“Too good” to be true (Today 5 Jan)
SINGAPORE – To them, it sounded like a good offer: A $900 monthly salary to be a cleaner at the integrated resorts. All they needed to do was pay a “processing fee”.
Foreign domestic worker Raquel Abella certainly thought it would be a good opportunity for her husband to join her in Singapore.
She was about to pay an agent $1,800 this week when she received an SMS from Humanitarian Organisation for Migrant Economics (Home), a migrant welfare group, alerting her that the transaction was a scam.
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City life hard, but better than mining and quakes (Global Times)
City life hard, but better than mining and quakes
- Source: Global Times
- [08:32 December 31 2009]
- Comments
By Deng Yumei, as told to Chen Chenchen
My story of the past decade, if written out, is probably as long as a book.
I was born in a mountain village in Beichuan, Sichuan Province in 1966. Like other siblings in the family, I couldn’t afford to enter high school. I merely finished junior middle school. At 21, I married a man in another village. It took more than 10 hours to get there from my parents’ village.
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Overheard from Asiaone forum posting
Overheard from Asiaone forum posting:
1. What is your opinion about people saying that foreigners are getting a good deal and locals getting the bad deal?
Are you local? Did you serve NS?
I notice alot of local eurasians like to reassure their friends that they serve NS, why do you think so?
If you are so pro-emigration, why are you back? Is the grass greener on the other side?
This is an awesome thread.
I know, tons of random questions, Just wanting to hear your opinion.
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“I married a China prostitute” (Asiaone)
 ‘I married a China prostitute’
Old man marries China woman despite knowing her for less than half a year. It was only one month into the marriage that he found out she was a prostitute. -AsiaOne A 64-year-old Singaporean man married a 40-year-old China woman despite knowing her for less than half a year, only to find out one month into their marriage that she is a prostitute.
Mr Chen, who spoke to the local Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao, said that he first met his China wife, Ah Ping, in April this year while dining at Pearl’s Centre in Chinatown.
Ah Ping had approached him first and engaged in in conversation. During this time, three men asked her if she provided sex services, but Ah Ping flatly denied so, thus giving Mr Chen a good impression of her.
She later told Mr Chen that she was a graduate back in China, and came to Singapore to look for work. They exchanged contact numbers and soon became a couple, meeting often for food and shopping trips. In September this year, Ah Ping proposed that they get married. She told Mr Chen that they could apply for a flat together once she had gotten her permanent resident status. Mr Chen, who was divorced two years ago, agreed to the wedding immediately. The couple registered their marriage on October 15. Soon after they wed, Mr Chen realize that his new wife was almost never at home, and they often fought and argued, “There was once when things got really bad, and she told me that she was a prostitute in Shenzhou (China) and when she came to Singapore, she is still a prostitute.” A former cleaner, Mr Chen told Lianhe Wanbao that he lost his job after sustaining an injury in a car accident on his wedding day. When he lost his ability to work, his wife’s attitude towards him changed completely. “I didn’t know that she was a prostitute then. She asked me for money, saying that she plans to set up a stall selling socks.” “Later on, a friend of mine saw her soliciting men, and it was only then that I realized ’selling socks’ was just her way of telling me she’s going out to sell her body.” Mr Chen said that his China wife also hit him from time to time during their rocky month-long marriage. Since getting wed, the couple only had sex three times, and the sessions felt like Ah Ping was just obliging her new husband because she had to, Mr Chen said. She was also drastically different from the caring woman that Mr Chen had thought her to be, and he found himself being kicked and beaten by her when things went wrong. According to Mr Chen, his China wife was a divorcee as well. She has a 20-year-old son in China. Because Ah Ping had yet to gain residency status, she had to leave Singapore once her visa is up, and can only return to the country after spending some time in China. When Mr Chen spoke to Lianhe Wanbao, Ah Ping was not in Singapore as she had left the day before.
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Asset bubbles all over Asia: UN economist (ST 1 Dec)
Dec 1, 2009
Asset bubbles all over Asia: UN economist
They may burst if short-term capital flowing in pulls out
GOVERNMENTS have been urged by a top United Nations economist to keep an eye on asset bubbles, which he says are appearing all over Asia as investors pour money into the rapidly recovering region.
UN Assistant Secretary-General Ajay Chhibber also cited the woes faced by Dubai, in the Middle East, as an example of how the underlying issues of the financial crisis had not been solved.
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Slowing the flow of foreign workers to Singapore (ST 13 Nov)
 It is inevitable that foreigner numbers will continue to swell but the crucial thing is how many the country can accommodate and how fast it wants to grow, says Prof Hui. — ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
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SINGAPORE could have gone ‘overboard’ in its quest to maximise growth over the last two years before it was hit by the recession.
