Material Comforts vs. other important aspects of life (essay)

This material is copyrighted. Do not plagarise please. Or I'll haunt you down. ^^ Writers: Jaslin, Shamira, Zhi Qi, Xiaotian and Jessica :)

In our pursuit of material comforts, we have ignored other important aspects of life. Is this true?

It is human instinct to seek comfort. It was such for our ancestors hundreds of years ago, and it is still the case for us in the present. The fact remains the same. Just that instead of seeking physical comfort such as shelter, we seek material comfort such as a nice big house and maybe even a car or two. People educate themselves so that they can get a high paying job which allows them to acquire the material desires of their hearts. With the advancement of society, competition for these high paying jobs is increasing and only the best will get the best. Thus, often in our pursuit of material comforts, we become so focused on earning a high income that we ignore other important aspects of life such as our family, our health and even the environment. Money may make the world go round, but money cannot after all, guarantee happiness. Thus, I agree to a large extent that we have collectively ignored various important aspects of life in our pursuit of material comfort.
                       
The increase in the cost of living has resulted in people seeking money to provide for themselves as well as their families. The responsibilities a working adult would primarily face would be to provide for their family’s needs and wants. 87% of working adults in Singapore work at least 9 hours to ensure that their families have ample food and are contented. Although it is tiring for providers to work for long hours, they persevere on as they would do anything for their loved ones. The ever-changing fashion trends must be kept up with. Moreover, buying the latest Apple product would buy them an affectionate hug and bring a smile to their teenage children. It is pleasant to see our loved ones happy, even if it means burning a hole in our pockets. They do not forget nor ignore the most important aspect of life- their families. With the satisfaction of their families in mind, they would feel the spur to pursue material comfort. However, in their pursuit for material comfort, parents have neglected their families as they are barely home. In Singapore, 72% of households have both parents working to provide for their family. Also, with most men being the breadwinner as well as more women pursuing their education and career, less time would be set aside for their children. This would then increase a child’s chances of going astray as guidance is important for a child’s development. Thus, although it may seem that we are not neglecting our families in our pursuit of material comforts, we actually are. Hence, I strongly agree that we have ignored other important aspects of life in our pursuit of material comfort.

Developing countries, in pursuit of money, make use of their natural resources to earn more revenue and improve their economic standing. In fact, Vietnam earned US$884 million in the first quarter of 2011 from the export of 1.85 tonnes of rice. However, as the country strives towards a better quality of life for its citizens, its natural environment has been severely damaged. In Kalimantan, Indonesia, forested areas have decreased greatly in size from 1900 to 2000. This is mainly due to the logging industry, which plays a significant role in Indonesia’s economic development. Rapid deforestation has resulted in many environmental problems: loss of biodiversity, air pollution, soil erosion and flooding. This shows that our environment has been neglected in our pursuit of material comforts.

People constantly seek degrees to rise in the ranks of education as having a higher level of education would increase the chances of a higher paying job. In order to achieve their degrees, many of them would sign up for the relevant courses and just study the relevant topics in the course without having any genuine interest in the subject. They do not bother to do further research for more details about content that may not be covered in the syllabus. This shows that we have lost the thirst for knowledge and would only study what is given to us.

Due to the higher standard of living and rising prices worldwide, more people find themselves putting material comforts as their priority and soon they get sucked into their own temptations and wants. Hence, they forgo religion and replace it with the pursuit of materialism. The absence of religion in part of our daily life means that there is a lack of moral education and also lack of a set of self-guiding principles which is an essential aspect to us living a fulfilling and motivating life.

Lastly,working long hours causes health problems. In Singapore, the rate of osteoporosis, particularly at the hips due to office work for long hours, has already surged five-fold among women and 1.5 times among men. This shows how poorly people regard health. Hence, with people being too focused on getting the worldly pleasures in life, they ignore the more important aspect of taking care of their health.,

In conclusion, I feel that we have ignored other important aspects of life such as our family and friends, our health, the well being of the environment, even our religions, in our pursuit of material comforts. Besides neglecting the important aspects of life, we also lose our thirst for knowledge and education becomes nothing more than just a stepping stone to our success in the workforce, which gives us access to the material satisfaction that we desire. Moreover, we may have the money to view the wonders of the world and to travel to various countries to explore and experience the rich and diverse cultures, but we may end up with no time to do so due to our busy work schedules. I believe that we should strike a balance between the material and other aspects of our lives. Only then will we be able to live a fulfilling life.

