Charles & Keith warehouse sale at Tai Seng HQ (2 – 5 Jun)
Charles & Keith & Pedro Warehouse Sale Up To 70% Off from 2 – 5 Jun 2016 | SINGPromos.com
Charles & Keith and Pedro will be having their Warehouse Sale from 2 June to 5 June 2016. The sale will be held at Charles & Keith Group Headquarters (6 Tai Seng Link).
The Palme d’Or has been handed to Ken Loach for I, Daniel Blake, drawing the festival to a close. But what lessons can we take from the whole 12-day circus? Matthew Anderson offers some thoughts.
1. Terrorism has given France the jitters
A squad of bored-looking soldiers with enormous guns was on hand to greet excited festival-goers touching down at Nice Airport, an ominous sign that this year security would be both tight and tiresome.
France’s official terror threat level is still ‘extremely high’ following the November attacks on Paris, and France’s interior ministry and the festival’s organisers were taking no risks.
A few weeks beforehand, they simulated a terrorist atrocity in a drill that tested the responses of police, military, firefighters and medical staff. The dramatic scenes would not have looked out of place in a Hollywood action blockbuster.
Thank goodness the festival itself passed off without incident: bag searches, security wands and confiscated liquids were the worst we had to deal with.
2. A shadow still hangs over Woody Allen
There was however, one incendiary device lobbed in the festival’s direction when, writing in the Hollywood Reporter, Woody Allen’s estranged son Ronan Farrow once again raised allegations of sexual abuse against the film-maker by his daughter Dylan.
There was a conspiracy of silence and a culture of acquiescence from the media, he claimed.
Allen’s latest film Cafe Society was the festival’s curtain-raiser and at the opening ceremony, MC Laurent Lafitte addressed a joke to the 79-year-old director: “It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the US.”
The comment caused a minor sensation among journalists gagging for some controversy, but the general consensus was that it was simply ill-advised and in poor taste.
It’s very difficult to be funny about rape – and we shall return to this subject later.
Read the full article here
Local singer Ferlyn Wong struggled for years to come to terms with the fact that she had depression.
All the raw emotions the 24-year-old experienced will be reflected in a 10-minute short film.
Titled Left Behind, it was produced by her independent record label GIF Music, with support from the Institute of Mental Health.
Wong is best known as a former member of K-pop girl group SKarf, which has been inactive since 2013.
According to Wong, it was a no-brainer that her company, which she co-founded in November with two partners, would focus on depression for its first corporate social responsibility video project.
“Depression is a topic I can relate to as I suffered two bouts in real life,” she told The New Paper in a phone interview last week.
“I think there is a kind of stigma in showbiz. It’s, like, if you’re an entertainer, you’re supposed to be a role model and be happy all the time.
“But entertainers are human beings too. By doing the short film, I want to tell people that it’s okay to admit to having depression and to stand up and seek help.”
PRESSURE
In Left Behind, which will be available on GIF Music’s YouTube channel next month, Wong plays a college student who crumbles under the constant pressure to succeed.
She will also be seen playing a supporting villainous role in the local cosplay-themed movie Young & Fabulous, which opens here today.
Wong suffered her first bout of depression in 2012, the year SKarf, which included another Singaporean, Natasha Low, debuted in South Korea.
She recalled: “The lifestyle there was overwhelming and I took diet pills to lose weight. (But they) had side effects. After taking them, I had severe mood swings. One moment, I’d be happy and the next, I’d be crying for no reason.
“I started seeing things too, and I’d have suicidal thoughts every other day.”
She added: “Back then, I wasn’t even aware of the changes in my emotional state. It was my (fellow SKarf) members who told me that for four months, I was ‘crazy and scary’.”
SKarf’s South Korean member JooA, 26, told TNP over e-mail: “After taking the pills for a prolonged period of time, Ferlyn started hallucinating.
“She would clean a spot on the wall continuously, insisting that it was very dirty when it was not.
“Also, she believed that drinking water made her fat. To see her suffering, it pained my heart.”
Wong said her second wave of depression, which happened in February, was brought on by “the accumulation of stress and the betrayal of a good friend”.
“I had insomnia and didn’t sleep for consecutive nights. And I couldn’t eat and had to force myself to eat a few mouthfuls of food a day,” she said.
Her manager, Ms Ice Poh, said Wong “looked like the walking dead” then.
Wong was candid when asked what she thought was the root cause of her depression, saying: “Fear of failure, insecurities, the constant feeling of not being good enough, and that whatever I do will never be enough. The lack of confidence in my self-worth.”
Acknowledging depression was the first step of Wong’s recovery.
Seeking clinical treatment was the second step and Wong admitted she was initially unreceptive to professional help.
“In the beginning, I didn’t want to seek (it) as I was embarrassed by myself for being so weak as a person,” she said.
“I don’t feel comfortable opening up to strangers. A part of me feared that they might leak information and that people might start spreading rumours about me without understanding the whole situation.”
During Wong’s second bout of depression, Ms Poh said Wong wanted only to stay in her room and it was with “much persuasion” that she slowly agreed to face her issues.
Wong said: “I hated myself for feeling that my life was meaningless, and that I wasn’t deserving of any good things.
“I could hear people trying to help me, but it just couldn’t register until I met a friend’s friend, who had a worse experience.
“She shared her (recovery) journey with me and from that point on, I started to be more receptive to external help.”
COUNSELLING
Wong has also been receiving weekly counselling at her church for about a month.
