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Catholics commemorated Good Friday yesterday, a solemn day in honour of Jesus’ crucifixion and death.
The New Paper visited St Joseph Church in Upper Bukit Timah Road at about 10.30am to observe the occasion.
Even with half an hour to go before the mass, the hall was packed with hundreds of parishioners. Some had to stand outside in the sun and heat.
Many went through an outdoor procession called the Stations of the Cross to remember Jesus’ trials and final journey before his death.
Each of the 14 stations had a life-size sculpture inspired by the set of bronze Stations of the Cross found in Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage site in France. They are located along a footpath around the church.
STARTING POINT
Believers were seen walking from the first station – depicting Jesus’ death sentence for claiming to be the Son of God – to the last, where his body was placed in a tomb.
Mr Marvin Ocampo, 40, a construction coordinator, told TNP that he and his family were from the Church of St Mary of the Angels in Bukit Batok, but would visit St Joseph Church on Good Friday.
He pointed to the sculptures while carrying his daughter and said: “The visual representation is meaningful and it helps the children understand better.”
The sermon was observed with worship, prayer and the singing of hymns by hundreds of churchgoers.
Mr Ocampo said Good Friday was a day of penance and a reminder to give thanks.
That sentiment was shared by another churchgoer, Mr Charles Susay, 41, who is between jobs.
He said that he, his wife and three-year-old son would abstain from meat for 40 days – during a period called Lent – leading up to tomorrow’s Easter Sunday, which marks the day Christians celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.
“It’s a time where we lead a quieter, more humble life and reflect,” he said.
This article was first published on March 26, 2016.
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A teenage volleyball player in China gave birth to a baby in a gymnasium toilet before leaving the girl in some bushes and returning to her tournament, state-run media reported Friday.
The girl went into labour while filming a match at the national under-18s women’s volleyball championship in Changxing city in the eastern province of Zhejiang on Wednesday, the Hangzhou Daily said.
She gave birth alone in the toilet before placing the baby in the bushes near the gymnasium “out of fear”, the report said, then went back inside to continue recording the match.
The infant was discovered by a passerby, who followed a trail of blood on the ground to find the mother, the report said.
“She was resting near the courtside,” the website of the People’s Daily quoted the passerby, surnamed Wang, as saying.
“She looked fine after giving birth. I assumed that she must have a strong body to give birth to a baby during the match.”
The newborn and the mother were rushed to hospital for treatment, it added. Both were safe.
Chinese babies born out of wedlock are sometimes abandoned because of social and financial pressures. The country’s family-planning policy can mean heavy fines for couples who have more than two babies.
A newborn was rescued from a toilet sewage pipe on Sunday in Xinping county, in the southwestern province of Yunnan, according to a website run by the fire department of China’s public security ministry.
It took firefighters nearly three hours to take the pipe apart, piece by piece, in order to pull the baby out, said the report.
It did not state whether the baby — whose gender was not given — was thought to have ended up in the pipe deliberately or by accident, or mention its mother.
Local officials told AFP they were not aware of the case.
In 2013, a baby boy was also saved from a sewage pipe after his 22-year-old unmarried mother gave birth unexpectedly as she used a squat toilet.
Seoul – North Korea released a new propaganda video Saturday menacingly titled “Last Chance”, showing a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington and concluding with the US flag in flames.
The four-minute video romps through the history of US-Korean relations and ends with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a missile surging through clouds, swerving back to the earth and slamming into the road in front of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial.
The US Capitol building explodes in the impact and a message flashes up on the screen in Korean: “If US imperialists budge an inch toward us, we will immediately hit them with nuclear (weapons).”
The video was published on the North’s propaganda website DPRK Today and shows images from the Korean War, the capture of US spy ship Pueblo in 1968 and the first crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programme in the early 1990s.
Pyongyang has upped the rhetorical ante in recent weeks, with near daily threats of nuclear and conventional strikes against the South and the US mainland in response to large-scale South-US war games.
The threats have turned increasingly personal, and North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un on Friday watched a live-fire long-range artillery drill simulating a strike on the official residence of his South Korean counterpart.
Tensions between the two Koreas been on the rise since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, and a satellite rocket launch a month later that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.
