Even news of a fatal accident in Johor Baru, where eight young cyclists were killed last Saturday, failed to deter him.

Mr Lim will join 77 cyclists from the Epic Cyclist group, who will clock 1,000km for the fourth KDF Millennium Ride from March 3. With the aim of raising $350,000, they will ride through Kuala Lumpur and Muar in Johor, cycling at least 10 hours a day, before finishing at the Singapore Island Country Club on March 6.

The former aquarium shop owner had participated in all three previous rides. He will be the oldest participant this year.

Read also: Charity helped her to lead normal life

Organiser Clifford Lee, 46, said: “Even for a pro-cyclist, it is a tough challenge to overcome. But these ordinary people are willing to commit themselves to perform such a daunting task.”

Mr Lim said: “What the KDF patients go through is much tougher, so this is really nothing in comparison.”

First-time participant Gary Lee has been preparing for the arduous terrain by training on slopes at Cameron Highlands and Fraser’s Hill. He has covered about 300km already.

The 45-year-old vice-president and deputy general manager of Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing Pte Ltd cycles thrice weekly, about 150km each time.

MOTIVATION

His source of motivation is his late father, who died of diabetes last year.

He said: “I feel like I can do a triathlon every day now.”

Mr Lim, who has two teenage daughters, said his family was concerned.

Last Saturday, a 22-year-old female driver slammed into a group of cyclists in Johor, killing eight of them aged between 13 and 17. Eight others were in critical condition.

Read also: Charity duo give love, find it with each other

However, Mr Lim managed to convince his family, as the group has taken several safety precautions.

Directing the cyclists around the road bends with neon flags will be six passenger cars.

Following the convoy will be four vans carrying supplies. They double up as transport vehicles when the need arises.

There will also be about 20 first aid-trained volunteers and a doctor cycling among them.

Read also: Retiree, 75, treks 800km in Spain for charity

KDF donor relations and communications manager Jemin Chua said the funds raised from the ride will help defray patients’ dialysis fees, medication costs and provide transport subsidies to those with mobility issues.

She added that the beneficiaries include more than 300 low-income patients.

Last year’s ride, which raised $590,000, funded nearly 4,000 dialysis sessions.

The public can donate online via giving.sg at tinyurl.com/Mride17. For details, call the KDF at 6559-2630.

This article was first published on Feb 24 , 2017.
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This happened a month into Runnan Wang’s first year as a University of Connecticut marketing major.

With only his father’s support, the 21-year-old American applied to the institute in November 2014 and received an acceptance letter two weeks later.

Three years on, Mr Wang will graduate from the institute with a Bachelor of Food Business Management degree this December.

The New Yorker and nine course mates are now the third batch to be in Singapore for 15 weeks as part of their Asian Specialisation Programme.

APPRECIATION

Together with Temasek Polytechnic’s Centre for Transcultural Studies, the students cooked a nine-dish buffet meal on Wednesday at the polytechnic’s Culinary Academy.

They did this as a show of appreciation for 45 of the polytechnic’s elderly cleaners.

It was part of the polytechnic’s Project BECAUS (Befriending Elderly Cleaning Aunties & Uncles of Singapore).

Read also: Final-year poly student interns at his own company

The manager of the Centre for Transcultural Studies, Ms Amy Daga, 46, said she got the idea for Project BECAUS in 2010 after talking to an elderly cleaner at a food court in a shopping mall here.

Ms Daga recalled: “She had little to eat even though she was working in a food court.

“I realised she didn’t need legal representation or lobbyists, just people to show appreciation.”

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Photo Gallery

Temasek Poly students devise diabetes-friendly dishes

Source:

The Straits Times

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The project was launched last July.

The cleaners were served grilled chicken with nam prik, pandan crepe cake, lamb satay with peanut sauce and tom yum goong.

Madam Low Hwee Thiang, 66, has been a cleaner at the polytechnic for 21 years.