Ferrari Crash Fuels Singapore's anti-foreign sentiments

A wealthy Chinese expatriate who crashed his million-dollar Ferrari into a taxi killing himself and two others has sparked outrage in Singapore, where anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise.
Websites were swamped Monday with postings attacking Chinese and other foreigners in the city-state after it was reported that a 52-year-old local cabbie had died of his injuries following Saturday's pre-dawn accident.


The crash instantly killed the 31-year-old Ferrari driver, Ma Chi, while the taxi passenger, a 41-year-old Japanese woman, died in hospital two hours later, a police spokeswoman told AFP.
Police gave no other details but local media said the Ferrari driver was a financial adviser from Sichuan who was applying for permanent residency and already living in a Singapore penthouse with his family.

 Copyright: Yahoo! news SG

HFMD cases rise to a new high

The number of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) cases saw a 14 per cent spike, even as efforts have been stepped up to curb the current epidemic.
The Ministry of Health’s (MOH) latest statistics showed that the number of cases rose to 1,590 during the last week of April, breaking the four—year high of 1,394 cases seen in the previous week.

Inspections have been intensified at pre—schools and spot checks will be done at enrichment centres, said MOH.

Noting that the reported HFMD cases so far have been mild, a MOH spokesperson added high standards of hygiene are also being reinforced in primary schools and childcare centres.

Credits: Yahoo! News

S'pore is 4th most desirable place to live and work

Singapore has moved up two spots to become the fourth most desirable place in the world to live and work, according to a survey by recruitment firm Hydrogen and business school ESCP Europe.This is because Singapore has become an increasingly popular destination for multinational corporations over the past few years, said Hydrogen.

"We have seen companies from sectors as diverse as technology, energy, pharmaceutical and wealth management open offices here. The big question here is whether Singapore will become Asia’s Silicon Valley or its Switzerland," said Simon Walker, Hydrogen’s Asia MD.

While the three most popular places for survey respondents to live and work remain the US, the UK and Australia, their dominance is waning.

The report showed that 12 per cent picked the US as the top relocation destination, down from 18 per cent last year.

The UK and Australia each got 9 per cent of the votes, down from 10 per cent and 11 per cent respectively.

As Singapore becomes an increasingly attractive relocation destination for expatriates, Hydrogen said employers in the city state are finding that they have the pick of the world’s top professional talent.
Mr Walker said: "Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, and it offers a clean and healthy environment free from traffic pollution.

SBS to raise S'porean bus drivers' salaries by 16%

In a bid to attract more Singaporean bus drivers, SBS Transit will increase the starting pay of new Singaporean drivers by 16 per cent from next month onwards.

According to local media reports, new Singaporean bus drivers can now expect a basic salary of S$1,600 compared to the current S$1,375.

With overtime pay and allowances, drivers can earn about S$2,250 a month in gross salary in their first year of service, SBS Transit said.

The existing 1,900 Singaporean bus drivers will also get to take home an additional S$225, reported The Straits Times. Non-Singaporean drivers will get a smaller increase of between $75 and $150.


Credits: Yahoo! News Singapore

Another breakdown hits SMRT

Train commuters dashing to work yesterday morning faced delays and disruptions on the new Circle MRT Line, which was struck by its second breakdown since it opened fully last October. The rush-hour breakdown between one-north and Bishan stations lasted from 7.40am to 10.10am and was the result of what operator SMRT called a "disrupted power supply to the communication backbone network".

It seems to be a similar glitch that happened top the same stations last Dec 14, when about 1,400 passengers suffered delays. The problem then was reported to be due to a "communication network problem". This time, about 18,000 commuters were affected, said SMRT. Some reported hour-long waits in trains that ground to a halt between Buona Vista and Holland Village and Farrer Road stations at around 8.30am. Others heading to the eight affected Circle Line stations found them shuttered and scrambled to find alternative routes.