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25 Things I Learned About Business from “Its Always Sunny” (Focus Editors)
Fans of FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might chuckle at the idea of gleaning serious business advice from such a silly show. Between Frank’s bluntness and Deandra’s cluelessness, the characters are hardly captains of industry. But a little imagination goes a long way, and business lessons are practically jumping out of the TV screen at executives open-minded enough to see them. So take a break from the usual platitude-filled management texts, sit back, and learn the 25 things It’s Always Sunny can teach you about business.
Stick to proven business models
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Youtube hit as Beyonce sings Halo to cancer patient (The Daily Telegraph 23 Sep)
A WEEK ago cancer patient Chelsea James was looking forward to seeing her pop idol Beyonce perform in concert in Sydney.
Yesterday she was celebrating the fact that “I’ve had over 700,000 hits on YouTube”.
The 11-year-old stole everyone’s hearts on Friday night when she was plucked from the audience at Acer Arena to be on stage with Beyonce, The Daily Telegraph reports.
With her wispy hair – some of which is still falling out from her chemotherapy – blowing in the wind, she stood alongside her idol, who dedicated Halo to Chelsea.
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More than 100,000 employers to receive $890 million (Asiaone 22 Sep)
More than 100,000 employers to receive $890 million
Tue, Sep 22, 2009
AsiaOne
More than 100,000 employers, with whom about 1.4 million local workers are employed, will receive $890 million from the third payment of Jobs Credit on September 30, 2009.
Eligible employers will receive a letter of notification from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) by Thursday, September 24. This letter will inform them of the amount of Jobs Credit they will receive for the third payment.
Employers do not need to sign-up, as eligible employers will automatically be granted the Jobs Credit. This includes those who did not qualify during the first two installments.
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Facing Joblessness With Confidence – Be Prepared
This article was reproduced here in Jan 09.
Many who visited this blog site I believe will have been retrenched or preparing for retrenchment. However, it is not the end of the world yet.
The unemployed need to prepare themselves well if they are retrenched. Those with severance package definitely have the upper hand to wait out the prolonged down turn. Those without will face the future with less confidence.
Nevertheless, staying prepared for retrenchment even if one is working now help.
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She quit job as secretary to be a cabby (Asiaone 18 Sep)
She quit job as secretary to be a cabby
For the sake of her three children, she switched jobs from being a secretary to a taxi driver.
Her husband complimented her career move by becoming a taxi driver himself and they even became partners at work.
Four years ago, Mdm Yu Xiu Yun, 37, resigned from her secretarial job to pursue a career in the male-dominated taxi driving industry.
At the job interview, she said she had grown tired of her former job and resigned to spend time at home taking care of her children who were still schooling.
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Job interview cues that say “hire me” (New York Times 21 Sep)
Sep 21, 2009
WORKING LIFE
Job interview cues that say ‘hire me’
No set rules but courtesy and common sense give applicants the edge
NEW YORK: It is always fun to hear hiring managers recall the most boneheaded mistakes they have seen job seekers make during an interview: showing up in flip-flops, say, or taking a cellphone call while meeting the company president.
But that kind of cluelessness is rare. More common are the subtle missteps or omissions that can cause one candidate to lose out to another. If one person is sending out the right signals and behaving in the right way through each step of the process, he or she has a much better chance of landing the job – even with an inferior resume.
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How working parents can find jobs in a Recession (Business Week 16 Sep)
How Working Parents Can Find Jobs In a Recession
Posted by: Lauren Young on September 16
Even if the recession is over, the outlook for job seekers remains bleak.
I asked Tory Johnson (pictured here), who is chief executive officer of Women For Hire and author of Fired to Hired, to offer her career advice in an unsettled economy.
Question: Unemployment figures show that more men are out of work than women. What are your thoughts on this trend and how it is impacting workers?
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Singapore-born porn actress killed in California (Sunday Times 20 Sep)
S’pore-born porn actress killed in California
31-year-old beaten and suffocated; boyfriend charged with torture, murder
By Jamie Ee Wen Wei
In one of her MySpace accounts, Miss Felicia Lee wrote in her profile: ‘Growing up, I lived in many different places. But I was born and raised in Singapore. My family and I moved around a lot!’ Her family reportedly moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was 13.
A Singapore-born porn actress has been found dead in her apartment in the small city of Monrovia in Southern California.
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What it takes for foreigners to integrate in Singapore (Sunday Times 20 Sep)
What it takes for foreigners to integrate in S’pore
By Radha Basu, Senior Correspondent
At an in-house course a couple of months ago, a colleague voiced her deep apprehension about being crowded out of her ‘own backyard’. At MRT stations and offices, parks and pubs, she bumped into people whose accents and attire advertised their foreignness. Almost overnight, ‘they’ had overrun her tiny nation, she said.
She rationalised that she knew the nation needed foreigners to sustain its economic growth. But her heart, alas, sang a different tune. She felt upset, isolated. A stranger in her own home. Her predicament was not unique.
