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Worth spending 10 minutes reading it..... Yahoo news: 3 Big Money Mistakes Singaporeans in Their 30s are Making When you’re in your twenties, if you aren’t lucky enough to have a trust fund or a business to inherit, chances are you’re either scrambling to find a job or to find yourself. But you should have everything figured out by the time you’re 30… right? I’m not sure if it’s something in the water, but it seems like lots of the 30-somethings around me still haven’t quite gotten their act together. In fact, despite earning a lot more than they were in their 20s, it seems like more and more 30-somethings are getting mired in debt. I have a sneaking suspicion the following money mistakes have something to do with it. Let’s find out. Spending too much on their weddingsSpeak with a typical Singaporean 30-something in a relationship and there’s an 80% chance they’ll start talking about marriage and complaining about the high cost of wedding banquets. In fact, it’s become standard practice in Singapore to spend an average of $50,000 on a wedding, with many going up to $90,000. Truth be told, many of the grooms-to-be I’ve spoken to haven’t even been that keen on splashing out on a lavish wedding, gloomily stating that it’s their fiancees who want a dream wedding and they have no choice but to go along with it. Shane, a 30-year-old bank analyst, is going to tie the knot next year. “While I would prefer to have a smaller, more inexpensive wedding, my fiancee has a very large family and wants to have a hotel wedding banquet, so I’m bracing myself for the cost,” he says. Falling deeper into consumer debt instead of digging themselves out of itIn countries where young people move out of their parents’ homes during university or at least once they get their first jobs, the 20s are a time of being broke and paying off student loans, while in their 30s most start enjoying greater financial stability. In Singapore, however, for many people the opposite is true, as they continue to live under their parents’ roofs until well into their 20s. It is only when they start working, which can be as late as the mid to late 20s for those who have advanced degrees or males who do national service, that they are suddenly forced to bear the financial responsibility of supporting aged parents or purchasing property. That, and the persistent lifestyle inflation that dogs the young and upwardly mobile, has resulted in high levels of consumer debt amongst 30-somethings. Penelope, a 34-year-old HR executive, has recently run into cash flow issues. She goes on overseas vacations twice a year during the school holidays together with her husband and three kids to locations such as London and LA. Each time, the family spends close to $10,000. While she was mostly credit card-debt free in her 20s, she now has a credit card balance which she rolls over each month. “My family has grown, but my husband and I continue to be the only ones bringing in money. As a result, our spending has increased quite a bit.” she says. It’s not just those with kids who face credit card debt. Albert, a 31-year-old bank executive, carries about $10,000 worth of credit card debt, which is more than 2 months’ worth of salary. He survives by paying only the minimum sum each month. Most of his debt was chalked up while spending on food, drinks and entertainment. In fact, a recent report showed that one in five credit card holders in Singapore now pays only the minimum sum each month. And a fast-growing segment of the population with revolving debt consists of women aged 30 and above. Orchard Road might have something to do with it…. Overcommitting to houses and carsIn your 20s, most of your peers are still living at home and taking the MRT. But once you hit the big 3-oh, you look around and realise that more and more of your friends are buying property and driving cars. This sudden shift has led to many 30-somethings committing to property and car purchases that are really a bit more than they can afford. Many of the 30-somethings I’ve spoken to who’ve recently started paying for their own properties have admitted that their finances are tight and leave no room for error or accident. While the TDSR framework aims to stop people from overstretching themselves, it fails to consider their day-to-day expenses, which can amount to quite a bit. In addition to paying her home loan installments, Belinda, a 30-year-old bank executive, also gives her parents $1,000 a month, spends about $1,000 a month on her car and has personal expenses of about $2,000 a month. She depleted most of her savings to make the downpayment on her new condo unit and is now treading dangerous waters. “Basically, I can’t afford to stop working for many years to come,” she says. “I’m not really worried about losing my job as things are going well at work, but then again anything is possible.” (Names have been changed to protect the identity of respondents.) Link: https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/3-big-money-mistakes-singaporeans-160000290.html

