, Fernandes has a lot of explaining to do. BTW all Air Asia flight between Surabaya and Singapore have been suspended with immediate effect.

 

[steffychun]

Media outlets are now reporting that the Air Asia flight was not authorised to fly the route on Sundays (although it was authorised for four other days of the week).

Is this just an administrative oversight by Air Asia or was it their intention to maximise revenue by avoiding/ignoring Indonesian government channels?

Either way, Fernandes has a lot of explaining to do. BTW all Air Asia flight between Surabaya and Singapore have been suspended with immediate effect.

Time for the families to copy the Familiee...SUE!

 

[Area51]

Re: It's really a bad idea to climb over the thunderstorm...AirAsia QZ8501



AirAsia flight has parallels with 2009 ocean crash

By LORI HINNANT
Jan. 3, 2015 7:11 AM EST

FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 30, 2014 file photo, relatives of passengers of the missing AirAsia flight QZ 8501 react to the news on television of bodies found near the site where the jetliner disappeared, at the crisis center at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. It took nearly two years to find the black boxes from Air France Flight 447, but the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that fell into the Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of June 1, 2009, could offer insight into what may have gone wrong on AirAsia's Flight 8501.(AP Photo/Trisnadi, File)

PARIS (AP) — The jet dropped from the sky swiftly, without a mayday call. It was quickly swallowed up by the waves.

It took nearly two years to find the black boxes from Air France Flight 447, but the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that fell into the Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of June 1, 2009, could offer insight into what may have gone wrong on AirAsia's Flight 8501. Both flights killed everyone on board, both were flying into storms when they disappeared, and — in both cases — it seemed to the pilots of the Airbus that a climb was the way out of their predicament.

In the Air France flight, several factors converged to bring the plane down: The three pilots of the Airbus A330 were confused by faulty air-speed data after key sensors iced over. Then, about 25 minutes into turbulence, the autopilot and autothrust cut out, and the pilot at the controls began a steep climb, despite requests from the co-pilot in the cockpit to descend.

The captain, who had been away from the cockpit, returned about 90 seconds after the first stall warnings sounded. Four minutes and 23 seconds after the first alarms sowed panic and confusion over how to regain control of the aircraft, the plane slammed into the ocean, plummeting belly first at nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) per minute. The wreckage was found 12,800 feet (3,900 meters) beneath the surface, its black boxes intact.

Above the Java Sea, the pilot of the AirAsia Airbus A320 told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but he was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude. The plane lost contact minutes later. Search teams have not yet found the black boxes containing the same crucial information that pinpointed the causes of the Air France flight.

Investigators from the French agency BEA, which investigated that 2009 crash, are in Indonesia. Sonar images have identified what appeared to be large parts of the plane, and the waters are far shallower than they were for the Air France crash, no more than about 100 feet (30 meters). However, the search has been complicated by strong currents moving the debris.

The 2009 crash ended up being, at least in part, a lesson in the hazards of automation. During that time, deprived of autopilot, the panicking men flying the Air France flight took actions that made matters worse, including trying to carry out different maneuvers simultaneously from both sets of controls. Since then, many have cautioned that pilots are often ill-equipped to take over when things go wrong.

"We see more-sophisticated automation in the cockpit really serves us well, and by and large it creates a safer environment for airline passengers. But there are times when that automation can become confusing, or there can be a disconnect between the pilots and the automation in the aircraft," said Deborah Hersman, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and now president of the National Safety Council, a private advocacy group in the U.S.

David Greenberg, a former Delta Air Lines executive who was hired at Korean Air to oversee pilot training and safety, said aircraft manufacturers, airlines and the FAA embraced the idea that automation could make flying safer, but more recently began to worry about the times when automation can't carry the day.

"The focus started to shift back to being capable of using the automation as an assist to reduce workload in the right circumstance, but being capable also of taking over and flying the old way," Greenberg said.

"In Asia, it's very normal to rely, in my view, excessively on automation," he said, "partly because the manufacturers stress that the airplanes are easy to learn and easy to train on and very safe because the automation narrows the gap between skill and required skill."

___

Associated Press airlines writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.

 

[sochi2014]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Why they like to test God and always fly during bad weather?

Hundreds of lives are cheap meh?