Credits: The Straits Times :)

Aceh's road to recovery

As the showpiece project of the multi-billion dollar Aceh recovery effort, the new 240km highway traversing Sumatra's tsunami-ravaged north-western coast is already revitalizing commerce and changing lives in the 74 villages along its path. But after innumerable obstacles and a two-year delay in its completion, it is perhaps not surprising that last October's official opening of the American and Japanese-funded undertaking was marked by a distinct lack of fanfare or celebration.

In Jakarta, it passed almost unnoticed. For all the goodwill involved at the outset, contentious land purchases, graveyard and mosque relocations, bad weather and the sheer complexity of finding a new track for a quarter of the road all conspired to make it more of a challenge than anyone had imagined. Indonesian government critics say the Americans also paid little attention to the post-conflict conditions in Aceh and as a result were not prepared for the Free Aceh Movement's role in representing land owners, including many who had died in the tragedy.

Credits: The Straits Times

Overcoming 'Physics Envy'

Economists, political scientists and sociologists have long suffered from an academic inferiority complex: physics envy. They often feel that their disciplines should be on a par with the "real" sciences and self-consciously model their work on them, using language ("theory", "experiment", "law") evocative of physics and chemistry. This might seem like a worthy aspiration. Many social scientists contend that science has a method, and if you want to be scientific, you should adopt it.

The method requires you to devise a theoretical model, deduce a testable hypothesis from the model and then test the hypothesis against the world. If the hypothesis is confirmed, the theoretical model holds; if the hypothesis is not confirmed, the theoretical model does not hold. If your discipline does not operate by this method - known as hypothetico-deductivism - then in the minds of many, it is not scientific.

Credits: New York Times

Indonesian government seen as incapable of making tough decisions

It is still two long years before the 2014 Indonesian elections, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling coalition can no longer be deemed an effective government government capable of taking hard decisions. The refusal of coalition partners Golkar and the Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) to support a 33 per cent increase in the prices of subsidized petrol and diesel has dealt a mortal blow to Dr Yudhoyono's hopes of ending his final term on a high note.

Granted, there is an optional measure authorising an adjustment at the end of six months if the Indonesian crude price (ICP) averages 15 per cent above the US$105-a-barrel assumption in the revised 2012 budget. But this cannot mask the worst defeat of Dr Yudhoyono's eight-year presidency. Government planners can also take little comfort from the fact that the ICP averaged US$119 for the first two months of this year, just below the trigger point.

Credits: The Straits Times

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin reaches out via FB

Fans of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra can now get closer to him through social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Thaksin and his supporters had been restricted in their ability to communicate with one another, and his Facebook and Twitter messages would enable him to speak to them directly.

Cartoon to teach kids about money

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet will lend his voice to an online animated series designed to teach financial lessons to children. Mr Buffet is starring in The Secret Millionaire's Club, which aims to educate children about basic financial principles, such as avoiding debts. He said he hopes the cartoon will be fun and informative. "What better time to help educate our kids about financial responsibility," he said in a statement. Each online episode will be three to five minutes long. Mr Buffet is donating his time to the project to foster financial literacy. This will not be the first time he is involved in cartoons.

Watch it here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3gBNBtJMJw

Why Bill Gates shut down his Facebook page

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says he is "not a 24-hour technology person" and explained why he shut down his Facebook account. Saying he was not big on text messaging, he added: "All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we're not careful." He was speaking to government officials and information technology executives, touching on subjects ranging from social networking to cellphones used to test for diseases.

Asked whether he ever gets "unplugged" from email, computers and cellphone, he laughed and said he reads a lot "and sometimes not on a screen". He said he once had a Facebook page but every day "10,000 people tried to be my friend". He spent a lot of time trying to decide "Do I know them? Don't I know them?" Ultimately, he said, "I had to give it up."

Credits: New York Times

Tremors felt in various parts of Singapore

Singaporeans felt the floor move beneath their feet yesterday as aftershocks from an 8.6-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia shook high-rise buildings and homes near the coast. Tremors lasting two to three minutes each were reported at around 5pm by people across the island, from residents in Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh, Serangoon North and Geylang Bahru to office workers in the Central Business District.

The Meteorological Service yesterday confirmed that an earthquake struck Northern Sumatra at 4.38pm, about 1,240km away from Singapore. About 30 people evacuated The Bencoolen building in Bugis Street after feeling the tremors. The management of the 16-storey Capital Square building in the Telok Ayer street broadcast a message telling tenants not to worry. Marine Parade residents felt the strongest tremors , but most did not get too anxious as it was not the first time they had experienced them.

