Critical Inquiry

Why decline help from welfare organisations? Granted, the older generation of Asians do not wish to rely on handouts for fear of "losing face" but this family has been accepting donations from passer-bys which is almost as good as begging. Furthermore, there is the 8 month old son who is being unneccessarily subjected to such hard times when welfare had already been extended to them and rejected. Is this a tactic to force the authorities to prioritise their wait for a house? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homeless family lives under bridge at Kallang river, rejects welfare SINGAPORE : A homeless couple has been living with their eight-month-old son under a bridge near Kallang river. Anglers who frequent the area told Channel NewsAsia the family has been living there for three months. They have been living off donations by passers-by. But when some welfare organisations extended a helping hand, they refused to accept any aid. When C

The first hints that a possible taxi fare increase is coming was released yesterday. Already, there are many people complaining about it in the various online community forums. The reasons for the complaints are varied, ranging from the recent re-election of the PAP government to taxi companies profiteering from the increase instead of benefitting the taxi drivers who need the increase most. Regardless of all the online complaints that are being voiced, the fares will still be raised eventually. Not that the taxi companies do not know that consumers are unhappy about fare increases, who is willing to pay more when given a choice, but that companies understand the economics at play. The greatest users of taxi services are those who can afford it by virtue of higher income or reimbursement from their company. This increase is but a drop in the ocean for them since it does not hit their monthly disposal income significantly. The complaints that are being voiced arise mainly from those who

I was doing a review of the financial services I have after reading in the papers the news where a maid forge her employer's signature to encash a cheque and subsequently fleeing Singapore back to Phillipines. The review basically got me round to closing down my dormant accounts and terminating whatever links that I had maintained between dormant and active accounts. In this review session, StandardChartered's e$aver account was the first to go since it was not longer matching the interest rates offered by other banks. When I initially opened the account, the terms were such that should the account balance be zero for a period of 30 days, the account will auto close. However, that had not materialised and now the website states that a trip down to StandardChartered branches is neccessary to process the account closure. Regardless, I made a call to the StandardChartered hotline and got the guy on the line to process the closing of the account for me, reminding him of the initial

I am not a supporter of webpages that contains tonnes of advertising on it and hence never really wanted to put any advertisements on my blog. However, after having the blog gone "live" for quite a while, I realised that it can jolly well be another source of income for me if done right. What is right then? Basically, that entails writing relevant content that people will be interested to read about so that my postings will be well indexed by search engines. Of course, that content also has to be information that I am interested in and keen to share with the general public. If the blog does get popular and is read by many people, and some of these readers click on the google adsense advertisements I have on the page, then I will potentially be looking at a small steady stream of passive income while doing something I like! Google Adsense fits nicely into the scheme of things as it actually has quite a few different advertisement banner formats from which I can choose from to

A little late in posting this little piece of very important news. Be reminded to ask the right questions to extract all the relevant minor information that your FA may have left out. ----------------------------------------------------- Many financial advisors lacking in needs analysis, disclosure: MAS By Frederick Lim, Channel NewsAsia SINGAPORE: Many financial advisors here do not carry out a sufficiently detailed fact-find on their clients' investment needs. This was revealed in a mystery-shopper survey conducted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It also shows that many financial advisors do not give out full disclosure on the investment products they recommend. The survey covered 100 representatives from 30 financial institutions covering the banking, insurance and capital markets sectors. Some 40 mystery shoppers took part in the survey - including housewives and unemployed persons. They were given two scenarios with which to approach financial institutions for advice -

Finally, the top 16 teams for FIFA Worldcup 2006 are out. It has been a relatively exciting Worldcup 2006 so far....Germany, Ecuador, England, Sweden, Argentina, Netherlands, Italy, Ghana, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Spain, Ukraine, Switzerland and France... Who is going to be able to make it through to the next stage? Which teams will emerge as the top 8 teams? I have just lost my first bet on Worldcup 2006.... a grand total of S$2!

