The_King

Emperor Chicken with salad

SINGAPORE: Kay's Singapore is investigating how worms got into a cup of its instant pasta, after a consumer complained on Sunday (Jan 20) that he found them crawling inside the product. A Channel NewsAsia reader, who wanted to be known only as Mr Yang, sent photos and a video showing worms inside the cup, which he bought from a Sheng Siong supermarket near Commonwealth MRT station. Mr Yang said he noticed this after opening the lid of the mushroom chicken-flavoured Kay’s Cup Pasta. He got a refund from Sheng Siong after returning the product to the supermarket. "Upon the customer’s feedback, we have examined the products on our shelves and informed the supplier of the incident," said a Sheng Siong spokesperson. He added that all three products have since been removed from its shelves. There are three flavours of Kay's Cup Pasta. According to the website of Kay's Singapore, it is the "first in Singapore" to manufacture instant pasta. In response to Channel NewsAsia's queries, Kay's Singapore said: "We are still in the midst of investigating this matter, but as far as we can know, it may be due to some leakage in cup sealing issue that allow the worms to be crawling into the cup." It added that it has not received other complaints about worms in its products. "Quality control is our top priority and in order to give our consumers peace of mind, we are working closely with Sheng Siong supermarket to have all the cup pasta recalled back and all recalled products would be disposed of. We will also be investigating this matter further," said the company. Channel NewsAsia has reached out to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority for more information. Source: CNA/ic(gs)

Water cleaning firm Hyflux faced its creditors last Friday for the second time since it filed for bankruptcy protection, in a bid to rally support to carry through what has proven to be a tough rescue deal. No definitive answers were given when investors repeatedly asked how much money they could expect to recover. Only one new figure was shared by EY, the financial adviser: In a liquidation scenario, only senior unsecured creditors, namely banks and note holders, will get paid. They can expect a recovery rate of 3.8 to 8.7 per cent. Subordinated creditors such as perpetual and preference shareholders will get nothing. Hyflux chief Olivia Lum opened two town hall sessions at Hyflux Innovation Centre last Friday by addressing why she was not using her own cash to recapitalise Hyflux, despite repeated calls for her to do so. She told shareholders: "With SM Investments coming into the company, this is effectively a takeover and I no longer will own much shares, in fact almost no shares. So I will no longer be in the driving seat." Last October, SM Investments, a consortium comprising Salim Group and Medco Group, tabled a deal to invest and lend $560 million to Hyflux in exchange for a 60 per cent stake in the company once it has settled all its debts. Sources told The Business Times that Ms Lum added to light applause: "I know many people do not like to see my face any more. I'm okay, I'm prepared to step down, I just want to make sure I hand over the company properly to the new investor." SM Investments has left a 40 per cent equity stake on the table for Hyflux's various stakeholders to share in a rescue plan, she said, adding: "I'm only worried for the papas and mamas, that in the case of liquidation, they will really get zero value... Without support for the rescue plan, the alternative for Hyflux will likely be liquidation." Hyflux intends to finalise the terms of a restructuring deal by mid-February, including exactly how much in cash or equity each creditor group will be allocated. A third round of town hall meetings will be on March 13. Next month, Hyflux will go to the court to ask for approval to call a scheme meeting and all creditors will vote on the scheme of arrangement by the end of March. https://www.tnp.sg/news/business/hyflux-faces-creditors-2nd-time-filing-bankruptcy