Video: http://razor.tv/video/493414/how-to-deal-w...eckless-drivers Speeding, hit-and-runs and sudden cuts and turns - these are some cases of reckless driving which have made news headlines over the past few weeks. Videos of these incidents have been posted and shared online, thanks to motorists' increasing use of car cameras. Several members of the public have also been sending their videos to citizen-journalism website Stomp to alert others of errant drivers. The official figures for inconsiderate and careless driving are indeed alarming. In 2012, Traffic Police reported 243 cases of reckless driving, which is a 50 per cent jump from the 163 cases in 2011. The number of speeding offences in the first six months of this year has also increased from 109,960 to 129,578 - an 18 per cent rise compared to the same period in 2012. Mr Eugene Lee, a driving instructor at the Singapore Safety Driving Centre, points out that one mistake Singapore drivers often make is to jam their brakes suddenly and excessively whenever they spot a potentially dangerous situation ahead. But "by braking, they will cause danger to others", he adds. So, what should you do when you encounter a dangerous driver? Watch the above RazorTV clip to find out, and click here to see the top mistakes by Singapore drivers. Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/...s-drivers-the-r

We are living in such a sad world.... The horrors of the civil war in Syria are captured in this poignant photo of a frightened 4-year-old girl raising her hands in surrender — thinking that the long-lens camera pointed at her is a gun. Turkish photographer Osman Sagirli snapped the picture of little Adi Hudea in December at the Atmen refugee camp on Syria’s border with Turkey. Gaza-based photojournalist Nadia Abu Shaban last week tweeted the heart-rending picture of Adi — her eyes conveying a mixture of sadness and fear as she pursed her lips tightly. “Thought he has a weapon not a camera so she gave up!” Abu Shaban wrote. The posting has been retweeted 18,000 times, eliciting an emotional outpouring across the globe. “I’m actually weeping seeing this. We’ve made this planet a horrible place, haven’t we?” tweeted user @cosmetopia. Adi has been living with her traumatized mom and three siblings at the camp since 2012, when her dad died in the Hama province massacre that claimed about 200 lives. At first, some Twitter users believed the lost-innocence photo may have been staged. But a user on the Imgur photo-sharing site traced it back to the Turkiye newspaper, where it was published in January, the BBCreported. The photographer insisted it was authentic. “I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon,” Sagirli told the BBC. He explained that normally, a child who is unaccustomed to having a photo taken will either “run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera.” It wasn’t until after he examined the picture, said Sagirli, that he realized his subject was terrified because she had seen so many weapons in her young life that the cameras became a weapon in her mind. The UN has called Syria’s five-year civil war the “world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe,” with an estimated 220,000 killed and more than 12 million in need of aid. About 5.6 million are children.

Interesting read from Xin MSN http://lifestyle.xin.msn.com/en/worklife/c...eetings#image=1

from Yahoo: Dr Mahathir regrets Internet freedom The Malaysian Insider

Let's say there is a screw up at work due to your mistake. Will you admit it to your subordinates or move on as quickly as possible? Does admitting fault make you a better leader or diminish your authority?

