How much Do I need to own a car in Singapore

This is a very common question in Singapore. You can browse through popular forum like hardwarezone and you will notice that there is a sticky post in the car section because every now and then, someone will ask for advices on how much do I need to earn before I own a car in Singapore..!!!

Everyone plans their budget and everyone have commitments. Could be phone bills, renovation loans, allowances to your parents etc etc. 

For I can only give you my perspective, it is up to you to decide whether if it is applicable to you. 

Like any newly wed couples, we got our Reno loans, bills and other monthly misc credit card bills piling up every month, waiting for me to clear. 

When my wife and I decided to buy a car, it was purely for convenience sake. We travel to our parents place 4 times a week after work and grocery shopping is always a chore since we had to take the train/bus to the central of the estate. So anyhow, we worked out math and we decided to take the chance.

Please note that the below is based on a resale car of 8 years old, 1.5L:

Monthly loan : $900 

Annual Road tax : $556 ($46 per mth)

Monthly Petrol : $280 (after disc)

Monthly Season Parking : $160 (multi storey + office hdb parking)

Monthly Insurance : $142 (if you know how to choose the correct insurance, FYI- I am a first time driver)

Monthly Cash card top-up : $90 (send wife to work + visit to parents place)

All in all, the magic round number is $1,600. Of course there are cheaper car model. You can look out for QQ or picanto. But, $1,600 should be the figure if you plan to own one.

Of course you got your car servicing/maintenance which I have yet to factor in but if you choose a reliable car, it shouldn't require much maintenance. Just some parts here and there. 

Downpayment as well! So I suggest for couples who plan on buying a car, buy it when you receive your year end bonus or both of you plan a 1year saving agreement and each save $500 per month to pay the Downpayment.

To own a car these days is a luxury. So I am considered fortunate enough to be able to afford one. Praise God. 

Till then..

How to appeal for rejected short term visit visa to Singapore

I've got a long distance cousin who wanted to visit Singapore recently. So I tried to apply for him via SAVE (Submission of Application for Visa Electronically) , with me as his sponsor/local contact. The cost for the application is SGD$30, regardless whether the application got rejected or approved.

So after 1 working day, I received an email from ICA, telling me that his visa was rejected. (Reminder: please remember to check your spam box because that's where the mail landed in)

So if you wish to appeal for the rejected visa, here's what you need to do:

Draft an email to ica_save_helpdesk@ica.gov.sg with the title : Appeal for entry visa application

Do provide Visa ref no. and reiterate your appeal reason in the email. Short and sweet will be sufficient.

If you do not want to encounter further delays in your appeal, here are the important items you need to attach in the email:

1) screenshot of applicant passport

2) screenshot of applicant passport photo

3) screenshot of local contact passport biodata page

4) screenshot of local contact NRIC front and back

It is said that the processing time will take up to 14 days. So fingers cross and I hope your appeal will be successfully.

Till then..

Trion:Z Review - Negative ions

Been wearing the Trion:Z band for 2 months ever since I bought it from Tokyu hands. Got a mix experience wearing it but overall, I can't really say whether the band works exactly as how it should but I do enjoy some fair share of experience wearing it

The Trion:Z is one of the cheapest model, selling at $29.90 and it is said to have about 200 negative ion output per cubic centimeter. At 200, is not high. Some bands can go as high as 1400. 

Negative ions are said to have health benefits and makes one feel good. Imagine being in front of a waterfall and the water hitting the rock at the bottom of the waterfall. You will feel an energy which is created when the water hits the rock. Those are negative ions from Mother Nature. Similar to surrounding yourself by trees or siting on the sands along east coast park and stare out at the sea.

After 2 months of wearing it, here are some of my personal findings :

o My muscles will not feel as sore in the morning whenever I workout the day before at the gym.

o I wake up fresh, feel more energetic at work and I feel good about myself during my first 2 weeks wearing it

o I experimented once not wearing the Trion:Z band to bed and I find myself not waking up fresh. Literally dragging myself out of bed

o After 2 weeks, I felt like I was back to my normal self, no good feel anymore, it was as though my body was immune to the benefits or the band has ran out of negative ions.

o I tried not wearing the Trion:Z for 2 weeks and wore it back again. Initially, I felt relax and good but slowly I felt otherwise. 

I'm not too sure if the negative ion output is too low for me, considering the fact that I work out 3-4 times a week. It is said that the band's output of ion will not deplete but it seems like it did on me.. 

So I'll let you decide. Share with me your experience too if you wear it before. Perhaps we can exchange notes together

Till then...