heng my xiaomi note 5 is 4000mah muahhahahahaha

so fast deliver WTF the ugly notch

Forgive me for being a wet blanket, but one of the most tedious things about being a working adult in Singapore is our uniquely Singaporean office lunch culture. For lack of a better description, Singaporean office lunch culture appears to be ridden with the sort of peer pressure that turns supposedly rational adults into teenagers. As the hour of socialising descends upon the office anytime from 12 to 2 PM, the designated leader of the Office Lunch Clique poses the seemingly innocent question: “Lunch?”. For the uninitiated, this is mere formality. The question is really an unspoken rule that we should leave the office for lunch with the team. It also assumes that we should want to hang out with our colleagues in a social setting, and that we are ‘anti-social’ if we choose to remain at our desks or have lunch alone. Rejection of lunch invites is done at the individual’s own risk. The bold decision to consistently avoid eating with our colleagues or to have a solo lunch at our desks may be mocked by more ‘sociable’ colleagues through tired retorts, like “bo jio”. If this happens often enough, we’re as good as social pariahs, thereby excommunicated from the Office Lunch Clique. As the rules of Singaporean office lunch culture dictate, the only thing worse than turning down a lunch invite is not receiving one in the first place. Following this rhetorical enquiry, a mass exodus of Office Lunch Cliques from offices streams into the surrounding malls, food courts, and hawker centres, ready to ‘chope’ their seats with lanyards, tissue packets, and name cards. Regardless of which Office Lunch Clique we belong to, lunch itself is usually one hour’s worth of self-indulgent, unproductive drivel packaged as necessary employee bonding. While ‘lighter’ lunch topics can range from discussing weekend plans to talking about marriage/children/BTOs, many of us see lunch as an opportunity to air grievances about work. For that reason, lunch hour can be spent dredging up shared dissatisfaction, feeding each other’s unhappiness, and ‘bonding’ over gossip. The result: a false sense of intimacy. Essentially, the average Singaporean worker quickly learns to embrace Singaporean office lunch culture as a way of life. It’s a singular experience designed to make us feel accepted and excluded at once. In 2016, Singapore ranked 13th globally in a study measuring peak productivity in human capital, a marked improvement from holding 43rd place in 1990. Even so, reports earlier last year mention that Singaporean productivity is still a “work in progress”. The tireless call to measure our personal value in terms of productivity adds to the perpetual exhaustion that permeates our lives. This is further exacerbated by the obligation to take part in Singaporean office lunch culture five days a week. That is to say, lunch hour can be the one thing that ruins our productivity for the rest of the day. First of all, we must realise that lunch hour is rarely just an hour since its after effects can last the entire day. A user in the Reddit thread about the differences in lunch culture between Singaporeans and Western expats posits that lunches are social for us, but functional for the latter. Having spent lunchtime socialising, we return to our desks buzzing from the feel-good nature of our interactions. Switching from work to lunch mode also requires us to adopt different headspaces and use different cognitive functions. For instance, we might be focused on problem solving and project management on the job, but lunch may require us to read body language and make small talk. Inevitably, partaking in office lunch culture causes many of us to lose our concentration on the work we were doing. The most common spillover effect from lunch is having to battle post-lunch syndrome, i.e. the food coma. Many of us tend to indulge in carb-heavy, savoury lunches, which makes us crave dessert, coffee, or bubble tea to ‘cleanse’ our palates. In turn, we spend a longer time socialising away from our desk, forgetting it’s a work day. The eventual crash from this sugar high can also invoke extreme lethargy, making getting back to work a painful process. As a result, we tend to devote about an hour trying to regain our flow. In positive psychology, flow is described as “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity”. In other words, instead of doing productive work, time is spent trying to ‘get in the zone’. I call this hour ‘buffer time’. During this buffer time, we perform shallow tasks, such as filing loose sheets of paper, sending non-replies to emails, tweaking one column in an Excel sheet, or following up with a conversation on Slack. This gives us the illusion of being productive, similar to checking superfluous items off a to-do list. But make no mistake, the effects of our lunch break linger, and we remain distracted as ever. In some cases, the distraction endures the rest of the day, causing us to put in half the effort yet experience twice the exhaustion. We end up working overtime to make up for lost time and low quality work. As any seasoned office worker knows, the cumulative effect of constantly working overtime is burnout. It is also the very thing that kills individual productivity. At my first job, there were weeks when I longed to spend lunch alone. Yet I’d hype myself up to socialise during lunch, pretending to care what someone’s boyfriend/husband/child did or what newfangled opinion another person had about their client. None of this added value to my work or life, but for the longest time, I pretended that it didn’t bother me. When I returned to my desk after lunch, I was disturbed and distracted, and as a result, predictably unproductive. All this led to a bubbling sense of resentment towards the Singaporean office lunch culture, towards my workplace, but most of all, towards myself for being unable to make the resolute decision to stand my ground without fearing social retribution. Naturally this worsened my internal struggle because productivity is one of the most important things to me. But even being a lifelong member of the Cult of Productivity was no match for the allure of being inducted into the Office Lunch Clique; it’s almost a status symbol, a triumph that a square peg can fit into a round hole. If anything, the Singaporean office lunch culture is the antithesis of another Singaporean hallmark: our endless pursuit of productivity. Frankly, the reason that many productivity hacks might not seem to work permanently for many of us is because we tend to target the wrong areas of concern. Instead of solely focusing on productivity itself, we should pay attention to a broader culture that lends to the potential productivity slump. In this case, addressing the overwhelming obligation to socialise with our colleagues over idle, redundant chit chat during lunch may help us realise we could be spending that hour and the subsequent ‘buffer time’ after that completing several more tasks. In an ideal world, this would then enable us to finish work faster, leave work earlier, and have more time to seek social fulfilment after work. For now, unless you’re immune to the post-lunch productivity plunge, you may just have to be ballsy enough to opt out from Singaporean office lunch culture—at least for a couple of days a week. After I left my first job job, I grew a backbone, learnt to listen selectively and filter out any gossip I wasn’t interested in, and Marie Kondo-ed insipid lunch company from my life. But I suppose I’m also lucky that my current colleagues don’t give a shit about the Singaporean office lunch culture. The unspoken rule is that individual tasks and moods take priority over communal lunch hour, so we never have to explain ourselves if we choose to sit lunch out. Because there’s no distinctive Singaporean compulsion to get together for lunch, we’re able to work productively for an uninterrupted stretch. Now when we do head for lunch together, at least I know I want the break. Then I come back to my desk unburdened, refreshed, and legitimately looking forward to begin work again. http://ricemedia.co/culture-food-inescapable-singaporean-office-lunch-culture-worst-part-work/