Why can't we be more responsible for our mistakes, like Japan? TOKYO: The president and five other top executives of Japan's biggest mobile phone operator will take pay cuts to apologise for a series of network troubles, NTT DoCoMo said on Friday. The firm admitted that it has struggled to deal with growing data traffic as smartphones boom in popularity, and pledged fresh investment to tackle the issue. President Ryuji Yamada will have his remuneration reduced by 20 percent for three months while the other executives will take a 10 percent cut over the same period. "I deeply apologise to our customers for the huge trouble," Yamada told a news conference. The cuts were "a clear means of taking responsibility for causing the series of network malfunctions, and leakage of personal information," NTT DoCoMo said in a statement. The company's most recent network problem came on Wednesday after the company renewed equipment to boost data processing capability, leaving 2.52 million subscribers offline for several hours. In December, it suffered disruptions to its smartphone e-mail service, leading to a system glitch in which e-mail senders' addresses were replaced by those of other users. The firm plans to invest 164 billion yen ($2.1 billion) by March 2015 to beef up its network and try to stabilise operations "in line with the rapid increase in the number of smartphone users," it said. NTT DoCoMo is trying to grab a bigger slice of Japan's expanding smartphone market, but faces stiff competition from rivals Softbank and KDDI, both of which offer Apple's hugely popular iPhone, which it does not. The firm, which is part of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group, separately said its net profit for the nine months to December fell 11.1 percent from a year earlier to 394.6 billion yen. Operating profit dropped 1.9 percent to 743.8 billion yen for the period on revenue of 3.17 trillion yen, down 1.1 percent. NTT DoCoMo slightly downgraded its full-year net profit forecast from 514 billion yen to 474 billion yen due to corporate taxation changes.

I just heard these two five minutes apart while I am bored manning the booth... 1. You want to go urine... It should be....You want to go and urinate or you want to go and pass urine... 2. Can you fetch me to the airport... You never fetch anybody TO anywhere. You always fetch from, you TAKE to. So to be correct it should be.... Can you TAKE me to the airport (please) or can you fetch me from the airport please. Although in the latter case, a much nicer phrasing would be "Can you pick me up from the the airport please". By rights, fetch should be used as ...go from here, pick something up and then bring it back here. (exactly the sequence of events as when a dog plays "fetch"). So you could be sitting at home, and your wife might ask..."can you please fetch my mother from the airport please?" - in which case you should always say no anyway, afterall - who wants to see their mother in law?

Now Honest Mistakes are becoming more common .... even Obama use it .... BUT ... "I think that all of these were honest mistakes, but ultimately, there's no excuse for them." Obama takes responsibility

SINGAPORE: Officers from Singapore's Home Team are reminded that mistakes must be addressed and not swept under the carpet. Speaking at his Ministry's National Day observance ceremony on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said officers must take ownership and account for their mistakes. His call came in the wake of incidents involving the Home Affairs Ministry which have brought about public scrutiny. These include the escape of Jemaah Islamiyah leader, Mas Selamat Kastari, from Whitley Road Detention Centre earlier this year. Mr Wong said: "Some of you may be concerned that you would be penalised harshly if you make a mistake, so much so that your focus is on avoiding mistakes, rather than in making positive arrests and detections. I do appreciate and understand your concerns. Let me assure all Home Team officers that we will always observe the need for pragmatic balance in all that we do. "But I also assure you that how the officers responsible will be taken to task will always be fair and just. Commanders will ultimately be liable and assessed on the quality of their leadership as reflected in the performance of their officers, as well as the manner in which they address problems and adversity." On a separate note, several public-spirited citizens were commended on Thursday for their role in preventing crime. Mr Wong said there was a marginal one per cent increase in crime cases for the first half of the year. Housebreaking and related crimes dipped by 22 per cent this year, compared to the same period in 2007. "While fire calls have increased fractionally, the number of fires within residential premises fell. Fires involving household contents and unattended cooking fell by 23 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. "Civil Defence Force's preventive education efforts, together with the National Fire and Emergency Preparedness Council and its community partners, seem to have paid off. Equally encouraging is the 11 per cent fall in fires involving non-residential buildings, including commercial and industrial premises," he said. The drug abuse situation in Singapore has also seen an improvement. But Mr Wong said the Central Narcotics Bureau needs to keep an eye on inhalant abuse, especially among the youths in school

http://www.mingpaonews.com/20070203/gca1h.htm

Just thought I'd add some light hearted material. I was browsing through this month's issue of the Wheels Asia Magazine and noticed these mistakes. I haven't read through the whole mag, but if you spot some more, post here and share the laugh! *Picture - An Aston Martin that takes forever in the century run. Most expensive car in the world.