If only there’s something that can truly showcase the Singaporean facet of being puritanically penny-pinching. Something that reveals just how tremendously cheap and calculative some of us can be.
Ah, here’s one. Naturally, we found it on a Singaporean boomer-frequented portal on Facebook: the Complaint Singapore page.
A fastidious Facebook user who goes by the name of Raven Qiu felt the need to share online about how he felt utterly grifted by the NTUC FairPrice supermarket chain. How so? Why, none other than the felony of only having seven sheets of wipes — instead of the explicitly stated 10 — in a house-brand packet of facial tissues.
Judging from Raven’s tone, this pretty much should be considered a serious crime. “Be careful… what you buy (at a) discounted price, (you) might be getting short-changed as well,” he concluded in his now-viral video.
SINGAPORE – Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao has opened its first store in South-east Asia, in Funan mall, to cater to rising demand for its home furniture goods.
Called Taobao Store by Virmall, the shop is a partnership between Taobao and Virmall, a local firm that helps to curate and bring in products from merchants on Taobao.
Opened on Wednesday (Sept 4), the shop offers more than 300 products from furniture to kitchen appliances and clothes. About 80 per cent of the items are from the home and living category, the fastest-growing category in Singapore on Taobao.
The 6,000 sq ft store on Basement Two of Funan mall is about 10 times larger than Taobao’s previous six-month pop-up at multi-label concept store NomadX in Plaza Singapura.
The opening of the Taobao store comes as competition in the e-commerce marketplace heats up, with home-grown shopping platform Shopee opening its new regional headquarters in Kent Ridge on Tuesday.
Taobao, which is under tech giant Alibaba, declined to reveal the revenue generated in Singapore in past years.
There are Taobao stores, such as pop-ups, in other countries.
A Singaporean is feared to be among the 34 people killed in a raging fire on a dive vessel off Santa Barbara in California.
Mr Sunil Singh Sandhu, 47, who had lived and worked in the United States for more than two decades, took up scuba diving only recently, his family in Singapore said yesterday.
His father, Mr Sojit Singh, 77, told The New Paper that his heart sank when he heard the news that his son was believed to be one of the victims.
The retiree, who has two daughters, said over the phone: “My mind went blank. I thought this was a hoax. My whole life is gone. I can never find another boy like him.
“I never had to worry about my son. He was a nice boy who had no bad habits. The only thing that I worried about was him not being married.”
The fire broke out on the 23m-long Conception at 3.15am (6.15pm Singapore time) on Monday as it was moored off Santa Cruz Island.
It was reported to be one of California’s worst maritime disasters in decades.
The Conception had sailed for the Channel Islands in California on Saturday morning.
The passengers, who were below deck, were all believed to have died.
SINGAPORE: Ms Tan Wei, one of two Singaporeans who were on board a boat that caught fire and sank off the coast of California, comes from a family of avid divers, her sister told CNA.
Dive boat Conception sank off Santa Cruz Island after flames erupted suddenly early Monday morning (Sep 2). By Wednesday, the bodies of all but one of the 34 victims aboard the 23m vessel had been recovered.
Ms Cheerin Tan, 29, told CNA that her family did not know if her sister was one of the 33 bodies found.
“But we have confirmation that her name is on the manifest so our family has accepted it. We are all avid divers and we know the outcome when such accidents happen,” she said.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Cheerin announced the death of her sister and said that her elder brother, Sejay Tan, was in Santa Barbara to handle the paperwork and arrangements.
Mr Tan has sent in a DNA sample to help authorities identify the victims, and is currently waiting for the results.
AVID DIVERS
The Tan family are no strangers to diving.
“She’s the most active one in the family and insisted on going diving when she was 10. So we did an adventure dive together as a family at Tioman,” Cheerin said.
Tan Wei later got her diving licence with brother Sejay when she was 17.
She went to River Valley High School before moving to the US in 2012, where she studied chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, which her siblings also attended.
After graduation, she worked as a consultant for two years, before doing her master’s degree at UC Berkeley.
Tan Wei graduated earlier this year and moved to Santa Barbara in June, where she started working as a data scientist.
According to Cheerin, Tan Wei was very excited about the diving trip and wanted to explore the area.
“She’s extremely close to her family, and WhatsApps us very often. So when we realised that our messages weren’t sending out we sensed something amiss,” said Cheerin. “I was texting her just the night before the accident.
“She really enjoys outdoor sports so it’s at least comforting to know that she was doing something she loved in the last few moments of her life.”
Cheerin told CNA that some of Tan Wei’s friends in the US would be flying over to Santa Barbara for a memorial on Saturday, while their parents find a resting place for her and make arrangements for Sejay to bring her back.