Budget airline AirAsia has launched a cheeky campaign based on the idea of the “Holiday Quickie”. It sounds a little risqué, but the branding team insist that it is based on an important issue: to encourage Singaporeans to take their work-life balance seriously. “We looked at the Singapore market and noticed that people in Singapore are always feeling depressed and looking for a break,” says AirAsia’s group head of branding Rudy Khaw. “Singapore is an island, so if you want to get away you can jump on a plane. The campaign is an opportunity to show people that they can go for a quick getaway, a holiday quickie.” Khaw says that the boom in the low-cost travel industry since 2001 means that people tend to travel more regularly. “This is especially true of the younger market. They take more trips whenever they want, but there are quick getaway opportunities for everyone and the Southeast Asia region offers great diversity,” says Khaw, adding that Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Phuket, Bangkok and Indonesia are among the most popular short-haul destinations from Singapore. The campaign will run for three months as film advertisements as well as promotions on AirAsia’s site and app and on digital and social media. Although the campaign targets Singaporeans, Khaw says it could equally apply to Hong Kong – another island city that has no domestic travel to speak of and where hopping on a plane for a weekend break is a viable option. Fare aggregator and travel metasearch engine Kayak has noticed an increase in the popularity of the short holiday, particularly those using budget airlines. Kayak’s data shows that the top five destinations of Hong Kong travellers – based on flight searches on budget airlines – are Taipei, Bangkok, Seoul, Osaka and Tokyo, and all fit into the “quickie” category. The most popular departure/return weekday combination for these destinations is Friday/Monday. Also, by the end of last year, Kayak saw a 112 per cent year-on-year increase in these searches. “Searches for a travel duration of one to four days also increased significantly – more than 120 per cent year-on-year – which shows that Hong Kong travellers are really keen, and great at slotting in time for travel in between schedules, even for just a short one over the weekend,” says Kally Lam, associate manager, APAC Marketing and PR, at Kayak. Skyscanner, a travel fare aggregator website and search engine, has also seen an increased uptake in short-haul flights. Its recent APAC Travel Trends Report 2018 found that the percentage of Asia-Pacific travellers flying premium economy and business class dropped significantly on short routes in 2018, which encouraged travellers to fly short-haul more often to take full advantage of superior comfort at reduced prices. The report also highlighted a trend for Asian travellers to go on much shorter holidays (four days), compared to those from Europe or North America (seven days). It pointed to a difference in work-life culture and limited paid leave as the likely reasons for the disparity. Although Asian travellers get fewer paid leave days on average compared to those in other regions, the report said they account for some of the world’s most prolific travellers, taking on average two trips a year. What’s more, three out of 10 Singaporeans and one out of 10 Hongkongers take seven or more trips a year. “This implies that they are making full use of their limited annual leave to travel as much as possible, resulting in shorter holidays, especially with increasing short-haul flight options from budget airlines like Scoot, AirAsia and Jetstar,” the report said. The Hongkongers who dread return to work after a holiday The Skyscanner data shows Hongkongers are embracing the weekend “quickie” holiday, with 20 per cent more searches for such trips in 2018 compared to the previous year. Skyscanner data shows that the “weekend getaway” spots that are gaining in popularity for Hong Kong travellers are Angeles, Phnom Penh, Cebu, Fukuoka and Chiang Mai. “The idea behind the campaign is that it’s something fun. We want to create a lot of buzz around the idea and get people familiar with the Holiday Quickie to promote short-haul flights,” Khaw says. AirAsia is certainly onto something. It has found a saucy label for a trend that is already well underway in Asia – particularly for work-hard, play-hard city folk in Singapore and Hong Kong who want to make the most of their limited holidays and time away from the office. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2182741/depressed-working-too-hard-people-hong-kong-and-singapore