Interesting Facts about Singapore

Came across an article that wrote some interesting facts about Singapore and I want to share with you guys!

 o Singapore population : 5.48M

 o GDP : US$307.9B

 o Ethnic groups :

      Chinese - 74%

      Malay - 13%

      Indian - 9%

      Others - 4%

  o Smartphone users : 7M

  o Online Shoppers : 3M

  o internet Users : 4M

  o Rank #2 IP Protection

  o Rank #4 Global Financial Centre

  o Rank #10 fastest internet speed 

  o There are 28k taxis on the island

  o Changi Airport connects Singapore to 320 cities across 80 countries

Till then..

Interesting startups in Singapore

Not sure why but I recently started to get interested in startups. I mean entrepreneurs/ technoprenurs - brainy people, with ideas and very determine to get what they visualized into reality. You don't just stop there, they continue to innovate and improve further.

One example is Friendster. Is no difference compared to Facebook but look how the company has steered from just social platform to news and games.

The digital business is risky and you need fundings, lots of it in order to grow. You need to be fast too. Digital Businesses compete against time. If you don't innovate, you will be left behind. Because in the digital business, especially Classifieds, there can only be room for One.

Fastacash 

Is an interesting concept, where they leverage on social media platforms to handle money transaction. You can transfer your money and notify your friends/transactor via Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp etc.

Fastjobs

Providing blue collar jobs readily on the go, the app will link candidates to the employers directly via contact number or email

Rocket uncle

Iogistics platform providing courier service with a touch of your fingertip. They have a network of dispatchers , ready to take on your job and you can track your delivery real-time. 

Carousell

Finally an app that allows you to buy/sell your old clothes. Back in the days where we use gumtree and locanto to sell our items, carousell has since taken the online classifieds by storm, becoming one of the fastest growing user base in Singapore

If you know of any interesting startups, please share with me too!

Till then..

What is organizational development

After running through videos on youtubes and articles online, I kind of understand what Operational Development, OD is somewhat about.

OD primarily is about streamlining performance and it describes the process model for strategic change. It's focus is on developing the organisation, rather than to develop the staff.

Quotes from Wikipedia : "it is worth understanding what OD is not. It is not training, personal development, team development or team building, human-resource developement, learning and development or a part of HR - although it is often mistakenly understood as some or all of these."

Google actually hires OD consultants to assess, redesign and evaluate work process, need for managing strategic change and input of organizational development.

The main objective is to promote organizational readiness to meet changes.

Management must be willing to go below the water line, sacrificing short term gain to enhance the long term gain and verifying implementations.

As for employees, the company must receive support of mindset shift from the employees, which I am referring to the attitude towards the organisation changes.

Strategic changes must be done in phases and not all at once. 

Evaluate -> review -> adaptation

Hopefully, in the coming months, the things I will be doing, reflect what I wrote above..

Till then..

Interview questions to ask

Having had an opportunity to be a Hiring manager for 3 years, I managed to interview a number of candidates who are keen to work in a big local organization. Meet many kinds of people from all walks of life. Hired some and missed some.

My giveaway to any interviewees who are preparing for an interview is : Ask Question.

Never, I repeat, NEVER leave the interview room without asking a single question. Even if it is a dead and straight forward job, ask something. I'm sure there are a thing or two that the interview missed out since there are so many things to share. 

So, I came up with 5 simple general questions that you can ask if you happen to encounter brain freeze during an interview.

Noticed that I try to disassociate myself with the position. Like how I will mention "is this position ....." So you try to see/ask questions from a 3rd party angle. This will make you look more professional.

o Is this a replacement position?

o May I know what is the Company's direction in the coming year?

o Who will I be working with if I am employed?

o How will the performance of this position be measured? (KPI)

o What is the career prospect for this position?

Japan Premium Detergent Gel Ball

It was in one of the provision stores along the street of Tokyo when we chanced upon a detergent gel ball that gives off a very soft and smoothing scent to our nose.. We bought a box back to Singapore and it has since made us wanting more..!

It take just 1 gel ball to wash the entire 9kg worth of clothes and the fragrance stays long lasting on the clothes.

We went to Japanese supermarkets in Singapore such as Mei-ya, isetan, Japan Home and Tokyu hands but we couldn't find it anywhere. Of course, you can find them on Amazon and rakuten but the shipment can take up to 1 month before the product arrived.

So I decided to drop P&G an email. Let's hope that they even bother to reply me. 

If you happen to visit Japan, buy back a small packet and give it a try! I heard it is quite popular among the Japanese homes too. Highly recommended!

Till then..

Red Star Restaurant - Dim Sum Affair

Brought my family to Red Star Restaurant yesterday because my parents wasn't too satisfied with their meal at Tim Ho Wan last week. With the queue and the hype brought around by the media, you thought you're going to taste awesome traditional dim sum? Nope, Didn't happened.

