singapore in 2010 world cup soccer

someone has said that singapore will in 2010 world cup soccer, competing with the countries like Brazil..

recession :The beginning of the end

still far away from recovery

we like new immigrant

From the Straits Times: "Helping foreigners fit in"

With his trademark grin, [MP Charles Chong] added: "When you ask Singaporean residents for feedback, they will complain that they have to wait more than 15 minutes for the bus. But when you ask new immigrants, they are happy that the bus comes in under 30 minutes."

MP Charles Chong was told what he was told

. and he told us what he was being told.
it was confirmed that they have preferred new immigrants than local singaporeans..

they are much easier to please and serve them. and they do fit in the overall great plan..to eliminate singaporean from their comfort zone and let them "venture" to oversea.

sleeping on the job

first, the lehman brother: they did not expect it to fall. town councils invested in exotic structured product which they did not fully understood them and suffered great losses. including the ordinary investor who trusted our banks and in the end, were played out. dirty people.

then came the losses made by Taemasek holding when they sold BOa shares, which we could not understand what they are doing?

then came the private school which offered fake degrees in 2007 and closed down only two years later.

we asked ourselves: what are they doing in the first place?

What's Love Got to Do With It?

it was just more than love alone.

It found that a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced.

Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship.

A couple's parents also have a role to play in their own relationship.

Not surprisingly, money also plays a role, with up to 16 percent of respondents who indicated they were poor or where the husband -- not the wife -- was unemployed saying they had separated, compared with only nine percent of couples with healthy finances.

more companies hired older workers

we have heard older workers being retrenched as the companies shift to overseas and they have a hard time in getting jobs, just because they are over 45 years and have no certificates.
they are experienced people and yet not fully maximized their potential.
the companies, even GLC employed young and inexperienced foreign talents, eliminating the locals.

and the older worker who still able to work found idling at home, doing nothing to contribute to the economy.

it was the failure of the tightly control labour market.

painless punishments

MAS has banned 10 institutions from selling structured notes for periods of 6 months to 2 years.

the finance companies got away scotfree with painless punishments while the investor who trusted these companies suffered huge losses while their whole life saving vanished in the air.

in the end, trust no one.

cherish each day

Michael Jackson's sudden death reminded us of how fragile life is.
two days ago, he was rehearsing for the live concerts in London, alive and full of energy.
two days later, he has passed away, at the age of 50 years.
he has so much things to do, and things have not been done yet.

luckily he has prepared his will 5 years ago in 2002. he has at least left behind something for his sons and daughter.

these things we should planned ahead, and not to rush when things are needed urgently.


so, cherish each day.
plan ahead.
you will never know what will happened the next day.

Machael Jackson's Last will

student

have met some of the students from polytechnics recently.
they have commented it was getting more and more difficult to get a position which they liked. the market is highly competitive with the influx of the students from asia and the import of foreign talent to boost our population.

at one hand, they have solved the aging population, but on the other hand, they have caused great discomfort for the job market for the new graduates, especially those who are local-born as they lost the edge to them.

tough as the recession is yet to recover although we saw signs of pick-ups.

Michael Jackson

from economist:

FOR a life so extraordinary the manner of Michael Jackson’s passing on Thursday June 25th was utterly banal: a middle-aged man succumbing to an apparent heart-attack. (There was speculation that an alleged dependency on prescription painkillers may have been a contributing factor.) During his progress from child prodigy to the self-styled “King of Pop” and, more recently, an eccentric semi-recluse, no part of Mr Jackson’s private life had given any other hint of normality. But behind the mask that plastic surgeons had made of his face was a keen brain for wringing cash out of pop music—and for spending it.

Mr Jackson first performed on stage at the age of six, accompanying his four older brothers. The Jackson Five, under the strict stewardship of their manager and father, signed to Motown Records in the late 1960s and began producing a string of hit records—a sequence of success that Mr Jackson continued in a 30-year solo recording career. It is reckoned that his final tally of album sales is around 750m—the most that any artist has sold. And one of those, “Thriller”, released in 1982, became the most successful yet seen, shifting 65m units. This record may well remain unchallenged: sales of albums have suffered as pop fans these days prefer downloading individual tracks from the internet.

The length of Mr Jackson’s career ensured that he experienced, popularised and even pioneered many of the techniques that help artists to profit from their musical talents. At the beginning of his career, touring was a vital component of performers' incomes, though a shift to earning money from selling records was well under way. By its peak, in the 1980s, touring had come to be seen by the music industry as a loss-making promotional tool to shift albums.

Mr Jackson did not invent the pop promotional video, as he is sometimes credited with doing. But he took this art form to new heights with the lavishly expensive video he made in 1983 for the title track of the “Thriller” album. He brought in one of Hollywood's top directors, John Landis (best known for “The Blues Brothers”), and spent an unprecedented $500,000 on the 14-minute miniature epic. But it was money well spent: the launch of MTV, two years earlier, whose format was being copied by other broadcasters, meant that videos had rapidly become one of the most valuable tools for marketing recorded music, and more cost-effective than concert tours. The “Thriller” video was broadcast incessantly all around the world, pumping up the album's sales.