Few things in technology are guaranteed to bring you actual joy, but Creative’s Super X-Fi just might qualify for that list. In short, the Super X-Fi distills decades of audio work into a tiny, portable dongle no bigger than a USB thumb drive that transforms smartphone, laptop, or PC audio with “holographic audio,” according the company. While that sounds like a lot of superfluous ad copy, we have to admit that after weeks of using the Super X-Fi, the company is on to something. We’d almost believe Creative’s claim that it has found the “holy grail” of audio, but Getting started with the Super X-Fi The Super X-Fi features a USB-C port on one end, a standard 3.5mm analog jack on the other, and features volume, shuffle, and a single control button on its surface. A tiny LED changes state from green to orange to let you know if it’s at work or not. To get started with the Super X-Fi, you first download an Android app though the GooglePlay store. You then take pictures of your head which is analyzed by Creative to pick the perfect audio profile for your particular head shape. This is necessary because so much of how we hear sound is determined by the timing differences of audio arriving in our ears, and the shape of our head and earlobes plays a large part of it. we’re disinclined to recall the Quest Knights just yet. The Super X-Fi app scans your head to determine what is optimimal for you. Besides profiling for your head, you also pick from a set of listed approved headphones in the app, or set it to “generic” for either headphone or in-ear. The headphone profiles are fine tuned by Creative to make the most of each pair’s sonic characteristics and fit style. Creative actually has an even more optimized approach for mapping that uses in-ear microphones to precisely model audio for your head while frequency sweeps are run on a surround system. Obviously, this isn’t something that’s currently feasible for your average consumer. But we can say that in demonstrations of the Super X-Fi mapped using the in-ear microphones, we had a tough time distinguishing the Super X-Fi from a decently high-end Dolby Atmos system. For now, the head scans using a phone camera are the next best thing. Having that extra information is how Creative distinguishes the Super X-Fi from all other spatialized audio solutions. Creative expects its algorithms to get even better still as it adds more scans to its growing database. Inside the Super X-Fi Crack open the Super X-Fi and you’ll find an AK4377. That’s a 32-bit, 768KHz digital analog converter from acclaimed audio company Asahi Kasei Microdevices. The other chip is Creative’s Super X-Fi chip. The company is pretty secretive about what the Super X-Fi does exactly but we’d guess it relies on such technologies as Creative’s Crystalizer, CMSS, and dozens of other audio patents the company has in its war chest. Yes, true audiophiles who pursue the highest-resolution FLAC or DSD files will scoff at Creative’s bag of audio techniques as gimmicks or magic tricks, but in our listening experience, the Super X-Fi was nothing short of phenomenal. Super X-Fi and music With stereo content over a good set of headphones or in-ear earphones, most music is rendered as if a singer or band is inside your skull. In fact, we’re so accustomed to this John Malkovich feeling that switching on the Super X-Fi may throw you off for a second or three. If you keep listening though, you’ll eventually realize you’re just not used to the sound of a band in front of your head, where they would be if they were performing for you. If we were writing Creative marketing lines, it would be easy to say that the Super X-Fi is like having a personal audition by musicians. Using whatever wizardry Creative has summoned from its library, there were times when the difference was stunning. It had us combing through our collection for more music to re-experience. Super X-Fi and games Want to feel like you have an advantage in a multiplayer shooter? Want to be further immersed further in an open world? Plug that Super X-Fi into your PC and enjoy a 5.1 setup at the comfort of your desk with no pesky speakers or wires to worry about. Online games like Destiny 2, Battlefield V, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 worked like a dream and provided a level of feedback that made us feel as if we were cheating. When you can accurately place a sound without any visual feedback and respond to it, it becomes a game changer. Did it make us a better player? No, it’s not magic. But it did give us a deeper sense of our surroundings than we’d experienced before. The Super X-Fi will also pass microphone data as well, for when you are teaming up with your buddies. The spatialized sound even increased the immersiveness of single-player games like The Evil Within 2, DOOM, and Red Dead Redemption 2 (gasp—a console game). Yes, the Super X-Fi also works with the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, but not on the Xbox One due to current restrictions from Microsoft. We’ve been using the Super X-Fi primarily to play games for two months and it’s become a must-have. In situations where a dedicated 5.1 sound system isn’t an option, the Super X-Fi is the next-best thing whether you’re playing on a TV or PC. And for those who are worried about Creative drivers, have no fear, this is plug-and-play—meaning you can’t blame the company anymore if your build locks up mid-match! Super X-Fi isn’t perfect Be forewarned, the Super X-Fi is not perfect by any stretch. As we said, there will be times when you’ll be floored by just how good the Super X-Fi sounds. But there will also be times when it’s just meh, or even just wrong. Maybe a pinch too much reverb, maybe the vocals are processed out as a little too thin. Android users will also be annoyed by the device asking for permission to access the Super X-Fi (Creative says it’s a security limitation imposed by the OS). There also isn’t much customization in how much depth you can add to the spatialization. In future iterations we’d love to see the ability to push the “speakers” out further, or adjust how much reverb is in the space with you. Fine-tuning like this can further trick the brain to accept you are indeed listening to speakers in the space with you. Fortunately, in situations where the Super X-Fi’s processing isn’t working for you, you can click a button on the device to switch it off. You’ll still get the benefits of a 120dB SNR, 32-bit AKM DAC, which is likely a big improvement over anything built into your phone or laptop, or the generic dongle that came with your phone. Super X-Fi works best with unspoiled sources In our experience, the Super X-Fi seemed to tickle us most with older, unspoiled music. The older the better. Mono recording? Even better. For example, an Amazon-downloaded Hank Williams’ Jr. MP3 of “Angels Are Hard to Find” (recorded in 1974) sprang to life with Super X-Fi, where the only thing that could possibly make it better was a hay bale and ice cold Lone Star beer. When it comes to gaming, your experience is likely to be better with games from studios that put a ton of resources into their sound teams, such as DICE and Blizzard—we found the Super X-Fi to shine Super X-Fi improves bad MP3s If you saw “MP3” and did a needle-scratch, stop. Yes, most audio snobs will turn up their noses at MP3s the same way a coffee enthusiast recoils at the mention of Folgers, and that condescension is warranted. MP3s are inherently compromised. Interestingly, we found this to be one of the areas where the Super X-Fi really shows its stuff. For the vast majority of average folks who have boxes of MP3 files they collected in college from that corner store called Napster, the Super X-Fi can, and will, make many of those files sound better. Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on the MP3 and how processed it was from the studio, but by and large, it improved most of the music we listened to. That’s not to say the Super X-Fi won’t make FLAC files also sound better. A 24-bit, 96KHz recording of the Eagles singing “Hotel California” sounded so much improved, that even Jeffrey Lebowski would likely approve.bright here. to read more : https://www.pcworld.com/article/3333606/consumer-electronics/creative-super-x-fi-review.html