The Singapore government unveiled a new ambitious infocomm blueprint yesterday, naming it iN2015 (Intelligent Nation 2015). One of the major thrust was to get broadband prices amongst the cheapest in the world. The lack of true competition now meant that consumers had been consistently shortchanged and had to fork out much higher prices per MB of connection speed. Only recently did Singnet come up with an offering of unlimited 512Kbps at prices below $30 and the other ISP have so far not seem to engage Singnet in dropping their prices. My guess is that this price war is not going to start anytime soon. The reason being the other major contender, Starhub, had most probably locked in consumers with freebies bundled with 2 year contracts and few users will be willing to pay the punitive damages. The only consumers with bargaining power to negotiate a square deal are those subscribers whom are not under contracts. The threat of termination and switching to another ISP is usually sufficient

The Straits Times just launched a new initiative on 14 Jun, Stomp - short for Straits Times Online Mobile Print - that will engage readers through forums, video and audio clips, and other interactive platforms. It appears that The Straits Times is really trying to make Stomp a success dangling an Opel Astra 1.6 and other attractive prizes that can be won in seven ways: By sending an SMS. By MMSing a picture. By posting a question on Ask ST on the Stomp website. By posting a question or comment on a Stomp blog. By posting a question or comment on Stomp's forum. By submitting a photograph for Stomp's photo gallery. By taking part in any online petition on Stomp. Why is The Straits Times so keen on this new platform of involving citizen reporters? The answer perhaps is a response that I heard a speaker give during a recent event. With proliferating digital (video) cameras, anyone could potentially become a reporter, picking up an instant news scoop. Through Stomp, The Straits Time

Late night shopping, midnight sales, etc is making another comeback this Great Singapore Sale. It is a fantastic idea and addresses many people's complaints about shops closing too early for shopping after dinner which may end around 8 to 9 pm. However, this idea will only be able to take baby steps now and is unlikely to catch on in a big way since the supporting infrastructure is not present. The shops can jolly well stay open as late as they want but shoppers who do not drive are going to play Cinderella once it approaches midnight. When the last bus or MRT departs and cheap public transport is no longer available, shoppers will then have to hail taxis to get home. And for those who are not informed about the taxi fare structure in Singapore, there is a midnight surcharge when getting rides after midnight. Unless there were huge savings in the midnight sales, more probably than not, the taxi fare will wipe out whatever savings there were. As Singapore tries to develop a vibrant

Once again, I am complaining about the services offered by our friendly local banks. This time the encounter is a call to DBS' customer service hotline for a temporary increase on my credit card spending limit. My request was turned down on the reason that MAS regulations does not allow it and what I can do is to do an immediate payment and ring up DBS customer service hotline again so that my credit limit can be updated with the paid amount. Ok... since it is MAS regulations, I can do without the credit limit increase and just make use of another credit card I am holding. It seemed weird that there is this MAS regulation as I had obtained temporary credit increase from Citibank before and it was exceptionally simple since I had constantly been in good credit standing. To clear my doubts, I do a simple search on the Internet when I got home and surprise suprise! Most of the other banks do offer temporary credit limit increases...Citibank, StandardChartered, Maybank, etc. all have i

Yesterday was the second time I caught a match of WorldCup 2006. The first I caught was the telecast of the opening match between Germany and Costa Rica where a scoreline of 4-2 made it one of the more exciting ones I seen in quite a while. Yesterday's match between Argentina and Serbia saw a scoreline of 6-0! Goals galore for Argentina!! It was absolutely to see the Argentina players in action. The setup for the goals and their skills in manoeuvring the ball is absolutely stunning. The Serbians had absolutely no chance going against them. While I am no soccer fanatic, I do hope to see more of such skilful play as the FIFA Worldcup progresses further. =D

It appears that many businesses have problems dealing with their IT department which tend to be more rigid and require precise directions to work upon. During the conference a few days ago, IT in failing to appreciate the needs of the business users, is unable to adequately address their concerns and support the business operations. However, how is it that IT always has to be made the whipping boy? The strain of IT savvy non-IT workers is still relatively small. Even when they do exist, it still remains that they have to be willing to take on additional work that taps upon their limited IT knowledge... and since their core function is not IT and their pay is not to do IT, why not just push it to the IT department? Being one of the newer breeds of IT professionals, I appreciate the needs of the business slightly better and try to meet their requirements as well as possible. Yet, as in all engineering projects, how is it possible to build something without knowing the specifications? How