Credits: The Straits Times

Charges filed against five who removed kidney

Last year, a Chinese teen sold his kidney to raise money to buy an Apple iPad and iPhone. Now, five people, including the surgeon who conducted the operation, are being charged with "intentional injury."

According to prosecutors, the boy, who was 17 at the time of the operation, has suffered from renal deficiency, a serious medical condition in which the kidney fails to filter toxins and waste from the blood stream.

The story is steeped in both tragedy and intrigue. The boy, who has not been publicly identified, hails from one of China's poorest provinces. When his mother saw her son with a new iPad and iPhone, both highly sought in China, the son admitted that he sold his kidney to pay for them.

News of the illegal surgery first broke last year. The boy spoke to a Chinese TV station. "I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn't have the money," the boy said. "When I surfed the internet I found an advert posted online by agent saying they were able to pay RMB 20,000 to buy a kidney." That's the equivalent of about $3,100.

According to reports, the boy received only about 10% of what the kidney buyer paid. The rest went to the surgeon and others involved in arranging the operation. The operation was conducted in a hospital room that had been rented out.

Though China has banned the selling and trading of organs, the practice still occurs on the black market. According to a report from the Health Ministry, "1.5 million patients need transplants each year, but only 10,000 organs are available." Many of those seeking organs come from other countries.

Credits: Yahoo! News

Harvard biased about ethnicity of it's students?

It is a common belief among Asian American families that their children are held to higher academic standards than college applicants from other ethnic groups. Such practices were openly acknowledged after investigations at Universities like Berkeley and Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s. The United States Education Department is investigating complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminated against against Asian Americans in undergraduate admissions.

Statistics seem to support the claim of bias across most elite higher education institutions. For example, in comprehensive data compiled as part of Duke University's Campus Life and Learning project, Asian Americans who enrolled at the school in 2001 averaged 1,457 out of 1,600 on the mathematics and reading part of the Scholastic Assessment Test, compared with 1,416 for whites, 1,347 for Hispanics and 1,275 for blacks. There is every reason to believe that a similar pattern holds at nearly all elite universities in the US.

Credits: The Straits Times

Rajaratnam's global city vision for S'pore

On Feb 6, 1972, Singapore's first foreign minister S. Rajaratnam delivered a visionary speech at the Singapore Press Club entitled "Singapore: Global City", laying down the vulnerable city-state's strategy for survival. Forty years on, the oratory by one of Singapore's eminent thinkers deserves far more recognition by Singaporeans, given that Mr Rajaratnam's arguments have since been vindicated on numerous counts. The intricately woven arguments in Mr Rajaratnam's speech continue to resonate today.

He began by rebutting the naysayers that minuscule Singapore had a "near-zero chance of survival", with no natural hinterland of raw materials. Instead, Singapore confounded such dismal predications because it "was transforming into a new kind of city- the global city". Indeed, Mr Rajaratnam employed the term "global city" decades before it was to become a popular buzzword and academic fad. By further emphasizing that "Whether cities were good or bad, the trend towards urbanization is irreversible", his words were a remarkably accurate harbinger of global trends today.

Credits: The Straits Times

Riding Safe

Motorcyclists can do themselves - and their families - a favour if they rid themselves of the attitude that because they are more exposed and vulnerable on the roads, the greater onus is on others to keep a lookout for them. That wind-in-the-face feeling, the ability to make it across town faster than by car or bus, straddling lanes and exploiting gaps between vehicles stuck in traffic, is what got 96 motorcycles and three of their pillion riders killed on the roads last year.

That is a startling statistic of one death almost every four days. What compounds it as a tragedy is that the numbers were almost similar a year earlier. Annual figures released last week by the Traffic Police were unambiguous in concluding that motorcyclists and their pillion riders continue to be the most vulnerable on the road to fatal or injury-causing accidents. This is despite more stringent training programmes for learners and efforts by the authorities more recently to get motorcyclists to voluntarily enrol for free courses that prepare them for the demands of riding on expressways.