The mother of two and grandmother of three cleans the offices of Block 26B.

Read also: Temasek Poly alumnus made it to Forbes list

She said: “The students are friendly and polite. I even received thank-you cards and ointments from them at times.”

Ms Camille Dawson, 43, Counsellor for Public Affairs, from the US Embassy here, attended the event.

She conversed fluently in Mandarin with an elderly cleaner seated next to her and enjoyed the potatoes made with a lime and fish sauce vinaigrette.

Ms Dawson said: “It’s such a meaningful and creative way of showing appreciation to these elderly cleaners who have done so much for them.”

This article was first published on Feb 24 , 2017.
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Singapore is expanding its rail network and engineers will be needed to maintain the trains and keep them running smoothly.

The 15,000 figure is an increase of about 60 per cent from the current 9,300 engineers employed by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the two rail operators, SMRT and SBS Transit.

Mr Khaw was speaking at the launch of the Singapore Rail Academy (SGRA) at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) at Dover Drive.

He spoke about the challenges faced by engineers in building Singapore’s rail network.

By 2030, the network will be 360km long, reaching a rail density that is similar to London and New York today. But the two cities built their rail networks over 100 years while Singapore is building its network in less than half the time.

Mr Khaw said that even as the network expands, the operators are working hard to improve the reliability of the rail system to become among the best in the world. To reach the two goals of rail expansion and rail reliability, Singapore has to grow the pool of engineering expertise, he noted.

Mr Khaw added: “This makes the rail industry a growth industry, whose employment prospects are almost guaranteed in the next decade.”

He noted that the role of rail engineers has become more complex over the years, and the academy will help train a new generation of rail engineers.

The academy will allow aspiring engineers and technicians to upgrade and re-skill themselves to join the rail industry. It will also serve as a research and development centre for rail engineering.

To facilitate the academy’s work, the LTA signed two agreements yesterday.

The first, with the Employment and Employability Institute, aims to attract, develop and retain the local rail industry workforce.

The second, with SIT and the International Council on Systems Engineering, aims to provide pre-employment training as well as continuing education and training programmes in systems engineering.

The academy has also started to develop a programme to help new and mid-career entrants to the industry develop their technical skills and expose them to functional areas such as design and planning.

This article was first published on Feb 24 , 2017.
Get The New Paper for more stories.

Singapore is expanding its rail network and engineers will be needed to maintain the trains and keep them running smoothly.

The 15,000 figure is an increase of about 60 per cent from the current 9,300 engineers employed by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the two rail operators, SMRT and SBS Transit.

Mr Khaw was speaking at the launch of the Singapore Rail Academy (SGRA) at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) at Dover Drive.

He spoke about the challenges faced by engineers in building Singapore’s rail network.

Read also: More fires caused by charging e-bikes, power banks: 4 such incidents

By 2030, the network will be 360km long, reaching a rail density that is similar to London and New York today. But the two cities built their rail networks over 100 years while Singapore is building its network in less than half the time.

Mr Khaw said that even as the network expands, the operators are working hard to improve the reliability of the rail system to become among the best in the world. To reach the two goals of rail expansion and rail reliability, Singapore has to grow the pool of engineering expertise, he noted.

Mr Khaw added: “This makes the rail industry a growth industry, whose employment prospects are almost guaranteed in the next decade.”

He noted that the role of rail engineers has become more complex over the years, and the academy will help train a new generation of rail engineers.

The academy will allow aspiring engineers and technicians to upgrade and re-skill themselves to join the rail industry. It will also serve as a research and development centre for rail engineering.

Read also: 2017’s most and least stressful jobs

To facilitate the academy’s work, the LTA signed two agreements yesterday.

The first, with the Employment and Employability Institute, aims to attract, develop and retain the local rail industry workforce.

The second, with SIT and the International Council on Systems Engineering, aims to provide pre-employment training as well as continuing education and training programmes in systems engineering.

