Tag: Singapore

Murder At Geylang: Why Was Body Left In Open For So Long?

A 52-year-old coffeeshop helper, known as Niu-ge, was found dead after a fight at Lorong 23 Geylang yesterday at 8am.

Five hours later, his bloodied corpse, which had visible injuries to the face, was lying on the road and his head was resting on the kerb.

Witnesses say the body was initially covered with a white cloth and a blue tent.

But when The New Paper on Sunday (TNPS) arrived at the scene at 10.30am, the cloth had been removed.

In the suffocating heat, the body could be seen by anyone standing behind the police cordon, which was placed about 20m away.

Despite the gruesome sight, passers-by gawked. Many were snapping away with their mobile phones.

Scores of pictures were later uploaded on social media sites like Facebook.

OUTRAGE

This prolonged and open display, however, prompted outrage from Mr Niu-ge’s relative, a woman in her early 20s who arrived at 12.30pm.

“Why do you leave his body in the open, to be exposed to the sun?” Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao reported her as calling out to no one in particular.

Mr Niu-ge’s body was eventually removed at about 1.30pm.

There was a deep cut running from near his left ear to the top of his head.

The scene of the crime, next to a crowded coffee shop, was spattered with blood.

Mr Niu-ge’s final moments were witnessed by a cabby, who wanted to be known only as Mr Zhang, 64.

He told TNPS: “He was wearing red, and there was so much blood that I couldn’t tell if it was his clothes or the blood.

“He was also breathing very heavily. I couldn’t bear to look for too long, and I wouldn’t want to see it again.”

An expert familiar with crime scenes, who declined to be named, said it is rare for a corpse to be left uncovered for such a long time.

He said: “But the police have to conduct their investigation, no matter what.

“It is just unfortunate that the body was found on such a busy road, (and resulted in) so many people taking photos of the body (from behind) the police cordon.”

TNPS understands that Mr Niu-ge’s body was not covered so that the police forensics team could conduct their investigation.

Police officers were seen taking photos of the scene and the body.

Investigators also found several weapons, including a long wooden stick and a short knife, at the scene.

A visibly shocked coffeeshop assistant at Victoria Food Court in Lorong 23 witnessed the confrontation between the two men just before Mr Niu-ge collapsed.

The middle-aged woman, who declined to be named, said the attack happened a few metres outside the coffee shop at 8am.

She told TNPS in Mandarin: “I think there were two rounds of fighting because Niu-ge already had injuries at the back of his head when he was at the coffee shop.

“I only saw the second attack from behind and the attacker ran away in the direction of Lorong 21.”

She recognised the attacker, whom she said was a regular at the coffee shop who would order hot tea every morning.

She said: “He has messy hair and was a little crazy, always talking to himself. I tried to avoid him as much as possible.”

Mr Tan Zhi Jia, 32, an assistant at another coffee shop in Lorong 23, told TNPS there was closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of the victim at his coffee shop at about 7.45am.

He said: “He went to the kitchen to wash his hands, which had blood on them. He told my colleagues that he had fallen down.”

Workers at the coffee shops along Lorong 23 had contrasting impressions of the victim.

Ms Audrey Liang, 37, who sells tissue paper, said she heard he had a debt problem.

She said: “He was always alone and kept to himself. I heard that he was hot-tempered too.”

However, Mr Tan said Mr Niu-ge was chatty and friendly.

The Chinese national, who has been here for six years, said: “We would talk about Singapore, and he would tell me about his job.”

A police spokesman said they received a call asking for assistance at about 8am.

A man was found lying motionless on the ground. About 10 minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Police are investigating the unnatural death.

Anyone with information should call the police hotline at 1800-255-000 or submit the information online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness

All information will be kept strictly confidential.

Source: The New Paper

July 11, 2016
Govt To Keep Ability To Amend Constitution Without Vote: Shanmugam

With social spending set to increase to support a rapidly ageing population, the Government needs to preserve its ability to make the “necessary adjustments” to the Constitution to strengthen the revenue base and pay for the extra spending, said Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugam.

This is why the Government does not intend to bring into force Article 5(2A) of the Constitution, he said in response to a question raised by Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan yesterday.

The Article states that if Parliament wants to amend certain elements of the Constitution, including any provisions relating to the President’s powers, it must seek a national referendum and get the support of at least two-thirds of voters.

With healthcare spending alone likely to triple from S$4 billion in 2011 to about S$12 billion by 2020, Mr Shanmugan told Parliament that further refinements to both the tax system, as well as the basis on which the Government can draw on net investment returns for current spending, cannot be ruled out over the next five to 10 years.

“To bring Article 5(2A) into force before that would otherwise potentially trigger a national referendum each time we needed to make a further refinement or adjustment,” he said. “Our view is that we should give ourselves more time before entrenching the provisions.”