 

[Area51]

Four 'large parts' of jet found underwater as Indonesia queries AirAsia licence

Indonesian searchers locate four "large parts" believed to part of the missing jet in the Java Sea as authorities announce an investigation into all the airline's flight schedules.

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 03 January, 2015, 3:16am
UPDATED : Saturday, 03 January, 2015, 9:31pm

Agence France-Presse and Reuters in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia

Officials carry what is believed to be debris from the crashed AirAsia plane after it arrives in Pangkalan Bun yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Indonesian and Singaporean search teams have located four "large parts" in the Java Sea which the search agency chief said late on Saturday are from the downed AirAsia flight QZ8501.

National Search and Rescue Agency Chief Vice Marshall Bambang Soelistyo told a press conference that the objects -- the largest of which is about 18 metres by 2.2 metres in size – were detected from Friday to Saturday by sonar from an Indonesian naval vessel, two Indonesian geological survey ships and Singaporean naval vessel RSS Persistence.

He said it was determined that the four objects, which are close to each other, are ”parts of the AirAsia plane we have been looking for” based partly on their dimensions and on the finding of oil slicks in that same area earlier on Friday.

”We tried to send an ROV [remotely operated underwater vehicle] to the seabed to get the visual images of the objects, but we failed due to strong underwater current, the speed of which was about 2 knots,” he said, while noting the objects are at a depth of about 30 meters. He added that the waves were as high as five metres.

The development came after Indonesia's transport ministry announced the flight had taken an "unauthorised" schedule, prompting it to freeze AirAsia's permission to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route.

The ministry would investigate all AirAsia flight schedules from Monday, a government official told reporters on Saturday, as part of a government probe into the crash.

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"We are going to investigate all AirAsia flight schedules," Djoko Muratmodjo, acting general director for air navigation in the transport ministry said. "Hopefully we can start on next Monday. We won’t focus on licenses, just schedules."

"It might be possible to revoke AirAsia’s license in Indonesia," Muratmodjo added.

Indonesia AirAsia CEO Sunu Widyatmoko told reporters the company would cooperate with the government investigation, but declined to elaborate.

Indonesian navy helicopters take off from Surabaya to bring in more bodies, which were found by search ships. Photo: EPA

Rough weather in recent days has hampered the search for the fuselage and black boxes of the Airbus A320-200.

Despite churning seas, Indonesian recovery teams yesterday recovered 30 bodies, some still strapped together in their seats.

Two South Korean Orion surveillance planes spotted six bodies yesterday, Indonesian air force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto said.

"After sweeping the area for more than two hours, at 11.58 the [Orions] found three bodies sitting in one row," he said, and another three just minutes later.

Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) personnel prepare diving equipment in the hunt for more victims of the crash. Photo: Xinhua

French and Singaporean investigators joined the search for the Airbus A320-200, which went missing en route from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board on Sunday.

Authorities dscovered AirAsia was not permitted to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sundays and had not asked to change its schedule, A statement from transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said.

Murjatmodjo said the plane took a flight time that had not been cleared by officials.

“It violated the route permit given, the schedule given, that’s the problem,” he said. “AirAsia’s permit for the route has been frozen because it violated the route permit given.”

He said the freeze would be imposed until investigations were completed.

Workers carry a body bag of a victim of AirAsia Flight 8501 for identification at Bhayangkara Police Hospital in Surabaya. Photo: AP

International investigators with sophisticated acoustic detection devices have joined the hunt for AirAsia Flight QZ8501 as teams continue to battle monsoon rains to recover bodies and debris from the plane, which disappeared from radar during a storm.

Twenty-nine ships and 17 aircraft scoured the now-narrower search area southwest of Pangkalan Bun.

The search zone spans 1,575 square nautical miles - one-tenth of the size of Thursday’s search.

Two ships carrying hydrophones, or underwater listening devices, left the southern Borneo port of Pangkalan Bun yesterday.

They are using sonar and ping locators to fine-tune their search for the plane's black boxes - the flight data and cockpit voice recorders - which are crucial to determining the why the plane crashed into the Java Sea off Borneo.

"There are two main tasks in this priority sector - first, to locate the biggest part of the plane's body," Soelistyo said.