Credits: The Straits Times

Manila Ditches Bilingual policy for younger pupils

Mother tongues will replace the national language and English in the first three grades of state elementary schools in the Philippines, as part of a new government policy aimed at boosting early learning skills among children. Of the 170 region-based tongues spoken, 11 main ones cover most of the population and the switch to them in the early grades will start in the new school year in June for Grade 1 pupils. It follows a successful experiment by the education department to test mother-tongue teaching in 920 elementary schools nationwide last year.

Teachers are being told to expect more participation in the new curriculum year from pupils who are too reluctant to speak in class using Filipino or English if neither language is used at home. "The problem with the bilingual policy was that comprehension was very low in the early grades,"said Ms Rose Villaneza, head of the Department of Education's Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education programme. "Using familiar mother tongues will help students freely express ideas - and that's important for cognitive development. "

Credits: The Straits Times

Malaysia and it's strict censorship

A Singaporean dance troupe has been denied a permit to perform here this weekend owing to their “indecent” costumes, a Malaysian dance organisation said today.

The women’s costumes featured long skirts, except for dancers in The Nutcracker, who would have worn the same short classical tutus and tights that have been used since ballet dancers performed before the Russian tsars in the 1870s.

“Ballet dancers in Baghdad are allowed to wear ballet costumes on stage,” said Bilqis. “Are we to understand that the Malaysian public is less cosmopolitan, less morally resilient and less broad minded than the citizens of a Middle Eastern country that has been ripped to shreds by war and violence?”

Bilqis pointed out that the arts were also a business, and that Puspal’s decision would create “enormous doubt” among international investors, causing them to shun Malaysia as a venue for world-class performers.

This would lead to huge loss of revenue for the country, which contradicted the Information, Communication and Culture Ministry’s stated objective of “increasing national income through contributions from the creative and communication industries”, she added.

Bilqis said she hoped the show would be allowed to go on “with better leadership” from the ministry as it was an act that would raise its prestige as an open and consistent incubator of the arts.

In February, Puspal cancelled the permit issued to R&B singer Erykah Badu after English daily The Star ran an “offensive” image of the American artiste bearing temporary tattoos of the word “Allah” in Arabic script.

Credits: Yahoo! News Singapore

Quietest Place On Earth

If you've been to a crowded airport, sporting event, or even a kid's birthday party lately, a little peace and quiet might sound like the perfect thing to help you kick back and relax. Just don't let things get too quiet, or you might drive yourself a wee bit insane: the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota can mute 99.99% of all sound, but visiting the silent oasis isn't as calming as you might expect.

The room holds the current Guinness World Record as the quietest place on the planet, and companies from all over the world seek out its unique acoustic properties. The walls of the chamber are lined with sound-absorbing baffles that can capture noise and mute it in an instant. This allows companies — both Whirlpool and Harley-Davidson have visited — to test just how noisy their products are without the risk of outside interference.

But while the super-silent oasis is a great testbed for various products, it holds a darker side: silence, it turns out, can put a great strain on the human brain. Researchers at NASA test the room's unique acoustic capabilities on humans rather than hardware. The noiselessness is used to simulate the silence of space — an environment astronauts would be well served to grow accustomed to.

What they've found is that when all outside noise is removed from an enclosure, human hearing will do its best to find something to listen to. In a room where almost 100% of sound is muted, people begin to hear things like their own heartbeat at a greatly amplified volume. As the minutes tick by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to lose its grip, causing test subjects to hallucinate.

NASA then monitors how the would-be space explorers react, and whether they can get past the very obvious awkwardness of seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there. According to lab officials, the longest anyone has lasted is 45 minutes before being allowed to hear the sweet sounds of planet Earth once again.

In the end, the chamber has proven a valuable scientific tool, just don't plan on renting it for some peace and quiet — it may do more harm than good.

My opinions: I want to be inside that room :D Sounds cool...pun intended :D

Credits: Yahoo! News

Attack over MRT seat: Man jailed 10 weeks

A man was jailed for 10 weeks on Wednesday for attacking an elderly cleaner over an MRT seat.

Cheng Tai Peng, 38, who is now doing odd jobs, was convicted early this year of slapping, punching and kicking Mr Chua Teck Seng, 64, while on board the MRT train travelling between Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang MRT station on April 3, 2010.

