Of flight tickets and train tickets

Just to let you know, I just booked my flight ticket for the last part of my A Level school year. Long story short, here's the plan:

6 Jan 2010: CGK-SIN, arrive 7:35pm.
8 Jan 2010: SIN-CGK, depart 12:55pm.

And I'm going to be transiting in SG on my return trip in July, but the transit is just one hour, it's not even worth mentioning.

There are many reasons why this stayover is short.

•Firstly, I have to be in the UK before the 11th, because I have exams on. I need to be in the UK earlier to adjust to the climate, time, duration of daytime, etc.

•Secondly (extending reason number 1), I tried to book an SQ flight for the 9th of Jan, but the site just won't cooperate, and tell me SQ only flies SIN-LHR on 4th, 8th and 11th of January, even though it has a code-share flight with Virgin Atlantic on the 9th (though it transits in Dubai, making my trip a 2-stop route, but who cares!). Been trying, believe me, for 2 weeks now.

•Thirdly, I want to spend more time with my family (and my bro's Honda Jazz).

•Fourthly, I need more time with the books.

•Fifthly, Singapore's broadband speed will spoil me. Must not get too used to it.

•Sixthly, what I want to do in SG, most of them, I can do in Jakarta, so what's the point of staying too long?

•Seven, I have a longer, more relaxed break between the end of my A Level exams in June and my A Level results collection in August. And by that time, I think the choir peeps were suggesting we have a get-together to celebrate Ms Gan's return to SG or something, so I thought - why not pop by?

And there you go - 7 reasons for the short stay in SG.

Now that I've clarified my reasons, let's start arranging stuff, yeah?

I'll probably need to go to a Guardian store and a Popular/Art Friend shop, btw.

And I must eat Roti Prata / Yoshinoya / 咸鱼炒饭 with green pickled chilli. Gosh, I miss these things.

And btw, I have a fisheye treat (hint hint).

So yeah, do drop me a Facebook message about this, alright?

While we're still on the topic of my flight ticket, I just realised that my flight ticket, even though it'll bring me half way across the globe and back, it still costs less than rail ticket.

And I'm not talking about some bullet train or rail journey to the ends of the earth.

I'm referring to this recent news article about the most expensive UK railway journey ticket. £1002 (that's £11.40 more than my flight ticket, based on current USD-GBP exchange rates) gets you a First-class "Walk-on" Return journey from some place in Scotland to some place in Cornwall. (See Map)

View Larger Map

That's 1,700 miles in total. (Map above can only show car journey. See source article for actual rail journey route)

To put things in perspective, I'm paying less than the tickets for an economy class seat on a 14,000 mile journey.

That should really makes you wonder about 2 things:
a) How does the airline industry do it?
b) How much dough does the railway companies in the UK make anyway? It's not as if they involve as many employees, or use more expensive vehicles for transporting people.

This is just laughable. For the same amount of money to go on a holiday in, say, Bali, I can go from one end of the UK to the other and back. That's just not the same, is it? And yet, in terms of £££, it is.

And mind you, even though it says First Class, you don't get the same treatment as a First Class passenger on a plane. The size of those seats are (most of the time) the same as standard class seats; they're only slightly cleaner, because fewer buttocks have been on them, since you need to pay more to get on them.

Well, that's all the bickering I can do now. Need to sleep. Got church tomorrow morning, and I'm watching 2012 with my housemates tomorrow afternoon/evening (tbc). Am I the only one to see the irony in that, or what?