Ms Poh said: “Things are looking up. She is sleeping normally and she has regained her appetite.”
Wong is “determined” to make her second bout of depression her last.
“The counselling sessions have been really helpful. I’ve come to recognise my self-worth and to accept the past, be it good or bad experiences, and using my experiences to help others,” she said.
While her short film is fictional, it does parallel Wong’s real life – the ending of Left Behind features Wong’s character emerging from self-imposed isolation and finding the strength to tell a friend about her condition.
“I now believe that my life can be a testimony to others, to bring hope and positivity to society,” said Wong.
keeyunt@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on May 26, 2016.
Get The New Paper for more stories.
The national water agency said that it plans to install 30 to 40 monitoring wells – boreholes drilled into water bearing soil layers – at Jurong Island and at the Old Alluvium area in eastern Singapore, as well as insert sensors into the monitoring wells to track water level fluctuations.
Source link
Blogger Amos Yee turned up in court on Thursday (May 26) and was charged with eight new offences.
Yee, 17, faces five counts of offending…
Source link
Some residents in Chua Chu Kang have been reeling from the stench of hundreds of salted fish left out to dry at the bottom of a Housing Board flat.
The activity has been taking place once every two to three weeks since the start of the year at Block 433, Chua Chu Kang Avenue 4, according to a Lianhe Wanbao reader.
The Chinese evening daily said in a report yesterday that the fish were laid on the grass, along the drain or on the floor.
A resident, who gave her name as Madam Ye, told Wanbao: “This salted fish situation appeared some time around the start of the year. I don’t know which household needs so much salted fish.”
Madam Ye spoke to a woman who was laying the fish out to dry on Monday and who said she was a maid.
She apologised for any inconveniences and said she would inform her employer.
The domestic worker added that some neighbours had also told her about the smell, and were worried that the fish could attract flies or other insects and become a health hazard.
Some residents Wanbao spoke to found the smell unbearable but others felt it was not a “serious situation”.
Wanbao tracked down the person behind the salted fish – an owner of a dried goods stall who said he did not have enough space in his shop to carry out drying.
“These are imported frozen salted fish, which require thawing before selling.
“I used to dry them in my house but there wasn’t enough ventilation,” he added.
He had tried drying the fish on a parapet outside his flat but stopped as he was worried that they would fall on residents’ heads.
He said this was the first time he was hearing of such complaints and would think of a better way to dry his fish.
Get MyPaper for more stories.
SINGAPORE – Teen blogger Amos Yee has been charged in court for allegedly wounding the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians, and for allegedly failing to show up at Jurong Police Division on two occasions.
Yee, who faces eight charges, intends to…
Source link
Thirteen-year-old Siti Maryam says she suffers headaches and nausea after harvesting tobacco leaves with her bare hands during four years of working on her family’s farm in Indonesia.
Maryam, who is among the thousands of children a rights group says work in hazardous conditions on farms in the world’s fifth-biggest producer of tobacco, spoke to Reuters in a field near the east Java city of Probolinggo.
“I feel dizzy, get headaches and feel like vomiting,” said Maryam, listing symptoms that match a condition experts call acute nicotine poisoning, or “green tobacco sickness”.
Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for tobacco products, with about $16 billion of cigarettes sold last year in the country of 250 million, an increase of 13 per cent from 2014, says market research firm Euromonitor International.
But a lack of information leaves families oblivious to the risks their children face while working on tobacco farms, said Margaret Wurth, a researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Several big companies lack procedures to screen out tobacco that involves the effort of children working in hazardous conditions, the group said in a report on Wednesday.
“As a result, these companies risk contributing to the use of, and benefiting from, hazardous child labour,” it added.
The group interviewed 227 people, among them 132 children aged between 8 and 17, who said they worked on tobacco farms in four Indonesian provinces.
But the report risks generalizing the whole of Indonesia and some children do work in non-hazardous conditions on tobacco farms, the chairman of the Indonesian tobacco farmers’ association, Soeseno, told Reuters.
“The root of the problem is poverty in certain small villages,” he said.
Parents getting children to help is in line with cultural norms in some areas, Soeseno, who goes by one name, like many Indonesians, said by telephone.
Customers do not normally ask whether child labour is involved, said Suradi, a trader who buys tobacco from farmers in Probolinggo for resale.
“When I send the tobacco to the storehouse it only depends on the quality,” he told Reuters.
Human Rights Watch said it contacted some of the biggest companies operating in Indonesia, such as Philip Morris International Inc, Djarum Group and PT Gudang Garam Tbk.
Philip Morris welcomed the report, sustainability officer Miguel Coleta told Reuters, adding that the company sourced almost 70 per cent of its tobacco through direct contracts with Indonesian farmers, versus about 10 per cent four years ago.
But change requires many stakeholders to co-operate, including the Indonesian government, he added. “We are talking about a massive market, millions of people,” Coleta said in an interview. “It’s not something easy to reform overnight.”
Indonesian tobacco firms Djarum and Gudang Garam did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In the tobacco field in Probolinggo, a dozen children helped to sow seeds, earning about 10,000 to 15,000 rupiah ($0.73 to $1.10) for working seven hours a day.
“I work here just to help my parents and help to fulfil our needs,” said 15-year-old Waradatul Yaumi.
If you are into dressing up, you should catch Singapore’s first cosplay film. If not, you can always watch the local heart-throbs.
This coming-of-age flick centres on friendship, focusing on the trio of Royston Chio (Aloysius…
Source link