North Korea has been pushing to acquire submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability which would take its nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.
The North has conducted a number of what it says were successful tests of a SLBM.
But experts have questioned the veracity of those tests, suggesting Pyongyang had gone little further than a “pop-up” test from a submerged platform.
The 63 men and 19 women arrested in Geylang are under investigation for various offences, says the Singapore Police Force.
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In the case of Mr Douglas Gan, 33, it was his mother who stood by him through thick and thin.
She provided the capital for his second business when he was broke, lovingly prepared food for him and his staff, and even went to court to handle a dispute for him.
Mr Gan smiled and said: “She was very supportive. She always told me to focus and do something I loved.
“She said if I loved it, I would excel in it.”
He was only 18 and still studying at Ngee Ann Polytechnic when he wanted to start a hosting company for Internet services.
Instead of objecting to her son’s plan, Madam Mary Jane Tan, 57, an insurance agent, started the company in her name.
Mr Gan graduated with a diploma in information technology and started a University of London Economics and Management course at the Singapore Institute of Management.
But when he decided to quit after one semester, Madam Tan supported his decision to become an entrepreneur.
She also helped him when he ran into trouble – a lawsuit was filed against Mr Gan after a dispute with a client.
As they could not afford a lawyer, Madam Tan, who was the sole breadwinner for their family, ended up representing the company herself.
Mr Gan said his father was unemployed at the time and was kept in the dark about the lawsuit.
As Mr Gan was serving his national service then, Madam Tan did not want to worry him. He found out that she represented the company in court only after he booked out. “Thankfully, we won the lawsuit,” Madam Tan said with a laugh.
By 2007, Mr Gan had become a millionaire at the tender age of 23 after selling two companies to investors and dabbling in the stock market.
But later that year, the market fell and Mr Gan panicked.
“I sold everything,” he said. “That turned out to be a terrible mistake as half an hour later, everything went back. I lost everything.”
Once again, his mother was there to help him.
Madam Tan said: “After the loss, he took me to the bank.
“He told me to help him take charge of his expenses and only give him pocket money of $200 each month.
“He gave me his savings book and ATM card. He didn’t even know his PIN. He told me he didn’t need to know.”
Madam Tan took $7,000 from her savings and lent it to her son, who went to Indonesia to kick-start Shownearby, a location-based mobile app that informs users about the amenities near them.
Once again, her help did not stop there and she got an accountant friend to teach her the ropes.
Mr Gan said: “She became my admin assistant and my accountant. She was with me every step of the way.”
Madam Tan also cooked and cleaned for his team after Mr Gan moved his office back to Singapore from Indonesia.
Madam Tan said: “Their office had a kitchen, so whenever I had time, I would cook for them.
“I started when they only had four people, all the way till there were about 20.
“If I couldn’t clean his office on weekdays, I would go down during the weekend. I went almost every day, unless I was overseas.
“I got mattresses and set up rooms for them to rest as they would sometimes work until the morning.”
Their hard work eventually paid off. Shownearby grew in popularity, topping the Android charts for free apps in Singapore in 2010.
It was acquired by Yellow Pages later that year.
Today, Mr Gan runs Vanitee, a beauty-service booking app that provides a platform for independent beauty artists to find customers.
He co-founded company with sister
He was offered a place to study mass communication at Nanyang Technological University.
But he turned it down as he wanted to focus on his business.
Mr Wayne Goh, 24, told The New Paper: “I applied because I wanted to keep my options open. But in the end, I thought I could make better use of those four years.
“At that point of time, my company was struggling to keep up. I felt my company needed me more than I needed the university.”
Mr Goh and his sister, Miss Goh Yiping, 34, are co-founders of AllDealsAsia. The website aggregates deals and discounts in South-east Asia, from household items and stationery to apparel and beauty services.
It was founded in 2010, when Mr Goh was still a final-year accountancy student in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
On their inspiration to start the business, Mr Goh said: “At the time, there were about 20 to 40 daily deal sites that came out weekly.
“We thought visiting multiple sites to find the best deal was too time-consuming, so we aggregated the deals from these sites and compiled them.”
Mr Goh said their website, which has about 500,000 subscribers, handles over a million dollars’ worth of transactions each month.