I was deeply saddened when I read the report on the outrage of modesty (SMU student arrested for aggravated outrage of modesty of woman he met on social media; Jan 10). It was troubling that something so traumatic could happen to an unsuspecting young student. However, what concerned me more were reactions from the public. Public reaction has ranged from mistrust of the girl's story to discrediting her character. This is very disturbing as it reflects a fundamental lack of awareness of what victim-blaming is, and why it is harmful to society. Victim-blaming is a devaluing act where the victim is partially or wholly blamed for the crime that happened to them. Besides inflicting further damage on the victim, it is also harmful because policies can be affected by it. Attributing blame to victims allows us to disregard any underlying societal issues that may enable perpetrators to commit crimes. Focusing treatment on solely the individual would tackle individual perpetrators but fails to account for why these perpetrators feel like they can commit such offences. Regardless of the outcome of this case, the fact remains that attributing blame to the victim's actions sends a harmful message that society is not at fault. We need to confront the fact that there could be underlying problems in society that lead people to believe there is nothing wrong with committing such crimes. Why did the perpetrator feel like he could get away with such actions? Why did this idea occur to an ordinary student? Policymakers should focus efforts on targeting the underlying cause of such behaviour: a lack of respect for other people's bodies. There needs to be a concerted effort that starts by teaching both men and women to respect their bodies and other people's bodies. Gillian Loy (Ms) https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/people-need-to-know-perils-of-victim-blaming

what you get? honor?

