In case a translation is needed,
M: I'm treating you (for dinner) and you're still playing hard to get :3
m: Because you're not handsome, have no car and fat wallet :)
M: *sigh* Hard truths.
This is not exactly the most interesting thing that's happening and is in fact, old news, but I thought it was worth a mention.
Our Prime Minister finally admitted that not all wards are treated equally because those that vote for Opposition members get fewer public upgrades.
PM Lee's reply was, "The answer is that there has to be a distinction. Because the PAP wards supported the Government and the policies which delivered these good things."
He said that while basic goods such roads, transportation, housing, healthcare and defence apply to Singaporeans, the extras — which come down to the upgrading programmes — is a national programme.
"Between the people who voted and supported the programme and the government, and the people who didn't, I think if we went and put yours before the PAP constituencies, it would be an injustice,"
Every I wanted to say has already been said by the people quoted in the article.
"Upgrading is not delivered solely based on policies. It is driven by money from the reserves. The money comes from the people and not from PAP."
"I thought that as PM, he was there to represent ALL the people, without favour or preference. He is not the PM of just those he voted for, but for each and every Singapore citizen, including those who did not vote for him or his party... How can the PM say that if you vote for PAP, you get nice chocolate cake and coffee, but if you vote for other party you only get water and biscuit?"
Yea, it's nonsense. Does he even remember the National Pledge?
- We, the citizens of Singapore,
- pledge ourselves as one united people,
- regardless of race, language or religion,
- to build a democratic society
- based on justice and equality
- so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and
- progress for our nation.
Nowhere does it mention anything about benefiting just the PAP and their supporters.
And what about those citizens in the Opposition wards who voted for the PAP?
Just discovered that there are ways to shop in overseas stores and get them to ship to Singapore no matter what. Pretty handy since most online shops are kinda biased towards Asia in terms of shipping policies.
First is comGateway. It's pretty expensive since, if I'm not wrong, it uses DHL, and DHL is known for its high prices (and reliability). In addition to the usual shipping, it also charges for Fuel Surcharges and Service Fees, and the Fuel Surcharge has been rising constantly (13% of shipping cost atm).
Not so inclined to use this service.
Another is VPost, which I believe is a service provided by Singpost. It appears cheaper and has multiple offers depending on what you're paying with. For example, I'm using a DBS Visa Platinum Debit, so I can get the Concierge service for free. VPost apparently can make orders on your behalf, and that's what they call "Concierge service".
Other promotions include half price for first shipments of new customers.
Overall, it's still expensive to ship stuff to Singapore. I tried to buy 9 t-shirts from 6dollarshirts.com and have it ship to the US address in Portland, Oregon given by VPost before letting VPost ship it to me.
The result? Each shirt would have cost me around S$15 net after shipping and the currency conversion charge. I can easily find t-shirts at this price in Singapore.
The only way I can have it cheaper would be to get only their US$2.95 "Mystery" shirts, which I'm guessing will cost me around $5-7 including all the other costs, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to wear those outside. Obviously they're going to give me those with crappy designs that aren't selling.
Then again, I should spend more time on Mturk again. Amazon has stuff that is kind of hard to find here.
Can't play Mythos now because they're having an extended maintenance together with a wipe. This is a last-minute wipe in order to make drastic changes to their servers to improve performance. Unfortunately, there will be another wipe that has already been scheduled to happen just before the actual release on the 26th of April (28th for those who didn't buy their "early access" box), forcing anyone who plays the game before to lose everything again.
Not going to play anymore until the 28th. Or maybe not even then, since the exams will be close.
So I was looking at the fixed deposit rates the other day (aka "timed deposits") and I realized there were some banks in Singapore that had higher rates than Hong Leong Finance. The thing is that they were all foreign banks, eg the ICICI bank, which is currently offering a whopping 1.65% for 3-year deposits of S$100k and above.
No other banks are offering such a high rate for any amount below a million dollars.
Now I'm wondering if it's better to have my fixed deposits there instead.
What are the cons of fixed deposits in foreign banks?
So today was the first time I had to speak to someone from the factory in China. It was hard to understand what he was saying as he was speaking in Cantonese.
I know I've said I can speak Cantonese (and recently, even type a bit) but
1) my Cantonese vocabulary is severely limited due to a lack of use
2) he had got a significant accent because he was not a native speaker
What I'm trying to say is that I had a lot of difficulty understanding him.
First, I had to think a bit to recall what "QQ" means. I mean, c'mon, "QQ" can mean plenty of things in different parts of the world!
For example, in Taiwan, "QQ" means "al dente" which is for describing food. In contrast, people in China use this term to refer to instant messaging, as in MSN, ICQ, that sort of thing. The third meaning is used in the English-speaking online communities to mean whining, raging or crying because QQ looks like tearing eyes.
Second, I forgot what 传真meant. The last time I heard someone say this was probably back when my father was still alive. Since then everyone I know has simply used the English term "fax".
Because of that and his accent, I had to think for an embarrassingly long amount of time (which to him, was a really long silence that made him mistake it for a problem with the phone line) to comprehend what he was saying.
Life ain't easy. I guess that's what they mean by being "outside the comfort zone".
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