The victim had testified that he had boarded a train at Jurong East MRT station and stood infront of a woman occupying the 'reserved' corner seat. As the train was approaching Bukit Gombak MRT station, he saw Cheng standing beside him and using his body to push him. Cheng was trying to rush for that corner seat.

When the victim told Cheng that he should not bully an old man for the seat, Cheng retorted: 'So what if you are an old man? You think old man have a golden tablet?' In the olden days, the golden tablet could be used to prevent one from being sent to death.

During a heated argument, Cheng slapped Mr Chua on the face, hit his left ear, and rained punches on the victim, who tried to move away but Cheng pursued him. A young man intervened by grabbing Cheng's arm and telling him to stop. Cheng threatened the young man to let go of him.

He then took a seat. The victim stood at one of the train entrances. When the victim looked towards Cheng's direction, Cheng approached him and uttered: 'You still want?'
He then used his arms and legs to attack the victim, who defended himself by using his hands to block him.

Cheng has appealed against his conviction. Bail of $10,000 was offered, pending his appeal. He could have been jailed for up to two years and/or fined up to $5,000.

Source: here

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Fighting with an elderly for a MRT seat? Not cool, dude.

Woman dies after SBS Transit bus hits her

NEWS: A 66-year-old woman died on Tuesday after being hit by an SBS Transit bus service 159, whereby she was dragged under it for nearly half a minute.
The accident occurred at the junction of Sengkang East Way and Compassvale Road. The police and Singapore Civil Defence Force said they were notified of the incident at 11.20am.
Last night, footage of what happened appeared over the Internet. The video - apparently taken by a camera in a vehicle in the area - showed the woman walking across a pedestrian crossing, the bus turning into the crossing, then the woman vanishing as she presumably went under the bus.

SBS Transit later announced that they will pay for all funeral expenses incurred by the family of the 66-year-old woman involved in the bus accident on Tuesday.

Adapted from here and here.

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I am disappointed in SBS Transit tbh. How can they hire such reckless bus drivers? The video was simply unbearable to watch :/ Condolences to the woman, R.I.P.

Should parents award kids for scoring As?

Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. The results represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom .

Kids who got paid all year under a very elegant scheme performed significantly better on their standardized reading tests at the end of the year. Statistically speaking, it was as if those kids had spent three extra months in school, compared with their peers who did not get paid.

If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost.

Money is not enough. (It never is.) But for some kids, it may be part of the solution. In the end, we all want our children to grow into self-motivated adults. The question is, How do we help them get there? And is it possible that at least for some kids, the road is paved not with stickers but with $20 bills?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1978758,00.html#ixzz1qnl5UhhR

Singapore a scholarship haven for foreign students?

Adapted from yahoo news,

If you don't have enough local talent, buy it from abroad whether in sports or research science — beginning with schools and universities.

To the government, expanding the talent pool is crucial for the economy.

Since the birthrate is declining, why not import youngsters from the region by the thousands, especially from China and Asean, to come and study here free of charge?

The issue is developing into a budding controversy with critics labelling it as a short-cut development of human resources through imports rather than focusing on home talents.

Cost problems

The issue took to the media last month when the government revealed in Parliament that at least 2,000 scholarships worth S$36mil were awarded each year to overseas students.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Sim Ann said that most of these scholars served out their bonds and the few who defaulted were made to pay liquidated damages. No number of bond-breakers was given.

It is not known if the total included a large number of scholarships by companies linked to the government, like Singapore Airlines, Neptune Orient Lines and Singapore Press Holdings.

Social Networking

"Strangers online have a lot to give us that is worthwhile, and we to them." Discuss, in relation to your personal experience and the situation in your country.

In Singapore, we see a growing generation of tech-savvy individuals who are spending increasing amounts of time on social networking platforms. With a fast pace of life, many of us find ourselves compensating personal interaction with communication online.

However, it is going to take time to learn how to live publicly. Recently, a National University of Singapore (NUS) scholar used his blog to post insensitive and degrading comments about Singaporeans. While his post represents a minority, the public response of outrage could very well lead to xenophobia and hatred/dislike in the long-term. This could spell disaster for Singapore as we are a nation that depends a lot on foreigners, and have an extremely sensitive multiracial society that lives together in close contact. Hence, we can see that people still have a lot to learn about their online boundaries.