since i am not gaming on my phone AT ALL. i will look at the battery life and camera (in low light)

me also thinking of huawei due to the 2 yr warranty. if got promo just buy

with 1 yr offical warranty ? or non offical type

waiting for promo

Xiaomi A2

SINGAPORE — An employee of a pest company contracted by the National Environmental Agency (NEA) to conduct mosquito breeding inspections was on Friday (Jan 18) charged with taking or attempting to take bribes from two construction companies. Tung Chee Keong, a 48-year-old Singaporean who worked as a vector control worker with Killem Pest, allegedly received S$1,000 in bribes from Muthukaruppan Periyasamy — a 51-year-old site manager of Ramo Industries — between May and August last year in return for advance notice of four inspections. Tung was also said to have solicited S$1,000 from Mr Kok Chew Leong, a workplace safety and health officer of China Jingye Engineering Corporation, in return for advance notice of the inspections at the construction site of a condominium called The Alps Residence in July last year. If Mr Kok paid the bribe, Tung also apparently agreed to turn a blind eye to mosquito breeding violations at the site. TODAY understands that Mr Kok did not give the bribe. In total, Tung faces six corruption charges. Muthukaruppan, an Indian national, was hauled to court on Friday as well, along with Tung’s alleged accomplice Chandran Jeganathan, a 30-year-old Indian national who worked as a technician with Killem Pest. Chandran allegedly received S$600 from Muthukaruppan. They both face five corruption charges each. In a press release on Friday, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau said that giving or taking bribes is already a serious offence, and corrupt acts which compromise mosquito breeding controls “can pose a serious danger to public health safety”. For each corruption charge, the men may be jailed up to five years or fined up to S$100,000. The trio were granted bail at S$5,000 each. Muthukaruppan will return to court on Jan 29, while Tung and Chandran are scheduled to return to court on Feb 19. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/employees-nea-contractor-killem-pest-advance-notice-mosquito-breeding-checks-for-bribes