“She’s a very, very sweet girl who’s like a little bright star amongst her friends. Bursting with energy and joy,” said her sister.
“ALWAYS SMILING”
The other Singaporean on the boat, Mr Sunil, is a research scientist who has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
He had picked up scuba diving only two months ago, reported The New Paper.
“My son had a beautiful character. He was always smiling and never short-tempered. That is how I will always remember him,” his father Soljit Singh told TNP.
Authorities have not released the names of the victims but more details have emerged about them in the days since the fire.
The 34 victims, including passengers and one crew member, were sleeping below deck. Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has said the two exits, a stairway to the galley and an escape hatch may have both been blocked by fire.
The aftermath of the blaze onboard the Conception diving boat on Sep 3, 2019. (Photo: Facebook/Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office)
A family of five, a teacher and his daughter, and a diving instructor and marine biologist were among those believed to have died, according to local media.
Also killed were Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz, a couple from Arizona who were passionate about diving and “died doing something that they loved together,” Baltz’s father John told local media.
Another victim was marine biologist Kristy Finstad, 41, who was leading the dive trip and co-owned Worldwide Diving Adventures that chartered the boat for a three-day excursion.
The only survivors of the accident, the captain and four crew members, were on deck when the flames erupted shortly after 3am Pacific time and were able to escape in an inflatable life boat, investigators said.
SINGAPORE – The countdown to the general election has officially begun, with the setting up of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC).
The committee is tasked with drawing up the electoral divisions, and sets the stage for the election.
As there is no requirement for the Prime Minister to announce the formation of the committee, MPs – particularly opposition MPs – have taken to filing parliamentary questions about it.
The most recent was in July when Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh asked Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong if the committee had been set up. Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing, replying on PM Lee’s behalf, said the committee had not been appointed yet.
But there had been signs the committee was in the offing.
First, the voter rolls were certified in April. This usually happens before the committee is set up to ensure it has the latest population numbers when deliberating on the boundaries of the constituencies.
Second, the boundaries of polling districts were changed and gazetted in March. This was done to ensure no polling station handled too many or too few voters.
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mm2 Asia, which operates AsiaOne, is now accepting applications for apprentices under the Story Lab Apprenticeship (SLA) programme, an initiative developed by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
As part of the initiative, IMDA has partnered with mm2 Asia and other leading media companies to train fresh media professionals and create more “made-with-Singapore” content for the world.
Through an immersive 12-month-long programme and on-the-job learning, these apprentices will gain valuable exposure and experience in the media industry as well as grow their skill sets.
WHAT TO EXPECT AT ASIAONE
Apprentices will kickstart their careers at one of Singapore’s leading digital news portals.
The man who caused a stir on social media by allegedly uploading pictures of himself sniffing female undergarments has been remanded at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).
Lim Wei Ming, 34, appeared in court again yesterday after having first been charged with public nuisance last month.
He was arrested on Aug 16 after the police received numerous reports on the Instagram account the images were uploaded to and was subsequently hauled to court.
According to court documents, Lim is alleged to have caused annoyance by uploading photos of himself sniffing female undergarments and performing lewd acts at 9.20pm at the Choa Chu Kang area on Aug 15.
Let’s get this out of the way first — Huawei’s newly released phone is running on Android. Yes, the world’s No. 2 smartphone maker might not be able to promise licensed Google apps (like Gmail, Maps, YouTube) for its upcoming Mate 30 flagship, but you’ll face no such issues with the Nova 5T.
The Chinese tech firm today (Sept 5) launched the latest iteration of its Nova series, which according to the marketing spiel, is considered a “junior flagship” phone, sitting somewhere between midrange and premium.
Further PR rigmarole reveals that the Nova 5T is “emblematic of modern living” thanks to Huawei pushing the “boundaries of style and functionality” with an “avant-garde, fashionable, and idiosyncratic” device designed for the youth market.
New research has found that getting the right amount of sleep may help reduce your risk of a heart attack, even if you have a genetic predisposition to heart disease.
Carried out by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder along with co-authors at the Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, and the University of Manchester, UK, the new study looked at 461,347 individuals age 40 to 69 who had never had a heart attack and who were taking part in UK Biobank, a large long-term study which includes genomic data on more than half a million UK residents.
The researchers analysed the participants’ self-reported sleep habits and medical records and also looked at their genetic information to determine whether those who were genetically predisposed to short sleep were also more likely to have heart attacks.
To make their analysis they used a method called Mendelian randomization, which involves studying genetic variants to see whether certain factors are associated with a higher or lower risk of disease. As it gives more reliable results, any associations found are more likely to suggest a direct relationship.