The academy has also started to develop a programme to help new and mid-career entrants to the industry develop their technical skills and expose them to functional areas such as design and planning.

This article was first published on Feb 24 , 2017.
Get The New Paper for more stories.

SINGAPORE – Yesterday’s fire at ECO Special Waste Management at 23 Tuas View Circuit was the largest industrial fire this year.

Workplace safety consultant Lee Wee Kiat said asbestos, which the company handles, is highly toxic and carcinogenic in the long term.

Read also: Monster blaze put out in 4 hours

Mr Lee said: “If it was burnt in the fire, it would create a dangerous atmospheric hazard for the people around it.”

There were 159 industrial fires last year, according to the latest Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) Fire Incident Statistics Report. That represents 31.4 per cent of the total fires in non-residential premises. There were 158 industrial fires in 2015.

JURONG ISLAND FIRE

One of the biggest fires last year was at a petrochemical facility on Jurong Island when an oil tank caught fire in April.

There were no casualties but the fire raged on for five hours before it was put out by 150 SCDF personnel.

Read also: Video of explosion in Tuas? No, this clip has been around since 2015

In Oct 2015, Leeden National Oxygen chemist Krysten Lim Siaw Chian, 30, died in a blaze at the gas manufacturing firm in Tanjong Kling Road in Jurong.

This article by The Straits Times was published in The New Paper, a free newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings.

SINGAPORE – He left his dormitory in Tuas South at about 5.30am yesterday to catch the 6.15am bus to work.

As he reached the bus stop behind ECO Special Waste Management at about 5.50am, safety coordinator Periyasamy Manikandam, 34, saw thick clouds of smoke and flames engulfing the premises at 23 Tuas View Circuit.

He said: “The explosions were so loud. It sounded like an air-strike and I thought there were bombs. I’ve worked in Singapore for 14 years and I’ve never seen something like this before.”

Mr Manikandam said there were some 25 people waiting at the bus stop, and they were taking photos and videos of the fire.

He added: “I didn’t dare stand with them. After I realised there was a fire, I crossed the road to get further away.

“The bus arrived, and the driver shouted at us to quickly get on.”

The fire also affected other companies in the area.

Read also: Video of explosion in Tuas? No, this clip has been around since 2015

A Malaysian, who wanted to be known only as Mr Zam, works at Container Connections across the road. He wakes up at 6am every day to ride his motorcycle down from Malaysia, and has friends at ECO Special Waste Management.

Mr Zam said: “My supervisor told me we couldn’t work and they were all waiting at the canteen for the road to clear.”

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was alerted at 6.15am and sent 200 personnel to the scene along with 38 emergency vehicles, including three unmanned firefighting machines.

SCDF said the premises, which measure about 200m by 200m, were fully engulfed in flames. Explosions rocked the area and SCDF also applied foam to suppress the fire in the drains nearby.

Tuas South Avenue 3 and Tuas View Crescent were closed, and police advised the public to stay away because of hazardous fumes.

The fire was extinguished after four hours and one firefighter was taken to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital with heat exhaustion.

There were no other casualties.

In a Facebook post last night, Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam praised the SCDF officers for doing “extremely well, in fighting and controlling the fire”.

In 2012, waste materials at an incinerator plant in Tuas View Crescent owned by ECO Special Waste Management caught fire, but that fire was contained in half an hour.

The home-grown company is licensed by the National Environment Agency as a toxic industrial waste collector, a general waste collector and an asbestos removal contractor.

Its Tuas sludge incineration plant is a first in Singapore and also in South-east Asia. It provides services to industrial and commercial customers from the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, semiconductor and other industries, and has more than 2,000 customers, its website said.

Its chief executive officer Rick Reidinger told The Straits Times that 20 workers at the plant were evacuated and no one was hurt.

He said: “We are still doing an investigation as to the exact source, but the important thing is that nobody is hurt.”

This article was first published on Feb 24, 2017.
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