Long before Americans discovered FOMO — the fear of missing out —Singaporeans were fixated with its more excessive forebear, kiasu. Taken from the Chinese dialect Hokkien, kiasu translates to a fear of losing out, but encompasses any sort of competitive, stingy or selfish behavior commonly witnessed in this highflying city-state. If you stand in line for hours just because there’s a gift at the end, then you’re kiasu. If you claim a spot at a table at a busy food court with a packet of tissues while you wander off in search of grub, you’re kiasu. If you’re a parent who volunteers hours of your free time at a school just so your offspring has a better chance of enrolling there one day, then you’re most definitely kiasu. It’s a survival instinct born out of Singapore’s dominant Chinese culture and deep-rooted insecurity as a blip on the map, one that’s only slightly bigger than the San Fernando Valley. Letting opportunity pass is tantamount to failure, the thinking goes. And if you do, you have no one to blame but yourself. “The national narrative is that we are a small country in a very large world,” said Shiao-yin Kuik, a former nominated member of Parliament, an honorary position. “We have very limited resources. If we don’t fight for our own future, no one else will.” Kiasu (pronounced kee-ah-sue) embodies a sort of unofficial national character, not unlike Japan’s harmonious wa or Britian’s stoic stiff upper lip. It’s an inescapable aspect of life in this country of 5.6 million that drives people to try and outdo one another. “It was inculcated in me since I was young,” said Rachel Yeo, 24, a senior studying journalism at the National University of Singapore. “Nothing short of the best was expected of me.” Yeo’s neighborhood growing up boasted one of the top primary schools in Singapore, Rosyth School. To ensure a place there, Yeo’s mother had to compile hours of volunteer work. At least twice a week, she read to students at the school before heading to work. Doing anything less risked losing her daughter’s place to someone else. “She’s a tiger mom,” said Yeo, who was also enrolled in rigorous after-school tutoring programs, a private industry that has grown into a $1-billion business here because of the parental arms race. The volunteer system in schools breeds another layer of competition. Parents complain about other parents who have exceeded their quota for hours, but continue to hog opportunities to volunteer. “People feel like others have to lose in order to win,” said Donald Low, a closely-followed economist and former public official. Foreign policy in Singapore isn’t immune to kiasu either. The feeling of vulnerability it engenders helps explain Singapore’s outsize spending on defense, which at over $10 billion, is more than that of any other country in Southeast Asia. The dread of having someone steal your lunch could also be driving Singapore’s hardening stance against Malaysia in a territorial dispute over a sliver of airspace and sea between the two countries. “Politicians were openly calling for people to stand up and defend the nation over what seems to be technical differences,” said Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore. “That the state and Singaporeans were ready to treat the issue as existential suggested a deep sense of fear,” he added. For an earlier generation, that fear propelled Singapore’s improbable success after it broke away from Malaysia in 1965 to later become one of the richest countries in the world on a per capita basis. But a fear of losing can also trigger paralysis when it comes to risk-taking. Kuik, the former member of parliament, said Singaporeans today need to be inspired and not cowered. “There’s a stronger desire to move beyond” Singapore’s origin story, she said, “and really try to explore a larger story, not driven by fear, but ambition.” There are modest signs of a kiasu backlash, including last year when a small group of parents formed “Life Beyond Grades,” an organization that seeks to relieve academic pressure on children to focus on their wider well-being. It’s an uphill struggle. Singaporeans are exceptionally self-aware of their reputation — even without reminding from their traditional Malaysian rivals, who are prone to calling the country Kiasuland. A survey released last year by the Institute of Policy Studies, a local think tank, found that Singaporeans perceived their society to be kiasu more than any other trait. One of the country’s most famous comic strips was centered on a bespectacled character named Mr. Kiasu. The 1990s series featured titles such as “Everything Also Must Grab” and “Everything Also Number One.” Giant, a local supermarket chain, ran a contest in 2017 to determine which neighborhood was the most kiasu. The winner, an eastern town called Tampines, impressed with a high percentages of residents admitting to excessively pressing the crosswalk button. They also fessed up in large numbers to reserving tables at busy coffee shops with a tissue packet or umbrella rather than more considerately ordering their food first and then finding a place to sit — a widespread practice known in Singlish as chope (You can also chope a parking space by having someone stand in it). Giant reportedly rewarded Tampines residents with free drinks, ice cream and more tissue packets for choping. There’s “an ambivalence about being kiasu,” said Chong, the political scientist. “On one hand, there are Singaporeans who wear it like a mark of national character, even pride. Others laugh at it, and still others see being kiasu as being a bit of an embarrassment due to the over-the-top behavior it can encourage.” Nowhere is that more obvious than in Singapore’s queuing culture. The fear of losing out has created a herd mentality when it comes to lines, especially at the city’s famous open-air food courts, known as hawker centers. “When you see a queue snaking, it means the food must be good, that it’s something you should try,” said Yeo, the journalism student. “I just returned from visiting Taiwan and saw long lines for food. Half the people were Singaporean.” Some lines are still talked about today, like the time when thousands of Singaporeans thronged outside McDonald’s restaurants in a kiasu-crazed bid to score free Hello Kitty toys. The pull to line up has even inspired a business, iQueue. The service, which is similar to errand apps such as TaskRabbit, gets up to 50 requests a month to stand in line for things such as boba tea or concert tickets to see the band BTS. Justin Zheng, a manager at the company, said he queued in line for 12 hours outside a prestigious art class last month for parents who wanted to register their elementary-school-aged child. Zheng arrived at 7 p.m. the night before the doors opened and still found someone ahead of him in line. By midnight, there were 100 in line. By the next morning, he estimates there were twice as many people. The parents next to him weren’t even taken aback that Zheng didn’t have any kids and was hired to be there. Instead, they took down his number. Anything to gain an edge, they told him. “It’s in our blood,” said Zheng, who was paid $110 to line up for half a day. “You realize you have to work harder to be earlier than the next guy.” https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-singapore-kiasu-fomo-20190118-story.html