It is currently in the midst of being acquired by the Lippo Group, an Indonesian business conglomerate.
Mr Goh said he thinks he and his sister complement each other well in running the business from their office near Lavender.
He said: “We both have different areas of strength. She’s good at building relationships, so she does external liaising with new partners and gets new investments for the company. I’m good with the internal stuff.”
GO-GETTERS
Miss Goh agreed, saying: “We’re both go-getters, but he’s more of an internal hustler while I’m more of an external hustler.”
She said: “It feels like he has been an entrepreneur for many years.
“He’s someone who is much wiser and more mature than his age. He’s very logical and makes very professional decisions.”
While conflicts between partners are inevitable in the business world, Miss Goh said the pair, who have another brother, have hardly ever fought.
She said: “There were definitely times when we disagreed, but we believe that everyone should be entitled to their own opinion.
“Our relationship is a lot about having discussions. Even at home, we believe we don’t have to win every conversation or argument.”
He didn’t want to burden grandmother
He wanted to spare his grandmother further financial hardship.
Instead of treading the usual path, Mr Alvin Yap decided to start his own company when he was a final-year student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
“I come from a humble family background,” said the 30-year-old.
His divorced parents had left him in the care of his paternal grandmother when he was just a baby.
Mr Yap said: “My grandmother was the one who raised me.
“She had to take on odd jobs to support us. She would rent out rooms, take care of children as a nanny and clean offices.
“We had to be frugal. That was why I started work when I was very young. I wanted to provide for myself – I didn’t want to burden her.
“That was also why I chose to go to a polytechnic. If I went to university, it would have delayed my ability to generate income for a few more years.”
Mr Yap, who was pursuing a diploma in business studies, was on a school trip to China when he met several companies. They shared with him the idea of selling customised covers for laptops and mobile phones.
CONCEPT
Inspired, he brought the concept back to Singapore and started his own printing service, producing covers with customers’ faces on them.
Mr Yap skipped school to tend to his business during his final semester, but his lecturers were understanding. They gave him an exemption and used his business to grade a part of his module.
Mr Leow Teck Sim, 43, one of his lecturers, said: “He was very resourceful, tactful and managed to convince his customers… I think I gave him an A.”
Mr Leow added: “Alvin is someone I have high regard for because he’s a ‘never-say-die’ person.
“When it comes to entrepreneurship, I would give him 99.9 points.”
Mr Leow’s confidence in his student was not misplaced.
Last year, Mr Yap founded Laku6, an online business based in Indonesia that sells certified used phones.
Today, his company enjoys immense success, having raised about half a million dollars worth of investments in less than a year.
Mr Yap had some advice for young entrepreneurs with dreams of becoming their own boss.
He said: “Think big and start small. Doing your own business is so hard that it’s not worth it if the idea is not big.
“Always aim to change to world. That way, you can attract the best people to work with you.”
This article was first published on March 26, 2016.
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March 26, 2016 1:06 PM
SINGAPORE -Stringent safety measures will be imposed as work starts on the new Canberra MRT station on the North-South Line (NSL), the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said on Saturday (March 26).
Spending time driving might be a given for car owners, but motorists here spent a great deal more time on the road than doing other activities such as shopping and being with friends, a survey has found.
Compiled by research agency 2CV and motor insurance company DirectAsia, the survey found that Singaporeans spent an average of nine hours a week in their cars.
This exceeds the roughly five hours a week spent on the road by United States drivers, according to poll findings released by a traffic safety research body last year.
The Singapore survey polled 506 drivers here aged 18 to 55 in January and its findings were released earlier this month.
When asked about the activities they spent more than five hours a week on, 77 per cent chose driving, the most common response.
This was followed by other pastimes such as meeting friends (64 per cent), shopping (51 per cent) and cooking (49 per cent).
Almost half of the respondents said driving allowed them to bond with their passengers. Half of this group were drivers aged 35 to 50, who saw car journeys as an opportunity for family bonding.
Part-time legal counsel Yap Su Ling, 48, said: “Because we are all in the same space physically, the extra time together with my girls in the car is guaranteed from the moment I pick them up to the time I drop them off.”
Ms Yap spends about 15 hours a week ferrying her two daughters, aged 16 and 14, to and from school and other events.
