Posts

Posted on

Singapore Air Show 2018

March 2018 | Dios Kurniawan

Last month I went to see the biennial Singapore Air Show 2018. I visited on the public day, with focus on the aerial display. Unfortunately, the aerial display would only be displayed twice and they were pretty short, less than 45 minutes each.

F-15s and F-16s belonging to Singapore Air Force are the star of the show. TNI-AU Jupiter Team was also present.

The static display was less interesting. The only star for the show – for me – was the gigantic A-400M. I wanted to get inside the plane but the queue was just too long. Other than that, only Gripen and Apache that stole my attention, but those two were also present in the previous years.

Malaysian Air Force Heavy Lift A400M

Taking aerial photos was my main goal of coming here so I brought my Lumix GX85 camera with 300mm lens. However, it turns out that a mirrorless is not as good as a DSLR camera for capturing fast-moving jets at airshows. Plus, the heat that day was unbearable, making it difficult for me to concentrate to take good photos.

A pair of RSAF F-16Cs performing a high angle-of-attack pass

TNI-AU Jupiters in action

RSAF’s F-15SG in a special ceremonial paint scheme

Posted on

Trip Report: FlyScoot

January 2018 | Dios Kurniawan

Last month during holiday season I decided to try Scoot, a budget airline subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. I have long heard a lot about this low-cost carrier but never had the chance to try it out. Scoot flies long-haul routes to Japan, China, Australia, even to Europe, and just recently transitioned to brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. I took the plunge and booked for a one-way trip to Sydney for a family holiday.

I bought five tickets (3 adults, 2 children) from Traveloka.com to take advantage of payment in Rupiah currency. Just like other no-frills carriers, there was no checked baggage allowance in the standard airfare, so I immediately purchased add-on 2x 25kg luggage allowance. Scoot also offers customers to buy seat upgrade for more legroom, which I did. I paid 15.5 million Rupiah in total, that’s approximately US$220 per person. Pretty good deal. If I had chosen to fly with Garuda Indonesia or Qantas, it would have cost me twice as much.

The caveat: it is not a direct flight, the trip requires a transfer at Changi Airport.

The itinerary says the first leg will be CGK-SIN departing at 8 PM on a single aisle Airbus A320, take a 3-hour layover at Changi Airport and then embark on a Boeing 787-9 at 1 AM for Sydney. The flight should arrive in the destination at around noon. Total journey: 12+ hours. Almost double as opposed to direct flights which normally take 7 hours. Not really convenient, but for saving lots of money I think I can live with that. This is a holiday trip anyway.

The Experience

Because of terrible traffic, we arrived at Soekarno-Hatta Airport just a few minutes before the check-in counter was about to close. There was no self-service kiosk, thus check-in process was done manually. Our luggage was checked-in too, and tagged for Sydney. Our bags would be taken care of during our transit in Singapore. Good.

The first leg to Singapore is served by an Airbus A320.

Food crumbs on the seat (photo: Dios K)

Boarding started on time, but when we finally found our seats (at the back of the plane, as always), we were welcome by food crumbs and scraps of other matter. It seemed as if the plane was not cleaned at all from the previous inbound flight from Singapore. How filthy.

The flight to Singapore itself was on-time. During the flight, I killed the time by reading and watching movies on my tablet. This is a budget carrier so no food is served, of course. Not much a problem because we are not hungry.

Our A320 landed in Changi at around 10 PM. We did not mind spending 2 hours in Changi Airport, considered as one of the world’s best airports. There were just a lot of things to do there. Food was good and plentiful, too.

The Dreamliner

Shortly after midnight, we headed down to the designated gate for our flight to Sydney. The gate area was fully packed with other passengers, more than 300 of them perhaps. According to Seatguru.com, Scoot configured its 787-9s for 340 economy and 35 business seats. By looking at the crowded waiting room, I guess all seats for tonight’s flight would be fully occupied.

Waiting rrom is crowded (photo: Dios K)

When we boarded the Dreamliner, we were greeted by bright yellow interior lighting. Not a really nice touch especially it’s in the middle of the night, I prefer something more soothing to the eyes.

The Dreamliner (photo: Dios K)

Seats are surprisingly quite comfortable. Seat width is just right, legroom is abundant. Unlike the first flight from Jakarta, this aircraft is in a much cleaner state, too.