Moreover, emotional space could be compromised as a result of sharing personal information online. For example, in last year's general elections, one of the major talking points in online forums was Tin Pei Lin, a young local minister, who received public scrutiny based on her personal Facebook, which contained pictures of her and expensive handbags. In the long run, this could become a liability to a person who becomes constantly misjudged based on a one-off incident as content on cyberspace is hard to control. In a country as small as Singapore, such news travel quickly, and can actually affect the reputation of a political party. Hence, to share information online is to open yourselves to emotional vulnerability.

Copyright: Mr Shermann (my GP tutor)

Edited by: Jaslin

Dangers of the Internet

Online Shopping:
Police have arrested a 22-year-old woman who is believed to be involved in at least 2 cases of online cheating.

On March 3, the victim made a police report that she had been cheated during an online purchase of a branded bag.

Investigations revealed that the victim had responded to an online advertisement placed by the suspect on the website Deluxemall.com for the sale of branded bags. The suspect went by the online moniker of Bagjunkie.

The victim purchased a bag and transferred a sum of $1,400 to a bank account provided by the suspect. Thereafter, the suspect became evasive and the bag was never delivered to the victim

Blackmail:
A young couple who was charged last month with extortion in an online love scam faced more charges in court today.

Yap Siew Ting, 17, and Soh Zhi Ren Alexander, 21, were charged in court last month for allegedly extorting S$6,000 from a 22-year-old victim on Jan 8 this year.

That charge has been amended and they are now accused of extorting S$150,000 from him on May 31 last year.Victims were tricked into sending nude videos of themselves to Yap. The couple had allegedly threatened to upload nude videos of the victims onto the internet if they refused to pay up.

Credits: Mabel Wang

Human Trafficking in Singapore

Government gets tough on Human Trafficking:

New laws and specialised enforcement teams will be put in place to further tackle the problem of trafficking in persons (TIP) in Singapore, says Minister of State for National Development and Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin.

Speaking at the launch of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM)’s national plan of action to combat TIP on Wednesday morning, Tan said that the possession of a well-coordinated response to such trafficking crimes is essential as criminals and human traffickers are becoming “more organised and increasingly transnational”.

“Trafficking in persons” is an umbrella term that refers to the illegal trade of persons for commercial sexual exploitation, forced labour or organ trafficking, involving the use of force, coercion or other means for the purpose of exploitation.

In Singapore, sex and labour trafficking are the key forms of TIP to deal with, said Tan, as organ trafficking is less prevalent here.

However, the island-state has up to last year been on the Tier 2 Watch List (having only been upgraded to Tier 2 in 2011) of the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons report, for not fully complying with its Trafficking Victims Protection Act, even though it is making efforts to bring itself up to meet the standards entailed in it. The report places countries into tiers based on the efforts their individual governments are making to combat the international issue of human trafficking, more than the actual scale of the problem each country is facing.

The U.S. has since called on Singapore to be more proactive in investigating and persecuting cases of human, labour and sex trafficking, to better protect victims and to ratify the 2000 United Nations TIP Protocol, also referred to as the Palermo Protocols, which target various forms of human trafficking.

Speaking last week on the issue, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded the efforts of the international community to combat the problem, noting that nearly 140 countries have enacted modern anti-trafficking laws, as well as the fact that almost 150 countries have ratified the Palermo Protocols.

She noted then and in June last year, however, that as many as 27 million men, women and children suffer from trafficking around the world, in its various forms.

"Unfortunately, because of the ease of transportation and the global communications that can reach deep into villages with promises and pictures of what a better life might be, we now see that more human beings are exploited than before," she was quoted as saying then.

As part of the government's latest plan, which was devised by a taskforce co-chaired by the MOM and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), current legislation in place will be reviewed, taking into consideration the laws in place in other countries.

“This will help us see if there is scope to enhance our legislative frameworks, powers and penalties against TIP,” he said in his speech.

He further added that cases of trafficking should be detected as early as possible, so structured training programmes will be put in place for government officers, with research studies and public education initiatives to be implemented as well.

Dedicated enforcement teams will help to further clamp down on instances of sex and human trafficking for labour, he said.

