Tag Archives: High

Our reader was shocked to find that his CPF payout would be the same even if he defers it to 70 years old. If you think you will get more, you might be in for a surprise.

The idea that the stalls at the Geylang Bazaar are rented out for a mammoth sum of $17,000 for the month is just staggering! How to expect the stall vendors to be making money during the one month itself? It just seems that this is an exercise for the landlords to be making money renting out these stalls, while the vendors struggle to recoup any money at all. Many vendors in the Geylang Bazaar have voiced their concerns about the sustainability of the festive event, held in conjunction with the month of Ramadan. Some familiar faces at the bazaar in the past years have decided to sit out this year's event, afraid that they will be unable to recoup the rental prices. Some are even complaining that after almost half the month of Ramadan gone, their stalls have not even covered half of their rental fees.

This was during the ghost month so the sergeants forced us to go to bed by 10. So I decided to take my shower before heading to bed. Once we entered the toilets, we saw long strands of hair in the sink and even inside the cubicles. It was freaking long strands of hair. That's not the spooky part though. Later that night we heard a woman screaming at the top of her voice. It was so loud that it even woke up the most compulsive snorer in our bunk! The next day was book out day and all we wanted to do was rush home and get as far away from that place as possible.

It is with much exasperation that I am penning down this note and I hope you can help share with all fellow readers, the predicaments local start ups like us face not just both in rental and labor costs but also the near inability to obtain any support from MTI or EDB! I am running a local bubble tea chain which has been shrinking due to my immense difficulties in recruiting suitable local staff as after deduction of the hefty rental superimposed by Capitaland and material costs, I can only afford to pay a Singaporean no more than $1250 for a 5 day work week. I personally would love to hire Singaporeans first and I hope our honorable WP MPs like Mr LTK whose speeches I follow and is coincidentally a businessman himself, can give our desperate cries an adornment motion in Parliament as we cannot expect the SCCCI NMP to be doing anything without prior permission from his taskmasters!

Women are by and large maternalistic creatures. It may be conscious or subconscious but wanting the best for your offspring often weighs heavily on the minds of women. Income naturally comes into play. Just because your husband is rich doesn't mean your family would be happy. Of course. But having a healthier income means that more doors are open to your children. In all honesty, declaring a desired income for a partner means that the guy has a visible target. Its not an necessarily an impossible task. Compare that with wanting big boobs with skin that remains smooth forever. That is hardly achievable.

In this connection, although the latest MOM labour report released on 29 October did not give the breakdown of total employment into foreigners, PRs and Singaporeans – I estimate (using the unemployment rates and total employment data) the percentage of foreign workers and non-Singaporean workers (foreigners and PRs) may have reached an all-time high of about 38.9 and 47.1 per cent respectively.

I refer to the article ”Singapore population hits 5.54m but growth slowest in a decade” (Channel NewsAsia, Sep 30). It states that ”The number of non-residents — largely comprised of foreigners working here and their families, as well as students — rose by 2.1 per cent to 1.63 million, slower than the 2.9 per cent growth the previous year.” After adding the 530,000 permanent residents (PRs) – does it mean that the non-Singaporean population has reached an all time high of 39 per cent?