Source: TODAY Online

July 11, 2016
Ground-Up Initiative Founder: Take Ownership Of Choices, Don’t Blame Government

To some, Tay Lai Hock is a “hippie” who’s misleading the youth; to others, he is just one Singaporean who is promoting the philosophy of living in harmony with nature.

Tay is founder of the Ground-Up Initiative (GUI), a non-profit group that aims to reconnect city dwellers with the earth. The group’s 26,000sqm Kampung Kampus site in Khatib is designed as a low carbon footprint area featuring tropical sustainable architecture. Their idea is not only to enable people to be with nature, but also actively look after the space, get their hands dirty and in the process, learn how to take risks and be leaders – all while working as a team with a 21st century kampong spirit.

Previously a highly-paid IT executive, the SilkAir crash in 1997 prompted Tay to have a rethink of what he was doing with his life. He later quit his job, backpacked around the world, and then started GUI.

Debates over land use in Singapore and the loss of rustic spaces are issues which resonate with him. He went “On the Record” with Bharati Jagdish about this, values in an ideal society, and what it means to put your money where your mouth is. But first, he took on what it meant to be called a “hippie”.

Tay Lai Hock: Well, I always say that if I’m a hippie, then I’m a hippie who promotes free love, free play, free spirit, but I don’t talk about free drugs or free sex, things like these. What I’m trying to do is help Singaporeans free their minds.

So often, we hear people say that they are very stifled. They’re very caught up with all the day-to-day running around and making a living that they have forgotten how to live. What’s wrong with what I’m trying to do? I’m not against anything. I’m just not doing what the mainstream thinks everybody should be doing.

So I’m just providing an alternative platform for Singaporeans. So naturally, the government officials when they started to try and understand what I’m trying to do, they asked me about it. Of course, the more progressive ones, the more open-minded ones will think that I’m doing good. But there are people who said I’m misleading youth. That one really hurts me.

Bharati Jagdish: Are you at liberty to say who said this about you?

Tay: No, I don’t think I should.

Bharati: But it was a government official?

Tay: Of course. I had more than one government official telling me this.

Bharati: Why do you think they think this of you?

Tay: I don’t know. I was shocked, I was like “Why are you saying this? What have I done? What did I do wrong?” Fortunately, that was about three years ago. I was really upset that day. Why do they think I’m poisoning the minds of the young? What have I done wrong?

CREATING A CULTURE OF RISK-TAKING AND CREATIVITY

Bharati: To what extent do you think this is because in Singapore, we have a culture of focusing on certain things – academic success, material success, but what you’re trying to do is quite different?

Tay: We all know that we’re chasing the five Cs right? You’ve probably heard that I backpacked around the world for four years. And in the last year, the last few months of my travels, I was sitting in the Sahara Desert, and I was looking back at Singapore and I said, “Okay Lai Hock, you haven’t died yet, you did well in the last few years, so what are you going to do now?”

So I said, “I’m going back to Singapore.”

At that time, our Government released the Remaking Singapore blueprint. Two things caught my attention. The first thing was, we want to teach Singaporeans how to take risks. I thought, “Wow, how do you create that, how to do that when the whole environment doesn’t even promote risk-taking?” Of course compared to back then in the early 2000s, I think Singapore is doing better now.

If you read the press, if you interview our local institutions, they are promoting a lot of entrepreneurship. The Government is putting in a lot of money to promote all kinds of things. But in my opinion, a lot of people are only taking risks because there’s a lot of money being put into them.

The second thing they said was, “We want to teach Singaporeans how to be more creative.” But our definition of creativity is narrow. For people like me, I will never be classified as a creative person.

Bharati: Why not?

Tay: You must be an artist, you must be this, you must be that.

Bharati: Yeah, that’s the conventional definition of “creative”.

Tay: But my four years of travelling around the world living as a backpacker in so many countries made me have this confidence. I said, “I am a creative person. I’m living creatively.” Now creativity need not be confined to just an art skill, but if you’re able to live creatively, and that’s where you need to be that free spirit. You need to be able to freely conceive things and adapt along the way, and change if you need to change. And –

Bharati: Solve problems.

Tay: Solve problems and not be just “uhh.” So when I came back, I really wanted to do all these kinds of things. And of course it was five years later that I decided that I will start my own organisation.

Bharati: In your opinion, why do we lack a culture of risk-taking and creativity?

Tay: It’s recognised that we have a good government. And the people do look up to them. It’s either we’re too comfortable or everything has been too convenient. The other thing is the lesser emphasis on character building; everything is always about results. Also, the majority of our population is Chinese. Chinese traditionally have Confucian ethics. So maybe it’s in the Chinese blood to always to be a little bit more driven to study, right?

