Buying resale HDB flat

Nowadays buyer of HDB resale flat must engage own solicitor probably due to the commercial bank loan. One may need to fork out some $2K, for example $1870 at Sim Mong Teck & Partners at HDB hub, for the legal fees:

** Solicitor's charge $850
** CPF cost $118
** Lodgment fees on caveat, transfer & mortgage $140
** Stamp fees on mortgage & transfer $510
** Disbursement - various searches $100
** Disbursement - transport, photocopy & incidentals $80
** GST $80

HDB market is on the upswing and its prices shot up 3% in the 2nd quarter, the biggest jump since 1999. 8700 transactions are reported in the quarter, or 38% up on the previous quarter. As the 'soft intervention' to the crazy market since this year, URA & HDB started to release more & new type of statistic data to provide true, sufficient and timely information (see at hdb.gov.sg).

Together with SLA's releasing more lands for developing new office & residential properties, HDB also announced its plan to offer 3000 new flats in the second half of this year.

Tanglin Village

We went down to Tanglin Village yesterday. It's a new place introduced on newspapers, at Dempsey Rd (turn in from Holland Rd west-wards) near botanic garden. Besides the old antique furniture stores, there are now quite a few bars & restaurants, art and spa houses newly set up, some are still renovating and yet to open. It will become a good leisure place especially for the nearby westerners.

Jacky's concert

'The Year of Jacky Cheung World Tour 2007' concert was held at the Indoor Stadium last night. It's the 3rd day of his Singapore show. Jacky brought in 30min. musical (abstracted from his '雪狼湖'?) which is pretty good and a surprise to me.

Unfortunately our seats are too close to the subwoofer so I can't really enjoy most of the loud songs -- that's a lession I've learnt :(

7.9% Sharp Increase

Based on Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA)'s estimated price index of private residential property, prices rose 7.9% to 147.3 points in the 2nd Quarter 2007, compared with the 4.8% increase in the previous quarter (increased by 7.6% in Core Central Region, 7.9% in Rest of Central Region and 6.5% in Outside Central Region).

A lot of speculating activities are encouraged by the recent record high & hottest deals (such as The MarQ at $5100psf or the 3am queuing for Duchess Residences). Some people bought in early this year are excited talking about the >40% (on paper) gains...

If it continues to be crazy like this, I think it will repeat the 1996 - 1997 story again when anti-speculation & cool-down measures were applied and then the market over-corrected itself in the several years after. A progressive & sustainable increase is far better than this sharp uptrend. But the speculators deserve getting burnt.

3G SIM

Finally I decided to upgrade my GSM phase 2+ SIM to a 3G card. I've been reluctant to do so as the old SIM was actually coded by myself when I was with a SIM card vendor. It was the first STK offer in Singapore, with Info-On-Demand SIM application on it. This fact has kept me loyal to that telco and to the particular SIM card for the past 8 yrs as I'm able to load additional STK applications therefore turn it into a live test card.

Now with 3G or even 3.5G network having phrased in and offering much faster data rate & more features, I can't hold on any more but to upgrade (I now have to pay for it!) & switch to the 3G network. Moreover, SIM application has become the past story though most handsets still (quietly) support STK. The VAS platform has changed from SIM card to Java application and now to the smartphone OS e.g. Windows Mobile or Symbian. WAP did not even get a chance to really fly. The role of SIM card has been demoted to its original function, i.e. subscriber identification and storing network parameters; it is no longer the key player in VAS development, nor is SIM vendor.

Actually, many of the original SIM functions become insignificant in today's mobile experience. For example, the SIM phone book is seldom used and SMS is not even stored into SIM any more. My new 3G SIM (btw, I can recognize it as Gemalto card by its contact-pad shape :-) is said to be 128K card with the capacity to store 1000 phonebook entries. But who really cares it? The phone usually provides megabytes (if not gigabytes) of dynamic memory that effectively stores unlimited number of contact & SMS records. It also offers a more sophisticated phonebook with, for example, voice tag, customised ring tone, face image, email & address that the SIM phonebook doesn't.

The world changes fast. The eight years are long due to flash the concept about GSM VAS...

Nokia N80 firmware v4.0707.0.7

It's lucky that I checked forums before connecting to Nokia firmware update service. There is a newer version v4.0707.0.7 released on the 28th of March (seems only in Europe market?) but many are annoyed by its full of bugs & its damaging their previously-working features. The only good thing I read so far is that it enters the sleep mode sooner to improve battery life. So, don't rush to upgrade it & stay on the current v4.0632.0.38.

More S60 App

Searching for more Symbian S60 3rd Edition freewares, I discovered the following applications:

Y-Browser (v0.80) by Jukka Silvennoinen is a full & extendable file management application with most standard features on files (such as copy, cut, paste, etc) & folders (create, remove, etc).

Screenshot (v2.60) by Antony Pranata captures screenshot on S60 mobile phones and saves it to a file in JPEG, PNG, BMP or MBM format. Actually those captures posted here are by the Screenshot.

MetrO (v5.5.1 / May 2007) by F Van Caenegem & P Bernard helps you find your way in the public transport systems (subway, bus, trams) in more than 350 cities around the world. It is originally for PalmOS and Windows Mobile devices and extended to Symbian Nokia phones. The Singapore database is not too useful though -- it only covers MRT/LRT but not the most needed bus system. One can easily find his way on the graphic route map being posted everywhere at station and on the train.