"The second task is to find the position of the black boxes, or flight recorders, which will be carried out by the KNKT [National Transportation Safety Committee] which start working today."

An Indonesian man prays for the victims in Surabaya. Photo: AP

KNKT chief Tatang Kurniadi said 40 divers, including 20 deep sea experts, had arrived from Russia to help, along with two planes.

Meanwhile, relatives were preparing to hold funerals after three more victims were identified, including flight attendant Khairunisa Haidar Fauzi, who had posted an Instagram picture with the message "I love you from 38,000 ft" for her boyfriend.

"I'm arriving in Surabaya to take Nisa [Fauzi] home to Palembang. I cannot describe how I feel. There are no words," AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes tweeted.

Also named was Grayson Herbert Linaksita, 11, who was travelling with his parents and 12-year-old sister for a holiday.

His great-uncle Bagyono Linaksita, 73, said he was dreading breaking the news to the children's grandmother, who was still on holiday in the Czech Republic. "We have not told her the news that the whole family had died in a plane crash. Grayson was her favourite grandchild. She will certainly faint."

The pilot of Flight QZ8501, Captain Iriyanto, had asked for permission to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a storm but his request was not approved

Due to other planes above him on the popular route, according to Indonesia's air traffic control. All contact was lost about 40 minutes after the plane had taken off.

Most of the passengers were Indonesian and the co-pilot Remi Plesel was French.

 

[Confuseous]

Indon minister: Air Asia did not have permission to fly on Sundays!

AirAsia didn’t have permission to fly from Surabaya to Singapore on the Sunday morning that flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea.

Indonesia's transport ministry said the plane had been flying on an 'unauthorised schedule' when it crashed, and the airliner has now been suspended from flying the route from the city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Indonesian authorities also said that recovery teams have found two big parts of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the sea last weekend with 162 people on board.

The Wall Street Journal reported that transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said the airline was only permitted to fly the route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from late 2014 to early 2015.
Scroll down for video


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...permit-flying-deadly-route.html#ixzz3NlcJojYK

 

[Area51]

AirAsia crash plane "was flying without permission"

As search teams find two large parts of the plane, officials say flight did not have permission to fly to Singapore on Sundays

By Tom Phillips, Surabaya
11:48AM GMT 03 Jan 2015

Bodies of victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 are lifted to Indonesian navy vessel KRI Banda Aceh (Photo: AP)

AirAsia Flight 8501 did not have permission to fly to Singapore on the day it crashed into the Java Sea, transport officials have said as search chiefs said they had found “two big objects” believed to be from the missing plane.

AirAsia’s Airbus 320 disappeared around 40 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya last Sunday morning with 162 people on board.

However, the company was only authorised to fly that route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Indonesia’s transport ministry said.

"It violated the route permit given, the schedule given, that's the problem," Djoko Murjatmodjo, the head of air transport, told AFP on Saturday.

It was not immediately clear why AirAsia had been flying that day if it did not have permission. All the company’s flights from Surabaya to Singapore have now been ordered to stop. The transport ministry has announced a full review of all AirAsia flights.

Sunu Widyatmoko, the chief executive of AirAsia’s Indonesian subsidiary, confirmed government officials had suspended the airline’s permission to fly from Surabaya to Singapore but declined to comment further.

Meanwhile search teams operating in the Java Sea reported detecting an oil slick and “two big objects” believed to be parts of the plan’s main fuselage.

“With the oil slick that we found and the discovery of the two big objects, I can confirm that this is the big part of the AirAsia plane we have been looking for all this time,” Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told reporters.

Teams of divers were expected to explore those objects on Saturday, weather permitting.

As the search entered its sixth day, with around 60 vessels and 20 aircraft now involved, there was renewed speculation that “extreme weather” had contributed to south-east Asia’s third major airline catastrophe of 2014.

A 14-page "meteorological analysis" from Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said one likely scenario was that icing, caused by bad weather, had “damaged” the Airbus’s engines.

"This is however just one analysis of what likely happened based on available meteorological data, and is not the final determination on the cause of the incident,” said the report, quoted by Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper.

Tony Fernandes, the AirAsia chief, has hinted extreme weather played a major role in the tragedy. “What we are beginning to see is that there were some very unique weather conditions,” he said earlier this week.