Tan also drew attention to victim care services, saying more can be done to help them as well.

“We will enhance the management of TIP victims, particularly our prosecution witnesses… in the form of clearer victim identification procedures and enhanced victim-care services,” he said, adding that the plan will help with the return of victims to their home countries, alongside reviewing current trafficking shelter facilities.

He also reached out to foreign governments, businesses, academia and members of the public, saying that partnership and pooling of resources will help “create a multiplier effect and effectively combat TIP”.

According to the MHA, five sex trafficking and eight labour trafficking cases were prosecuted in 2010, with enforcement being taken against some 182 companies that showed signs of labour trafficking.

Singapore’s laws also do not specifically address human trafficking, although the Penal Code and Women’s Charter contain clauses that criminalise sex trafficking. Children are also protected from trafficking under the Children and Young Persons Act.

Does the Media have a right to expose Celebrities' personal affairs?

Chinese Media humiliates Lee Da-hae:

Actress Lee Da-hae was recently humiliated when a Chinese media outlet featured a picture of her in a feature titled, "Female celebrities with plastic surgery", Soompi website reported.

In the article from the Chinese outlet, Xin Won Wang published on Thursday, Lee Da-hae was singled out as, "the one with the most obvious side-effects from surgery."

To make its point clear, the publication compared current pictures of her to photos of when she was a student and when she won the Miss Chunhyang beauty pageant.

The article stated, "There is a big difference between Lee's face in her younger days and now. It is clear from the comparisons that she had work done. When she attended the Shanghai Film Festival, her face was different again."

The news comes just as Lee has begun filming the upcoming Chinese drama "Love Actually," in which she plays the lead.

Other Korean celebrities mentioned in the article were actresses Chae Rim, Yoon Eun-hye, Kim So-yeon, Kim Jung-eun and the deceased singer UNee.

Copyright: Yahoo News Singapore

This article is posted by: Jaslin :)

Is this why Singaporeans are becoming irritated with foreigners?

Woman causes scene on Tiger Airways plane

A Vietnamese woman allegedly assaulted two men on board a Tiger Airways flight from Ho Chi Minh to Singapore on Saturday after she accused one of them of kicking the back of her seat, according to various media reports.

The incident involved Yeo Chia Keat, 37, a project executive who was with his wife, as well as his friend Chua Teck Kwang, 37, a technician who was with his family on the same flight.

According to socio-political website TR Emeritus, Yeo bumped the seat in front of him while stretching his legs. Upset, the daughter of the Vietnamese lady seated in front of him then started yelling at Yeo and his wife.

The daughter then started “shifting her seat up and down repeatedly”, Yeo told local Chinese dailyLianhe Wanbao, but the couple ignored her.

Yeo told the upset passenger when their flight landed in Singapore at around 5:20pm that they could go and make a police report together if she was not happy over what happened, but that simply enraged the woman, according to media reports.

Chua recounted to Lianhe Wanbao that the woman flung her hand-carried luggage at Yeo’s head, and after the former tried to intervene, she turned to hit him instead.

“She used her sharp nails and scratched my face and right arm”, Chua was quoted by the same paper as saying.

Yeo’s wife then took a video of the scene with her handphone.

From the video, uploaded by ElectricNewPaper on YouTube, the Vietnamese woman can be seen hurling words of abuse at Chua while passengers began alighting.

After which, she attacked him by pushing his chest. Chua’s forehead was seen to be bleeding after her attack. A lady tried to stop her by was also hit by her. They then threatened the woman by repeatedly saying that they would call the police on her.

While exiting the plane, shouts from both parties attracted the attention of the airport policemen. Chua told Lianhe Wanbao that the woman claimed the two men had hit her mother.

According to TR Emeritus, Chua claimed that the woman then unbuttoned her blouse and showed her chest to the policemen, telling them that Yeo had molested her.

Chua then called the police, who upon arrival tried to mediate between the two parties.

He later sought treatment at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital for cuts to his forehead and scratches on his chest and arm.

You can check out the captured footage here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYQ-vbqsIZE&feature=player_embedded

Copyright: Yahoo News Singapore.

This article is posted by: Jaslin :)

GP blog

This blog will be updated by Judy, Jaslin and Wang Ru :)