Bharati: Nothing wrong with studying.

Tay: Nothing wrong with studies, but traditionally studying means rote learning.

Bharati: It’s about how you study isn’t it?

Tay: Yeah, but I think our Education Ministry is one of the most progressive ministries. Almost every year, they will come up with new policies. But I think if you talk to any teachers enough, everybody is jaded. There’s a disconnect somewhere, and that’s the truth. I’m sure we all know that.

Bharati: What do you think needs to happen to bridge this disconnect?

Tay: I remember one Minister for Education who said that we must treat our students as clients. With this American philosophy of customer is king, suddenly a lot of parents started to behave like kings and started going to schools and making demands, and so I did tell the last Minister, who’s now the Minister for Finance –

Bharati: Mr Heng Swee Keat.

Tay: Yeah, I did tell him that; I’m glad that one day in the press it was reported that he said no to this. And I feel that we need to have a fine balance. So I’m not entirely sure that these are the reasons, but I think that our teachers are already under stress. And then they have added stress to deal with ugly parents. I’ve met some outstanding teachers, and they’re trying their best to do this, implement teaching to encourage creativity, for example.

But I think it has come to the point where a lot of them just do it for the sake of doing it. There are many things affecting our system here. The whole world is facing this – prevalent technology and the internet, but the things that anchor us as human beings are eroding.

I know our country is trying to bring back Character and Citizenship Education, but this is after 20 years of cutting that away. That’s why I’m trying to do what I’m doing, to first focus on you as a person, as a character, and asking you to understand your place on earth and in this world, and as a living person.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

July 10, 2016
6 Steps To Escape Living From Paycheck To Paycheck In Singapore

Living paycheck to paycheck is not only stressful – it’s dangerous. Here’s how to stop and turn your finances around.

If your paycheck seems to vanish as soon as it arrives, and you find yourself surviving on Maggi mee toward the end of the month – you have a problem. Specifically, you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

Not only is it stressful; it’s dangerous. A single emergency, such as retrenchment, will send you neck deep in debt. Here’s how to break the habit:

1. Always pay yourself first

Before you start spending your money, make sure 20 per cent goes into your savings. We know the CPF does this for you already, but you can’t take out your CPF money easily. It’s important to have an emergency fund that you can tap into when you need.

So the moment you get your pay, take 20 per cent and put it in a separate savings account. You’ll want to keep doing this until you accumulate six months worth of savings (however long that takes).

Having an emergency fund means you won’t need to resort to loans in a crisis. It also gives you the confidence to make critical decisions, such as switching jobs or starting up a small side-business.

2. Reduce your loan interest

If you find that almost all your money goes into repaying loans, it’s time to reduce the interest rates. One simple way to do this is to use a balance transfer to pay off a credit card completely, or to use a personal instalment loan to pay off higher interest debts.

For example: Say you owe $5,000 on a credit card, which has an interest rate of 24 per cent per annum. You could take a personal instalment loan for S$5,000, at just six per cent per annum. You then pay off the credit card with the personal loan. This would effectively reduce your interest rate from 24 per cent to just six per cent.

If you use a balance transfer, you might be able to get deals that reduce your debt to zero per cent interest for six months. This makes it considerably easier to pay off the amount owed. You should stop using a credit card or credit line after making a balance transfer to pay it off, or using a loan to do so.

3. Find an expense tracking method that works for you

What gets measured gets managed. If you track your expenses, you are less likely to overspend.

Here’s the tricky part: the same tracking method won’t work for everyone. For some of us, having an Excel spreadsheet does the trick; the rest of us need methods such as sticky notes or phone apps. Experiment with the methods available, from writing things down to using phone apps. Stick to the one that feels most intuitive.

This is the first step to developing a functional budget. Which leads to the next issue.

4. You need a budget, but forget the rigid methods

The easiest and most effective way to budget is to deduct 20 per cent of a particular expense. For example, if you spend S$1,200 a month on food, see if you can cut it down to S$960. Do this by setting aside $960 in your food budget, and then storing the excess S$240 in savings. You are free to spend the S$960 on food any way you choose – but when you run out, you’ve run out. No cheating and tapping your savings to pay for more. This method is usually more effective than trying to plan out the dollar value of each and every meal.

Because we are human beings and not companies, it is not natural for most of us to stick to corporate-style budgets, where the exact amount of each expense is predetermined.

Try to use this method for two or three categories in which you spend the most (e.g. food, travel, and clothes). If you fail to keep the budget in one, you may still succeed with the others.

5. Stop automating payments

If you have automated payments, such as for gym memberships, MMORPG subscriptions, or clubs, we suggest you cut them off. You should always be aware of what you’re paying, and how much you’re paying for them. This will remind you to stop forking out money for services or goods you don’t actually need.

