saving bus money

Had to go over to Hannah's house in Sixth Avenue area just now for arts comm meeting, and after scrutinizing all the bus routes available from my house in the bus guide, i decided to save money by taking one direct bus instead of two, the trade-off being that i'd have to walk for fifteen or so minutes from my house to the bus stop that fell on the 'direct' bus route.

I actually even went to the stage of checking the number of fare stages each journey had to see which made the most monetary sense, and since it turns out that in the end i could take either one of two direct buses, i first made sure that even though one route was longer than the other, that the price i would have to pay through ez link would be the same for either, since a certain fare covers a certain range of fare stages. (If anyone reading this hasn't got a clue what i am talking about, well, i was feeling the same way earlier today, which was why i was preoccupied with the silly bus guide for the longest time...)

All this basically boils down to the fact that bus fares, which i had taken for granted last time thanks to the humble student transitlink card (yes, it was still those floppy plastic cards with a picture of an insect on one side and a pink background with rules and regulations on the other, complete with the small hole that was used during, ahem, my time) now weigh much more on my mind than ever before, thanks in no small part to the fact that, for the first time since i was no longer eligible for those 45 cent bus rides, i have to commute a significant distance on a regular basis between my house and somewhere... At least the bulk of my army life was spent in a camp that was thankfully near my house. But now, it's a daily long $1.43 ride from my house to NUS, and even now in the holidays, i find myself commuting long distances again for events such as the one today. And since it's the holidays, i don't want to buy the horribly-priced $52 bus pass, for fear of under-utilising it. Otherwise, i'd be taking the bus for even the smallest of journeys, like from forum bus stop to kent ridge terminal, just to make my money's worth... Haha...