Where to put your money next year (Sunday Times 20 Dec)
Where to put your money next year
The world economy has got off the deathbed but its recovery in the year ahead will be sluggish. Gabriel Chen gets tips from financial experts for 2010 and finds out where the traps might be.
Dr Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management:
‘We believe commodities will continue to do well, and that includes gold. Commodity stocks look good because we expect the global demand for commodities to continue its long-term growth. To keep pace with domestic consumption, commodity prices will remain positive and though they will fluctuate from time to time, the overall trend globally is upwards.’
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“Sweat debt” may drive staff to resign (ST 3 Nov)
| By Esther Teo & Jonathan Kwok |
Management consultancy Hay Group warns that ’sweat debt’ – a human resources term used to describe the extra effort put in by employees – could pose a threat to bosses if employees get disgruntled enough to vote with their feet.
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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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Jobs credit scheme (ST 3 Oct)
Oct 3, 2009
JOBS CREDIT SCHEME
Extend and sharpen this precision weapon
By Tan Khee Giap, For The Straits Times
THE Jobs Credit scheme (JCS), introduced in the Budget this year to encourage companies to retain headcount during the recession, has attracted some controversy. Some have even questioned whether it is justified or effective.
It is useful here to review the primary rationale for the scheme. By assessing the direct and indirect policy outcomes of the scheme, we can arrive at a better conclusion as to whether it should be renewed or modified going forward.
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Integrating expat Indians into Singapore (ST 25 Sep)
Integrating expat Indians into Singapore
They are articulate in English, work in professional fields, and more of them are choosing to make Singapore their home. Insight asks members of the Indian expatriate community about the issues they face where integration is concerned. What can be done to promote it, what pitfalls are there, and how important is integration to them?
By Cai Haoxiang
SINGAPORE-BORN Ms Sakina Dhilawala, 45, feels expatriate Indians and local Indians can socialise more.
The two groups, for all their common ethnicity, are as different as chalk and cheese because their histories and interests are sharply different.
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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.
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Email from a Singaporean PR (15 Sep)
I want to discuss the matter relating to foreign professional in Singapore.
It seemed that local university students tend to face tougher competition once they graduate especially during this present recession.
Some of the foreign students, if my memory is right, were given scholarship by the Spore govt. I was reading the Indonesian newspaper in Indonesia and there is this advertisement by one of the Spore universities encouraging Indonesian student to apply for the scholarship.
There has been a survey that most local students prefer to work in other countries rather than in Singapore.
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The jobs that ate a family (The Daily Telegraph 19 Sep)
Gradma Di, left, daughter India, 11, mum Melissa Blackley, daughter Holly, 8, and dad John Anderson at home / John Fotiadis
SYDNEY mother-of-two Melissa Blackley is so obsessed with work that she doesn’t know what her children eat for lunch and hasn’t cooked dinner in two years.
She maintains her relationship with her partner of 18 years John Anderson via email. And each day the couple run a “dutch auction” to decide which parent will take daughter India, 11, to violin lessons or go to eight-year-old Holly’s extra-curricular activities.
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A Romance Writer Jabs at Singapore’s Patriarchs (New York Times 19 Sep)
Catherine Lim at her home in Singapore.
By SETH MYDANS
Published: September 18, 2009
Singapore
IT is the dress, she said, that catches the eye, the long silk sheath with the slits in the sides that offers what she calls “a startling panorama of the entire landscape of the female form.”
The dress is called a cheongsam, and the woman wearing it is Catherine Lim, 67, arguably the most vivid personality in straitlaced Singapore and, when she is not writing witty romantic novels or telling ghost stories, one of the government’s most acute critics.