So we drove over to Chin Swee road and thankfully, when we got there, the queue was only until the lift area. The queue looked very intimidating, thankfully it was quite fast. We queued for about 30mins and we managed to get a table. 

For those of you that have not heard of Red Star, Red Star serve one of the best authentic and traditional dim sum (in my opinion) daily from 7am to 3pm. You will need to go early otherwise be prepared to join the queue that can go as long as 2 storey down. The settings look like an 80s traditional Chinese restaurant. Waiters and managers there looked as though they have been working there for decades, experienced and sharp. 

You will be given a yellow card before you can start grabbing your food. The waitress will push a trolley filled with dim sum and you can choose what you want to eat! Just hand her the yellow card and she will give you a chop to acknowledge your purchase.

A meal for 4 set me back $114, inclusive of gst. I think the price is slightly steep? But if you only go there once in a while, I think it is quite worth it.

I especially love their lobster ball, their char siew and char siew pau..! Must try if you are going to try out red star! Below is the address:

54 Chin Swee Road, level 7. Singapore 160054

Till then..

Ghost Adventures Season 11

Ghost Adventures Crew

My wife and myself are HUGE fan of Ghost adventures. Watching Ghost Adventures is one of our weekend entertainment where we both become couch potato for the entire afternoon before we head out for our weekend dinner.

If you are a huge fan of paranormal series, this is a show you MUST watch. The show is heading into their 11th season. Started humbly by the creator, Zak Bagan, together with his friends Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin, they went onto an adventure where they spend the entire night locked down in the haunted place, trying to find answers to the after life.

It's been said that the new season will start on the 22nd August, Travel Channel if you have Starhub/Singtel Mio box. If not, you can also check out Youtube.

Below is one of my favourite episode. Super creepy and after watching almost all the adventures, I love this the best.

Watch them when you are free!

Till then..


Check out my other posts too!

Pebble Time Watch Review - 6 things you want to know

5 things you might want to know about BPL 2015/16

Pebble Time Watch Review - 6 things you want to know

I have been using the new Pebble Time Watch for 2 months now. Got it off from someone at Carousell for $280 as I couldn't get it in time before kickstarter ended.

I must say it blended into my lifestyle very well. It is a nice simple looking watch. Didn't have to pay a bomb for a smart watch, considering the fact that the Apple watch cost 2x more expensive
It has an average of 5 day life battery and the watch is compatible to both IOS and Android! Have you ever come across those China smart watches in the market that claims to be compatible to both platforms only to have a small * which says "compatible to IOS but cannot receive Whatsapp/facebook/bleah bleah bleah notifications* WHUATTT??! So what's the point? Everyone is using Whatapps to chat nowadays.. Fortunately, Pebble doesn't have such issue :D

The new Pebble Time Watch kinda does the job enough for me to forgo my beloved Gucci watch and I haven't looked back since. It provides direct notifications from the phone, without needing to take my phone out multiple times a day from my pocket. With a twist of my wrist, the watch lights up and TADA! Notifications right on my wrist. Reply or not to reply..? Hmm... Maybe later..

However, it can become a little annoying when you are in a meeting and your colleagues keep glancing at their smart watch. YOU THOUGHT that glancing at your phone during meeting was rude... Think again! In our society as we age, humans begin to accept the social norm that glancing at your phone during a meeting was okay..with the smart watch NOW, humans begins to think that glancing at your watch IS the NEW RUDE..! or annoying, at least for me..

The new generation Pebble Watch is also my best companion during my workout session. With Runkeeper on my wrist, I don't have to wait for my 5/10 minutes interval to know my Speed and how far I've clocked!

So after 2 months of using the Pebble Time Watch, here are 6 things you might want to know:


o I cannot bring myself to NOT wear my Pebble watch when I go out. It is almost like it's stuck onto
   my hand...


o It is a topic starter. People come up to you and chat up when they notice your watch


o I downloaded more watch face than the apps. Although Pebble have its own ecosystem, there ain't
   many apps that really caught my eye.


o The best feature of a smart watch is the push notification. enough said


o The background light is not as bright as it was marketed. Pretty disappointing but at least they
   rolled out the latest patch to improve on the issue.


o I wish Apple opens up their notification API and allow other smart watches to reply simple
   messages which I highly doubt Apple would do that...

                            Can you tell the difference between a Pebble and an Apple watch?

5 things you might want to know about BPL 2015/16

YES! Finally after more than 3 months of break! The Barclays Premier League is back!

