Say something

I am not one for doing online surveys, but here are two Singapore-related ones that I thought were worth doing this morning:

1) The Land Transport Authority is running a public poll on the names of the stations on the new Thomson Line. There are three shortlisted names for each station and the online polling interface is really easy to use.

My only beef is that the map extracts provided don't always provide enough context for someone who's not familiar with the area. I had to refer to Google Maps to clarify some of the locations, especially at the Marina Bay and Woodlands ends of the line.

I've stuck my choices at the bottom of this blog post, so avert thine eyes if you don't want to be biased.

2) The National Arts Council is running a survey for people who work in the arts and cultural sector. If you're one of them, go and do it! The online interface is one of the most intuitive and readable I've seen online, and it really didn't take all of the 15 minutes they said it would.

Okay, here's the equivalent of a spoiler alert. What follows are my preferences for the Thomson Line station names, from the southern end to the northern end (with occasional explanatory comments):

• Gardens by the Bay/Marina Barrage/Marina Gardens
• Marina South/Marina Boulevard/Marina Coast
• Shenton Way/Shenton/McCallum Street
• Maxwell/Ann Siang Hill/Neil Road
• Havelock/Bukit Ho Swee/Zion Road ("Havelock" for me refers to the general area, "Bukit Ho Swee" to the specific area where the station will be, and "Zion Road" makes people in general think of the area near the hawker centre and Great World City)
• Great World/Kim Seng/River Valley (importantly, without the "City" because it ought to be named for the landmark amusement park that occupied the land, not the mall)
• Orchard Boulevard/Grange Road/Tanglin (I think Orchard Boulevard is what people think of as the "back" of Orchard Road, which I would argue is closer to the ION Orchard/Paterson side than the Grange Road/Tanglin side where this station will be)
• Napier Road/Botanic Gardens South/Taman Serasi (because I don't often hear "Napier" used as a geographical reference point in everyday conversation, and because people generally don't distinguish between different ends of Singapore landmarks in terms of cardinal directions, which potentially makes "Botanic Gardens South" confusing and not as user-friendly, and also because I feel sentimental about Taman Serasi hawker centre and I think the name is worth resurrecting for a modern association)
• Mouth Pleasant/Whitley/Old Police Academy (Whitley is on the other side of the PIE lah)
• Upper Thomson/Thomson Village/Thomson Park
• Sin Ming/Bishan Park/Bright Hill
• Mayflower/Kebun Baru/Ang Mo Kio West (though I was torn about Kebun Baru)
• Lentor/Lentor Green/Teachers' Estate (I like "Teachers' Estate" but I think the area is slightly west of the station, right?)
• Springleaf/Nee Soon Village/Thong Soon
• Woodlands South/Champions Way/Woodgrove
• Woodlands North/Republic Crescent/Admiralty Park