On the other hand, you do want to automate your savings if possible. The reason your CPF seems so huge is because the 20 per cent is deducted for you – out of sight, out of mind.

6. Tighten your belt the first week you receive your pay

Make a pledge to do minimal to no shopping, on the very first week you receive your pay. The only thing you should do that week is transfer money into your savings account and repay any due debts. This will help to break the habit of overspending in the first week, and then needing loans or credit to get you through the rest of the month.

It will also prevent you from needing an advance, something that employers look on negatively as it affects their payment process.

7. Let someone else do the shopping

As a last resort, if you truly cannot control your spending, consider letting someone else do the shopping.

Get a spouse, parent, or close friend who is willing to help, and give them a fixed shopping list. Pass them the cash to do the shopping for you, so you don’t get tempted.

You can still indulge in the occasional bit of shopping. During the LAST week of the month, if you have a surplus, you may take the money and go shopping yourself. However, you should not bring any credit cards, lest you be tempted to rack up debt.

Source: http://business.asiaone.com

July 10, 2016
Thai Businessman: Forever Indebted To SMRT Taxi Driver Who Returned My $235,000

SMRT SHB1881L taxi uncle returns $235,500.00 to Thai businessman who left them in his taxi. Read what Mr Chukamon Khammat wrote to us which we reproduced every single grateful word that comes from his heart:

“I boarded this SMRT TAXI SHB1881L at clarke quay about 4am after a drinking seesions with some of my business partners and i am kind of drunk at that point of time. And has told the driver to go to Marina Bay Sand Tower 1 where i am staying currently. I safely reached but i forgotten my laptop bag,i immediately turns sober because that bag contains of CASH S$235,500.00 in it.

This money is given to me by investors in singapore for a business plans carried out in thailand. And i suppose to be remitting it today morning. My worries of my consequence of losing this money lead me to a breakdown and i cried in a totally lost manner in my suites.

My wife woke up in a shock as she sees me breakdowns.Upon knowing what happen she says gone…surely we need to bear this sum of money and we are dead because SGD $235k converted to thai baht is 6 million over . i suddenly say i think i go down to the taxi lobby to see if the taxi driver will deliver back the bag of mine..and my wife screamed at me saying “dun waste your time,its $235000 and not $23.50 ,if you are the driver will you return back the bag to the owner?” I kept quiet without a word but duno why my feeling tells me that i must go to the lobby to lookout for the taxi . But the problem i facing is actually i dun even remember the taxi number as i am totally drunk just now.

So my wife seeing the deep shit i have caused she got no choice but to followed me down to the lobby in a mindset that i am obviously wasting my time coming down to the lobby and i should think of alternative ways to raise this sum and we even think of mortgage our house at thailand and even sell off all our assets. But when the lift door open upon reaching lobby i saw a man coming in from the glass door panting and anxious going towards the reception and actually i dun recognise him but i recognise what he is holding onto. Its my laptop bag!

And i and my wife ran towards him and shouting for him and when he saw me he took a deep breath and says thank god…i found you sir…..at that time about nearly 5.00am we are like making a commotion in the lobby. I asked my wife bring up the bag and i urged the exinct kind hearted driver to wait as i need to buy him a drink and offer my appreciation .But we ended up with a short chat in my suites .the driver did not request for any monetary but only asked if i could give him a ice cold mineral water and my wife immediately get it from the hotel bar fridge.and i offered him $1000.00 cash for appreciation of returning this money .because seriously i ask myself if is me i found this money i dun think i will give back too.

And furthermore i get to know from this driver that he just started driving taxi and was a bankrupt in 2014 ,he starts all over from scratch of what he lost and is repaying his debts , this makes me more surprised because if i were him,i found this big sum of money i can start afresh and repay my debts..but the driver replies of why he comes back searching for me is because,he says he intends to go home after dropping me and he has drove off going towards petrol kiosk before going back home but upon reaching he saw a bag at the passenger seat and he said he immediate open the bag hoping to have my particulars so that he can returned to HOTEL to me.but he said he was shocked when he saw the whole bag cash and first thinking is that oh dear this man will surely goes mad if he lose this bag of cash.and even cost life..so he immediately rush to MBS hoping to get the hotel help by asking mbs staff can trace the cctv footage of the guest just now.

I am sincerely grateful and other than being thankful i duno what to say to this kind soul.so i hope i can make everyone knows and can learn from this driver kind deeds. And indeed there is still kind soul in this world.i am sure this driver will surely make a comeback after he earns and repays all his debt. Because his heart is Righteous and his failures previously is also a framed up and trusted too much on business partners.sorry if my english isnt so good you guys may help me rephrased the story.thanks.”

sincerely

Chukamon Khammat

Source: Beh Chia Lor – Singapore Road

July 10, 2016