The stock markets have been bleeding heavily the past few weeks. Who would have expected such a major turn of events in such a short period of time? Most of the markets that had performed well over the first few months of the year have totally given up the gains. I believe that it is time to start shopping for bargains and that those who have the means are already starting to load up on stocks with good fundamentals. There should be many square deals lurking around as long as the investment is for long term and not just speculation. There are people who believe that the correction potentially marks the start of a bear run but in actual fact, the fundamentals of the good companies had not drastically changed from when the investor sentiments took a turn for the worse recently. Fools go where angels fear to tread but fortune favours the brave. If one has spare cash on hand lying idle in some low yielding savings accounts, it may just be advisable to transfer it into some fundamentally so

I was atttending a conference recently and the quality of the speakers varied greatly. Having a mix of local and foreign speakers, the local ones largely paled in comparison except for a few. While the speakers may not be outstanding, they do manage to highlight some important points which are worth noting... but looking at them, I am sorely reminded of my own weakness in speaking to others. Locals who are technically trained tend to be good in knowledge but weaker in skills such as presentations, etc. I should look for more opportunities to speak up at work and hone my presentation skills. At the end of the day, one should realise that technical skills earn you your living but being able to speak well will earn you big money!

What in the world is DBS up to again? Why is there a need to call to register the chances since can easily base the number of chances on the transaction records of the credit cards? If this is a marketing tactic to raise the profile of the bank, I guess this tactic has not really gone down well with me as it is more an indication of the poor customer service that I have found local banks to frequently be guilty of. Yet, I will not complain too much about this since those who did not notice/bother with the hassle of registering will forgo their chances and I have a higher chance of winning the prizes!! :P

I have no idea if I should feel amused or sorry for some of the girls that I know. As I know them, their age is no secret to me. However, as the years go by and they get older, suddenly their online profiles on Friendster, Moblog, etc will suddenly see age changes once they pass the 30 years old hurdle. I have come across one who has conveniently took 5 years off her Friendster age when she turned 30 years old. Another one was more extreme, taking 12 years off her Moblog age, putting her profile age as 20 years old! This is so pathetic, especially for single girls who cross the benchmark age of 30 years old. Suddenly, she is no longer a 20+ young girl but a 30+ mature lady. Seems like there are many single women around me who cannot really come to terms with reality. What is the point of lying? The truth will still come to light one of these days and you will be even more of a laughing stock...

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni militant with a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, was killed via an US airstrike yesterday. He is a lucky man for how many people in this world have the chance to be so splendidly and expensively killed? While his supporters may hold him up as a martyr and lament his demise, his death is one which brought much joy to many around the world. Do his supporters ever wonder if Al-Zarqawi's directions were grossly wrong? When a person's death is greeted with such joy and relief around the world, has he lived his life in vain?

National University of Singapore (NUS) has become a laughing stock with the recent TV ads for its Business School. If the advertisements were meant to generate hype about the School, it certainly has done so except that what was really brought out was the gross misrepresentations of NUS Business School, which ranked 92, as superior to better institutions such as University of Chicago and Sloan. How in the world did NUS become a university of choice when the facts are that there are 91 better options? The girl who chooses NUS over University of Chicago and Sloan clearly is not thinking properly. Is that what NUS is trying to portray? That its Business School students cannot discern quality offerings? Maybe it is time for NUS to set up a School of Media or collaborate with NTU's School of Communication and Information (SCI) to gain a better understanding of how to project the right impressions. Such advertising gaffes only serve to render the campaigns counterproductive.

Recently my female colleague left her handbag on her desk when going to the washroom and returned to find the cleaner fumbling with her handbag. Cooking up some excuses, he quickly left... There was no doubt in her mind that the cleaner was trying to steal from her bag but describing him as looking "scary", she does not dare to report him. Time for me to pay more attention to the cleaners when they come over to clean my cubicle. There was never really such an issue when the cleaning services were done in house... The outsourcing of cleaning services has already seen the standards of cleaning dipped and now these sort of security issues. The company may perhaps be paying slightly lower cleaning costs but with the other problems popping up, are we truly getting a good square deal?