“When I pick them up, the day’s events are fresh and I get to hear much more than if I were to ask them later at dinner time, when they are less inclined to share,” she said.
Shipping executive Peter Leong, 63, who has also been ferrying his daughter Michelle, 22, around from the time when she was born, said: “I try to find topics to talk about with her, whether it’s schoolwork or friends, and I also talk to my wife when we are in the car together.”
He added that he will make it a point to communicate with his passengers while driving, “otherwise the ride would be very sombre”.
The survey also found that one in four drivers could not live without his car despite the high cost of owning one. Many drivers The Straits Times spoke to said that this was because of their daily needs.
Said Nanyang Technological University undergraduate and start-up founder Jeremy Lim, 27: “I always have to shuttle between school and my workplace. Plus I need to travel all over Singapore for my job, so (doing so with) a car is only logical.”
For insurance broker Dominic Chee, 26, it is also about accessibility. “If I want to watch a movie past midnight, for example, I may not be able to get public transport after that, so I need a car,” he said.
But apart from necessity, 40 per cent of those polled said they also enjoyed going for a spin without a particular destination in mind.
A quarter of respondents said that driving helped them to de-stress – a sentiment expressed especially among younger drivers.
“I find it relaxing just to go on a drive with my friends, sing at the top of our lungs and unwind,” said marketing director Jessica Nasr, 28.
chiaytr@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on March 26, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.
Ninety-seven charities deregistered between 2010 and 2014 – almost a third of the number that registered in the same period, the Office of the Commissioner of Charities (COC) has told The Straits Times.
Some found it difficult to attract staff, volunteers or donations and ceased operations as a result, while others subsumed their operations under their parent entity or merged with another charity.
Others changed their objectives and were no longer exclusively charitable, so they did not comply with registration requirements.
The latest to close is Sanctuary House, which provides foster care to abused children and babies. It will soon apply to deregister as a charity.
Deregistering means charities no longer enjoy the income tax and property benefits that registered charities do. Data for last year is not available yet, the COC office said.
Some 307 charities registered between 2010 and 2014, and Mr Gerard Ee, chairman of the Charity Council, said the 97 that deregistered was a small number compared to the number of charities in existence here – more than 2,000.
He said: “The new charities registered show that people are still interested to start a charity to serve a cause and civil society is still alive.
“But some charities are unable to attract support and find it unsustainable and give up after a while.”
Among those that deregistered were the Awwa Community Home for Senior Citizens, Tanjong Pagar Family Service Centre and Henderson Senior Citizens’ Home.
Now called Henderson Home, the latter was run by the Chinese Women’s Association (CWA) for 32 years but its president, Mrs Betty Chen, 89, was struggling to cope. “It’s a big job to run the home and it’s exhausting,” she said. “I was getting old and none of my board members wanted to take over the leadership.”
CWA handed over management of the home for destitute seniors to NTUC Health. The social enterprise took over officially in 2010.
Another group, Awwa, deregistered two of its charities about five years ago. The Awwa Community Home for Senior Citizens and Asian Women’s Welfare Association Welfare Fund, its fund-raising arm, were streamlined into the main body, Awwa. Both are still in operation.
Awwa’s chief executive Tim Oei said that previously, the home, welfare fund and Awwa submitted separate sets of accounts to the commissioner. But now that they come under one registered charity, it submits one consolidated set of accounts for all its services and programmes.
He said: “This saves us time and effort administratively. Besides, this does not confuse the public that we are three different charities. We are just one charity, running different programmes.”
The 11 charities under the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society, such as the Moral Home for Disabled Adults, MacPherson Moral Family Service Centre and Tanjong Pagar Family Service Centre, deregistered in 2013 and 2014. They are still in operation but were restructured into a single charity called the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities. This was done to promote a higher level of governance, among other objectives.
Mr Ee said that by consolidating the services and centres under the parent body, there is one management board to lead the charity, instead of separate boards. This helps to ensure better oversight of operations and more consistent governance practices and standards.
As of end-2014, there were 2,180 registered charities. Close to half are religious groups. The rest include charities providing social services, healthcare and education.
theresat@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on March 26, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.
March 26, 2016 12:39 PM
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