Life Sucks

How things have changed. In the past, there were few pawnshop. Most of them like this one here are imposing looking with iron bars, high counter and old man peering down at the customers.  I have walked past many of these pawnshop and thank goodness, despite our family situation when we were young, we never had to resort to them to get money. Over time, the number of pawnshops went down as young people shun them because of the stigma and turned to easy bank loans. Then in the past few years, a new breed of pawnshops have sprouted. No longer confined to the older city neighbourhood of Chinatown, Jalan Besar and Geylang, these new breed of pawnshops are in the HDB heartlands and shopping malls. These pawnshops have glitzy shopfront more like jewellery store and are fronted by celebrities making it sound cool to pawn things. And judging by the number of them mushrooming all over, it is very profitable too. At least for the pawnshop owner. Along with the pawnsh...

Most of us Singaporean remember the old National Stadium - the beautiful field, the 4 lights at the corners, the row and row of seats and of course National Day parade. Well the stadium is gone now but there is a project to save some part of it. The wooden benches have been recycled and made into various designs although I am not sure whether this is just a once off project or a commercial project. Anyway, here are some of the interesting ideas: Some of the design are real nice, some are plain impractical and some are kinda simple. The benches are currently on display at the URA Centre at Maxwell Road.

So we were in Muar for the food and the run of course. Before we left, we were told there was this famous food street. I had expected something akin to the famous Glutton Corner of Penang but what I got was more like a back alley of food stalls. It was a big letdown. We arrived in Muar around lunch time and promptly went in search of food. We came to this coffee shop at the corner of the food street and so we proceeded to order what we thought was the famous food there. Sadly, the char kway teow was too dry. The roast meat was so so and nothing to rave about. The otar was plain tasteless. Perhaps the best of the lot was the pig intestine soup with salted vegetables. Ok maybe in our haste, we got the wrong place so we promised to come back to the food streets for real food.

Recently there was this survey on service staff commissioned by the 'Go the Extra Mile for Service (GEMS) Up' project, a joint movement involving SPRING Singapore, the Singapore Tourism Board, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency, the Institute of Service Excellence at the Singapore Management University, and the National Trades Union Congress. The result of the survey shows that 56 per cent said workers in places such as restaurants, transport, shops and hotels performed "below expectations" when it came to doing more. Why am I not surprised? My personal experience bears this out. Recently, a group of us went for dinner. It was about 8.30 pm and we were at Citylink Mall. We walked into a ¾ empty Japanese spaghetti restaurant. As far as our eyes could see, there were only 3 tables occupied and the staff were cleaning the place. The group of us asked for a table for 7. One of the staff told us to wait. Initially I thought we had to wait while they join the smal...

Why do people buy houses near MRT for the convenience but after buying that    cry father cry mother about the noise from the train and the station! MRT station announcement too loud, train pulling in too loud, people talking on the train platform too loud!  http://sgforums.com/forums/2080/topics/406637 Why do people buy homes near to facilities and then complain about the crowd and the noise? Just like    a neighbour at my old place. He had bought an unit on the ground floor near to the children playground and swimming pool so that his children can be near them.    And guess what, he then started complaining about the noise from the other children playing there!  Why do people buy houses near nature reserve and then got all flustered about forest creatures invading their homes.  http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/ava-moves-control-monkey-problem-bukit-timah-20130429 .  Now I am very sure that t...