“I continue to have full faith in our operations in Indonesia and elsewhere,” he added.

As Indonesian rescue teams flew the bodies of 12 more victims back to Surabaya for identification and burial, heart-breaking reports emerged about a 15-year-old Indonesian girl who lost her entire family in the tragedy.

Chiara Natasya Tanus, a Surabaya-born student who was attending school in Singapore, lost both parents and both brothers - aged 17 and 9 - in the crash. They had been coming to visit her for New Year’s Eve and when they did not arrive at Sinagpore airport as expected last Sunday she returned home to her dormitory.

“We were supposed to have the best time in Singapore - we planned to spend the rest of holidays together,” the orphaned teenager told Indonesia’s Jawa Pos newspaper.

“I was so excited. I was looking forward to showing my dormitory to my family,” she added.

 

[AhMeng]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Air asia pay bribes lah... what's new?

 

[syed putra]

Re: Indon minister: Air Asia did not have permission to fly on Sundays!

Then how did the allow plane to take off. Anyway, India and Indonesia the same.too much local business influence in policies and In the courts.

 

[Sinkie]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Just look at his face....one darker patch here, another darker path there.....he must be tiok kong tao.....cos people kanna kongtao r liddat on the face..........

 

[JohnTan]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Possible corruption at the Indon airport side. Still think their lowly paid civil servants are a steal for taxpayers?

 

[Sephiroth]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Many questions on this shitskin airline

Hmmm... i wonder if Jah_rastafar share nicks with u

 

[Froggy]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Hmmm... i wonder if Jah_rastafar share nicks with u

Nope, not at all.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

Hmmm... i wonder if Jah_rastafar share nicks with u

It's jah_rastafar_I nigger. Also many people have the same opinion as me on shit skins. Having the same opinion doesn't mean we share nicks.

 

[singveld]

Re: ShitSkin Airline AirAsia - Breaking all the Rules

maybe they flew two hours early to squeeze in an extra flight for the day.

maybe they flew into the storm, because it is cheaper, less fuel then divert from the storm.

maybe the pilot are unable to delay flight due to stormy weather, due to management pressure.

maybe if their customers pay more. then they do not have to do all the above.

 

[makapaaa]

RSN Has Yet to Make Any Meaningful Contributions to AirAsia Crash Search

[h=1]MONEY WELL SPENT[/h]
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3 Jan 2015 - 4:42pm





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On Thursday 1 Jan 2015, the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (AUVs) that arrived on the RSS Persistence via Super Puma from Pangkalan Bun could not be unloaded until 7pm due to sea conditions. RSN personnel explained that they have to wait for better weather to start productive work as the AUV has to be launched from the RSS Persistence using a smaller craft.

The 1.8m long 37kg AUV is supposed to hover above the sea bed, with sonar scanners picking up images from each side. But the images are not uploaded immediately, and must be retrieved from the craft's memory card after each deployment to be reviewed manually by trained personnel. Ergo, any items identified may have drifted away by then. Also, the AUV is not a pinger, and pretty useless for detecting signals emitted by a plane's black box. The craft's primary use in the Singapore Navy is to search for mines. Last we heard, AirAsia QZ8501 was not carrying mines.

Meanwhile, harsh weather notwithstanding, the Indonesians, using correct equipment for the task at hand, found two large objects on Friday night measuring about 10 metres by 5 metres. "As I speak we are lowering an ROV (remotely operated underwater vehicle) underwater to get an actual picture of the objects detected on the sea floor. All are at the depth of 30m," rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo proudly announced.




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Indonesia is unique among developing countries, and unusual among other Asian countries, in the relatively low priority given to defense spending. In 2009 the military budget totaled US$3.3 billion, about the same military budget and force level as Thailand, a country with less than one-third of Indonesia’s population, and Burma (Myanmar), which has only one-quarter of Indonesia’s population.

Last year Singapore allocated about $12 billion of its budget to national defense. Malaysia's annual defense budget was almost $5 billion in 2013, while Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest economy, had an annual defense spending of about $7.9 billion.
That's the difference between Indonesia and Singapore.

Tattler
*The writer blogs at http://singaporedesk.blogspot.sg/