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From pineapple tarts shaped like piglet heads and Chinese pastries stuffed with mochi, here’s our pick of the festive season’s most munch-able delights. (Photo: Paradise Group) No matter how heaving our Chinese New Year (CNY) snack trolley, there’s always room for more (it’s all in the spirit of abundance, you see). Especially when each year, restaurants and bakeries all over the island dream up ever more delicious treats to tempt our already exploding calorie count. The following is a list of some of this year’s scrumptious offerings that we’d love to sink our teeth into. LEMONGRASS EARL GREY PINEAPPLE TARTS FROM SPRMRKT (Photo: SPRMRKT) These little nuggets of shortcrust pastry are infused with earl grey tea, imbuing them with a floral fragrance. Within each holds a generous filling of pineapple jam kissed with the citrusy tang of lemongrass. Each 600g bottle for S$38. Available from Jan 21 at SPRMKT outlets. sprmrkt.com.sg LUNAR NEW YEAR YUZU PANDAN CHIFFON CAKE FROM ANDAZ SINGAPORE (Photo: Andaz Singapore) Beneath its festive, red glaze sits a fluffy pandan chiffon cake sandwiching a softly tangy yuzu mousse and orange drizzle. It’s a lovely reinterpretation of a classic confection that we all know and love. Small for S$5.50, medium for S$18, and S$38 for large. andazshop.oddle.me GOLDEN YAM MOCHI FROM THYE MOH CHAN (Photo: Thye Moh Chan) This festive addition to Thye Moh Chan’s collection of traditional Teochew pastries boasts a luscious yam filling that harbours a heart of chewy, black sugar mochi. All that is enrobed in a friable, buttery pastry that crumbles deliciously with each bite. Each piece for S$3. Available at Thye Moh Chan stores. thyemohchan.com/products_cny_2019.html#cny NASI LEMAK COOKIES FROM OLD CHANG KEE (Photo: Old Chang Kee) The bright, vermillion hue that glazes the surfaces of Old Chang Kee’s Nasi Lemak Cookies brings to mind the layer of chilli oil that’s the hallmark of a good nasi lemak sambal. Each bite of this crunchy cookies is imbued with the quintessential flavour of one of our favourite national dishes – think dried chillies, assam, belacan and ikan bilis. Each jar for S$16.80. Available at Old Chang Kee outlets. oldchangkee.com PEACE AND HARMONY GIFT BOX FROM SI CHUAN DOU HUA RESTAURANT (Photo: Si Chuan Dou Hua Restaurant) This elegant gift box holds a quartet of CNY treats – namely, a luscious carrot cake, orange nian gao, a jade-hued chestnut cake and a golden osmanthus cake. Serve with a pot of Chinese tea for a lovely afternoon delight. Each box for S$32. sichuandouhua.com/promotion/chinese-new-year DRUM OF FORTUNE FROM GOODWOOD PARK HOTEL (Photo: Goodwood Park Hotel) Every year, the pastry chefs at Goodwood Park Hotel create a lavish confection for the CNY season. Resplendent in red and gold, this year’s offering sees a drum-shaped chocolate marble cake cloaked in fondant, and bedecked with eight auspicious mandarin oranges made of dark chocolate and mini chocolate ingots. Each 1.3kg cake for S$108. Available from Jan 18 with a five-day advance order. Call 6730 1786. goodwoodparkhotel.com RAINBOW KUEH LAPIS FROM HAI TIEN LO (Photo: Hai Tien Lo) There is all manner of CNY goodies to have from Hai Tien Lo, but we were particularly taken by the Rainbow Kueh Lapis. It has all the classic flavours of the buttery Indonesian cake, but dressed in delicately coloured layers. Each 1kg cake for S$58. Available for order from Jan 21. pacificmarketplace.sg KUMQUAT AND YOGHURT SUGEE CAKE FROM THE COFFEE BELT (Photo: The Coffee Belt) Sugee cake gets a citrus twist and lush tang with the addition of Greek yoghurt, oranges, lemon and kumquat. The result is a rich, moist cake glazed with yoghurt and cream cheese frosting, and finished with a sprinkle of smoked salt to really round out the flavours. Each 800g cake for S$16.80. parkhotelgroup.com/en/alexandra/the-coffee-belt YAM CAKE FROM VIOLET OON SINGAPORE (Photo: Violet Oon Singapore) Sometimes, what you need at the table is a steadfastly traditional favourite made well. That’s exactly what Violet Oon Singapore delivers with its wu tao gao or yam cake, flavoured with five spice and generously studded with dried prawns, Chinese sausages, dried mushrooms, and minced pork. One kilogram for S$42 and 1.5kg for S$52. Available from Jan 22 with a two-day advance order. Call 9834 9935. violetoon.com PIGGY PINEAPPLE PASTRIES FROM PARADISE GROUP (Photo: Paradise Group) These are some of the most adorable pineapple tarts shaped like piglets, and complete with auspicious red ears. Encased in their meltingly tender pastry shells is a lovely pineapple filling that has just the right balance of sweetness. Each bottle of 18 pieces for S$29.80. Available for takeaway at Paradise Group restaurants. paradisegp.com