Leg room is just fine (photo: Dios K)

This last leg to Sydney would take 8 hours. You just have to figure out what you will do without in-flight entertainment during such a long flight. There is no TV monitor in front of me. Just plain plastic.

I tried to look at the menu provided in the seat pocket. While the food looked tempting – especially the Nasi Lemak – but the $12 price simply turned me down. Too expensive! Besides I have already grabbed some McDonald’s while at Changi. Scoot officially prohibits outside food to be consumed onboard, but luckily that night the flight attendants did not seem to enforce the policy.

Menu is tempting but the price is not (photo: Dios K)

However, for a long flight such as this, there is no way we can survive without water. I filled up my water bottle in the terminal before boarding but that was not enough for the whole family. So during the flight I purchased a small bottle of mineral water, which cost me S$4. That’s a rip-off! But well, I had no choice.

There was no in-flight entertainment except onboard Wi-Fi which was offerred at exorbitant prices: $18 for 100MB. No way Hose! I ended up watching movies stored in my laptop and then sleeping for the rest of the flight. Oh yes, Scoot does not provide blanket but I have prepared mine in my backpack. No pillows either.

The flight was smooth, weather was good and my kids slept pretty well. I suppose the lower altitude setting of cabin pressure in Dreamliner was playing a significant role in making the journey more pleasant. Unlike any other red-eye flight I have ever experienced, this time I felt much more fresh.

Arrival at Sydney Airport (photo: Dios K)

We landed in Sydney at noon and the deboarding process was swift. We had no problem collecting our luggage in the terminal.

The Verdict

Scoot is an interesting option for travelling to Australia if you are on a budget and you don’t mind the much longer journey time. The first leg from Jakarta was less satisfactory because of the dirty seats, but other than that we were quite happy with our experience. Will I fly with Scoot again? Certainly. The service is not bad, Dreamliner planes are comfortable and most importantly I can keep my wallet happy.

Posted on

Getting Value from Big Data Projects

August 2017 | Dios Kurniawan

Many organizations are now engaging big data initiatives, and many projects have started with lots of investments and lots of ‘buzz’. Large companies have poured money to buy big data machines such as Hadoop, procured expensive software and hired data scientists. But after few years people start asking, how is the progress they have made, are they getting the value of their investment?

I do not have the statistics, but I believe only few do meet their initial expectations.

The main challenge for most big data initiatives is to extract insights out of the data. Many organizations are still having difficulties in discovering the valuable data that they have and making it available for analysis. Hadoop technology, with its perceived low cost of storing data, draws people to simply dump whatever data they have into it. In most people’s mind, Hadoop has become about providing cheap storage environment, blurring the real end goals and objectives of having big data in the first place. The data is in the Hadoop, but it is not really searchable and is not stored in a way that allows consumers to get the value easily.

In most organizations, Hadoop remains to be ‘IT-toy’, meaning business still pretty much depends on IT technical people to work on getting the data. There is a ‘disconnect’ between IT department and the business units. Business has spurred experiments on big data use cases utilizing many machine learning techniques, but the challenge is how to operationalise these experiments into something that truly generates valuable business insights in a sustainable manner, which in most cases, still technically difficult.

To ensure success, what needs to be built with big data in many organizations is essentially the automation on top of it.

It is a comprehensive set of tools which permits business users, and eventually the consumers, getting the data they need at the right time. Automation in big data is something like an e-commerce site: it allows user to search for the products they want, get help in doing it, and get the merchandise delivered to their doorstep. An online shop-style engine, which sits on top of the big data platform, connects the big data platform to the consumers, much like the recommendation engines usually found in online shops. Things like self-service Business Intelligence and self-service analytics. Without this, it is difficult to reap the benefits of big data investment and very little would materialize into something meaningful.

Hadoop, the most popular big data platform, is not delivering what it promises, either. Pouring data into HDFS (Hadoop File System) is quite easy, but getting the data out is still a challenge. Many SQL-on-Hadoop tools exist, but none has gained wide adoption to actually compete with true SQL engines such as Oracle and Teradata.

My experience also tells me that data governance has become a very challenging effort, in the sense that data is pretty much duplicated here and there, and data is sitting there without actually being used. Many IT organizations had literally spent months -even years- and millions of dollars in integrating big data technology such as Hadoop, and in most cases the effort has been successful. Successful in the sense that the ‘data lake’ with its cheap storage and abundant processing power can be provided, but the missing link is an integrated, end-to-end systems and procedures to enable completely operational environment, which brings valuable insights to the consumers.