For the record, I have always been a red devil fan ever since my extended family decided to get together one day and watch the Manchester Derby match back eRrrr... in 1993? Anyhow, I can't wait for the season to start! Is back to Weekends potato couch nua-ing session and the wife will just have to sit beside me and catch the match together! **evil laugh**

Below are 5 things you might want to know about the upcoming BPL 2015/16


o This will be the last season the Premier League will be known as Barclays Premier League.
    Barclays have decided not to renew their sponsorship. hMmm.. How about DBS Premier League 
    instead for a change..?


o  2015/16 will be Arsene Wenger's 20th Season! Considering the fact that Sir 
    Alex Ferguson managed Man Utd for 27 years...20 is an awesome number! C'mon Arsene! 7 
    more years to go!


o  3 Newly Promoted team to look out for - Watford, Norwhich City, Bournemouth! hmm..been a 
    long time bournemouth...


o  Radamel Falcao will be wearing blue instead! Don't be surprise if he doesn't score for Chelsea


o  Defending Premier League champions have NEVER lost their first game of the season. will 
    Chelsea be the first..?


If you are also a Man Utd fan, below are the Match fixtures for the upcoming season:

August 8: Tottenham Hotspur (H)

August 15: Aston Villa (A)

August 22: Newcastle United (H)

August 29: Swansea City (A)

September 12: Liverpool (H)

September 19: Southampton (A)

September 26: Sunderland (H)

October 3: Arsenal (A)

October 17: Everton (A)

October 24: Manchester City (H)

October 31: Crystal Palace (A)

November 7: West Bromwich Albion (H)

November 21: Watford (A)

November 28: Leicester City (A)

December 5: West Ham United (H)

December 12: Bournemouth (A)

December 19: Norwich City (H)

December 26: Stoke City (A)

December 28: Chelsea (H)

January 2: Swansea City (H)

January 13: Newcastle United (A)

January 16: Liverpool (A)

January 23: Southampton (H)

February 2: Stoke City (H)

February 6: Chelsea (A)

February 13: Sunderland (A)

February 27: Arsenal (H)

March 1: Watford (H)

March 5: West Bromwich Albion (A)

March 12: Crystal Palace (H)

March 19: Manchester City (A)

April 2: Everton (H)

April 9: Tottenham Hotspur (A)

April 16: Aston Villa (H)

April 23: West Ham United (A)

April 30: Leicester City (H)

May 7: Norwich City (A)

May 15: Bournemouth (H)

Signing off with a hilarious video of Ivanovic

till then!

SG50 - Singapore 50th Birthday

Happy birthday Singapore..!

Everyday, I will tell myself how fortunate I am to be living in this country. My 2 years of national service have somehow cultivated a strong sense of patriotism in me. And I for one, will never take the peace and stability of Singapore for granted.

I LOVE MY COUNTRY!
I am always proud to tell everyone that I am a Singaporean. Have you ever been to other countries and chat up with people on the streets? Some will tell you how envious they are of you, being able to speak good English, able to live in a vibrant and stable country. All these made only possible because of the foresight of our forefathers, who laid a strong foundation right from the beginning.

OUR LITTLE RED DOT,..!

Credit to the designer

Well, SG50 gave MOST Singaporeans a good reason to celebrate and some companies commemorate the year by rewarding their employees !!! So who are the lucky employees? Put your hands uPp!


SG50 Rewards/Bonus 

 UOB - S$1,000 + extra day leave

 DBS - S$1,000

 SMRT - S$500 worth of shopping vouchers

 Singapore Airlines - S$500

 Public Service Division - S$500

 NTUC Fairprice - S$200 worth of shopping vouchers




As for my company, everyone got 1 day off.. which is not bad, considering the fact that some companies did not give anything at all *must be positive!*
Focus on objective rememberrrr..!!  

If you know of any companies that gave other SG50 rewards to their employees, do share em' on the comments below!

What is National Day without our favorite NDP song....? Here is a flash mob on our beloved SMRT train - Home..

Credits to One Song One Singapore

till then..

First Post!

Hello !

Thank you so much for reading my blog.

The reason I started this blog was because I felt that my life is starting to get a little boring..I am getting a little lazy.... and I hope by creating a blog, I will be more willing to get out of my house and start snapping pictures and allow myself to do some self reflection at the end of every day. *wOoohoo*

a little bit about myself....
I am happily married to my beautiful wife for 2 years now. Married Life is fun when you marry your best friend. We dated for 6 years before I got on my knees and *tada! Here I am...MARRIED --- enough said

Some of you probably wonder.. hMmm.. Lazy Durian? what does that mean? Well.. basically it describe ME...! Fierce looking, rough and hard on the outside, but if you get to know me better, the yellow flesh inside aWwww,, yUmmy! But some, just don't like the smell and wouldn't bother to try the inside. They just walk away....

Hopefully, this blog can be a motivation for me to get out of my lazy self  and explore outside!

Objectives:

 o Stay Positive!
 o Fill my life with beautiful events
 o Be more aware of things around me
 o Make more friends


till then..!