At the height of his success Mr Jackson and his team of managers made the shrewd calculation that the value of pop music was wrapped up in the publishing rights to songs just as much as in record sales. In 1985 he paid $47.5m for ATV Music, which owned the copyrights to most of the Beatles' songs. Ten years later he sold half his interest for $150m to Sony. The value of his stake was probably around $500m when he died. This was roughly equal to the upper estimates of the debts he was struggling to refinance, which he had amassed funding his increasingly bizarre style of living.

Despite his vast earnings Mr Jackson was forced to borrow huge sums against his stake in ATV and his future earnings (recently reckoned to be about $19m a year) to pay for his huge shopping sprees and the upkeep of “Neverland”, his ranch in California. Last year he announced plans for a long series of concerts in London to boost his income and pay off his creditors. Playing live has re-emerged as the way to make money from pop as falling sales, rampant piracy and digital distribution have slashed revenues from recorded music.

Despite having built himself an extravagant fun palace, with its own zoo, fairground and elaborate topiary, Mr Jackson cut an increasingly lost and lonely figure in his later years. Though twice married and with three children, his closest relationships appeared to be with a chimpanzee and a succession of young boys. The questions raised by these unusual friendships continued to hang in the air until his death. He was acquitted in a Californian court in 2005 on charges of molesting one 13-year-old boy but reportedly paid $20m out of court in 1994 to head off other allegations of child abuse.

His status as a pop genius may well always be tainted by the strangeness of the life he chose to lead. Elvis Presley, still the unchallenged King of Rock’n’Roll, is increasingly remembered for his music, as memories fade of his own unusual private life. Mr Jackson would doubtless have craved to be held in the same public awe and affection (his dynastic ambitions even stretched to a brief marriage with Lisa Marie, Presley’s only child). But, sadly, for now he will be remembered by many as “Wacko Jacko” rather than the King of Pop.

home

there are so many things in life that you have wanted, but you knew that it will be difficult to get it.
and you went far away to search for the things you have been hunting for.
years after years, you have found none.

until you have reached your home and finally found the things you have looking is all the while in your home.

cared for the old, aged and the ugly

whether the political system tilted a bit or changed slightly, the bottom line is the care for the old, aged and the ugly was still much desired for improvement.

Things such as free ride for buses and MRT for the old as a respect to their contribution to the economy when they are young, but we did not see it coming soon, not now or this year.

when do they get 50% discount for the food or necessities for those who still can worked but lower wage? but they cannot get the subsidy as their wage was deemed too high.

for those who earned ten thousand dollars a month, a bread that cost S$2 is the same as those who salary of S$700 a month.

Full knee replacement operation

My mother went for knee replacement operation at NUH by one of the ambitious and young orthopedic doctor. He was also the head of the department. Since then, he has left NUH for private practice.
as he was new to the position and did not have much practical experience, he called for full knee replacement operation.
i was opposed to the operation, but he has persuaded our mother to do it. and she agreed to do it.

i should have asked for second opinion, but did not. i asked sister and she also agreed mother to do the operation.

few years, our mother found her operated leg was much longer than the normal one and she walked with a limp.

trust

my sister told me that you just cannot trust certain type of people.
i did not believe her and challenge her instead.
in the end, i lost the bet and have to take back my words instead.

yes, certain type of people whom you trusted will ended up betrayed by them.

i have no doubts about it and since then, have changed my perception on them.

they can't be trusted, no matter how good they are

the success of singapore

Taemasek on BOA (bank of America):
It was a long-term investment.
The sold them at the loss in 1Q2009.

The Singapore flyer’s breakdown for month in 2009.
They said, “It was good so that more people will know and come for the flyer.
What rubbish they are talking!

Town council invested on exotic structured products such Lehman brother and made a loss.
They said, “Overall, we are still earning profit for the past 10 years.
A loss is a loss, just admit it.

screening

A H1NI flu virus originated from the swine, surprising.
WHO has raised the level to 5, signaling a long draw battle and we estimated it will last for at least one year before MOH to lift the code yellow.
it was not like SARS, more like influenza, where it will infected many, but the casualty low.

still, it will be sometime before code yellow turn to green

change

change is everything.
last time we heard:
foreigners create jobs for us, singaporean and we owed them our livings to them.
instead, it was one singaporean supervisor and 40-50 foreign workers. a few years later, the singaporean supervisor got retrenched due to restructuring.

now, integration with new foreign-born singaporean. they sure changed the things fast. black become white and white turn black.

why the need of integration? because they are huge: roughly 1 million of them. you can imagine the social impact by their sheer numbers.

already 60-70% of the singaporean to be retrenched first.. they are not spared.
now they do regret taking up citizenship and should stay at permanent resident.

passed away

we have not seen our neighbour for sometime.
then we heard from other neighbour that he has passe away two weeks ago.

he has been staying at the same block as us for 20 years.
and he likes to drink beer.
when we saw him, we always greeted him and he also greeted back.
his wife divorced with him and his sons and daughters left him too.

he rented his rooms to foreign workers for S$150 each.

we are surprised to hear the news

Manchester United through the final:Rome

with 1-3 win over Arsenal on the second leg, Manchester cruised to the final of the Champions league to face either Chelsea or Barcelona.
Cheers!