The_King

@Chestnut macbook air is a bad choice.

not yet 2 month and the stent not yet take out, so scare to do exercise

i prefer enclosed, i cant think how much dust is there .

2 million debt. if i him buy house to rent out already, buy reits but bitcoin etc...... 2 million can anyhow all buy a bit

ya, it now 83.8kg, review on 23feb

It's public knowledge that local veteran actor Li Nanxing was once saddled with more than $2 million in debts and he turned to a life of gambling which, unfortunately, didn't pay off. On the new Channel 8 talk show The Inner Circle, he told host Guo Liang that he once wore his clothes from his hit TV drama The Unbeatables to a casino in Genting Highlands and was recognised. It was initially a lighthearted conversation as Nanxing shared that he would practise the card tricks that he was taught for the role. But when Guo Liang asked whether the 56-year-old became a more "stylish player" at casinos after that, Nanxing chuckled and turned somber as he opened up about his addiction. He said: "For a time after that, I was really hooked on it, to be honest... I had wound up my business and was looking for a shortcut. I thought, how long would it take for me to settle my debts just with acting? And I happened to be shooting The Unbeatables 2. "If you're lucky, it's like the show depicts — you're winning hundreds of thousands just like that. In a few games, you can get the money back." Nanxing managed to raise $200,00 and went to the nearest casino, which was in Genting Highlands at that time, and even "dressed in clothes from the show". "When I got there, I was recognised. [People said] 'Look, he is Singapore's King of Gambling. Let's follow him.' When the casino security saw me, it was like I was some big shot, a VVIP (Very Very Important Person), and they really escorted me into the casino," he shared. But, Lady Luck was not on his side and Nanxing grimly confessed that he "utterly lost". He didn't clarify if he lost his entire capital of $200,000 but he said that experience was "a lesson" for him. In the end, he turned to behind-the-scenes work to raise the funds needed to pay off his debts. He even worked as an extra on set. Nanxing recalled: "It was for a Hollywood movie. I only had two scenes. I opened the door, asked, 'Who are you looking for?', [someone replied] 'Don't ask', and my character was shot and died. "I even went for auditions. After I submitted my name, they were startled. They were like 'Him? He's auditioning for this?'" As much as it might have been a blow to his ego, Nanxing said matter-of-factly that he had no choice because he needed the money. Eventually, he managed to settle his debts and even got a second chance to return to acting. He said: "Viewers had stayed loyal and still wanted to see me in dramas. I really mustered my courage and returned to acting. It took around four years to settle all my debts."

A woman was dismayed at the state of the cookies she had ordered on e-commerce site Shopee for Chinese New Year. Stomper Sherly shared with Stomp that she had ordered four bottles of kuih kapit from Malaysia-based seller fndibhrm.sg on Feb 1 and paid a total of $52.15 for them. She received the cookies on Feb 16 and was shocked when they arrived all smashed up and looking nothing like the photos on the website. "The cookies came in a box and bubble wrap but it was a shocking sight to see that our CNY cookies had become like cereal," she said. "One of the bottles had even cracked. "I have some guests coming over this weekend too. "I'm really speechless." Sherly alerted both Shopee and the seller to the state of the cookies and received an apology from the seller. She also received a call from Shopee informing her that her refund will take seven to 14 working days to process. "The refund takes quite long compared to when we buy, it's an almost immediate deduction," she said.

give up. got money i also spend on myself

Even though lockdowns have been eased in many countries, airlines around the world are still struggling. This has led to many airlines innovating and pivoting to different business models. For example, Singapore Airlines started restaurant services in its airplanes and conducted behind-the-scenes tours at its training facility. Like many airlines, budget carrier AirAsia also ventured into a new vertical — food delivery — with AirAsia food. Sabrina Khaw, head of AirAsia food, told The Straits Times that the airline pivoted towards food delivery after noticing that food delivery platforms in Malaysia were charging “exorbitant commission rates”. AirAsia food runs on a zero-commission model, and merchants can choose from flat-rate plans powering payment and delivery. The Malaysian-based airline officially began AirAsia food’s operations in May 2020. According to the carrier, it had served 500 restaurants and delivered close to 15,000 orders within three months of its operation. Now, the delivery service is looking to start operations in Singapore. Entering Singapore’s Crowded Food Delivery Industry AirAsia’s chief executive Tony Fernandes / Image Credit: The Star On Wednesday (February 17), AirAsia’s chief executive Tony Fernandes announced on LinkedIn that AirAsia food would be coming to Singapore “with a roar”. Even though AirAsia food started almost a year ago in Malaysia, Singapore will be its first overseas foray. This means that it would have to compete with food delivery giants like Foodpanda, Deliveroo and GrabFood, as well as smaller players like WhyQ and Pickupp. Despite the foreseeable challenges, Tony said that he is confident that AirAsia food would do well in Singapore. “It took me seven years to get approval to fly to Singapore, but better late than never. So I’d say, we’re way ahead of schedule on food. I’m sure we (are) going to get a great welcome,” he told The Straits Times. Though he did not specify when the services would enter Singapore, he mentioned that interested merchants can now sign up with AirAsia via e-mail. “As a disruptive leader, we’re ready to take on the new challenge in Singapore, providing value, simplicity and inclusivity for everyone,” he said.

Buyers dashed into Ikea stores today to get their hands on a highly anticipated Lego collection, with some of the limited edition toys already showing up for sale on trading platform Carousell. Shoppers formed long lines to panic-buy the bricks, which come in small and big sizes at S$19.90 and S$24.90, respectively. Listings seen on Carousell’s app today showed both varieties of the BYGGLEK bricks selling way above retail. “How some people are buying BYGGLEK at IKEA Tampines,” read a caption of a photo of two women bagging what looked to be about 20 boxes at the cashier. One Carousell listing set the price for four boxes – two big and two small – at S$120, a 33% markup. According to Ikea’s website, each in-store shopper is limited to three boxes. An Ikea PR rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Swedish furniture retailer collaborated with Lego to produce the brick toy sets, which went on sale in stores today and will be sold online starting Feb. 25.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Electronics shops in Hong Kong have seen a sharp increase in demand for cheap burner phones as the Chinese-ruled city's government eases coronavirus restrictions but pushes the use of a contact-tracing app which has raised privacy concerns. The former British colony saw anti-government and anti-China protests erupt in 2019 and a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 in response, along with the arrest of most of its prominent pro-democracy activists. The swift authoritarian turn taken by the government, which denies curbing the rights and freedoms of the special administrative region's 7.5 million residents, has resulted in deep-seated mistrust of public policies, including of measures to curb the coronavirus. Health Secretary Sophia Chan said the app poses no privacy risks as it only stores data on users' phones and no third party collects it. The app notifies users if they had been in the same place with a person confirmed with COVID-19. "I'm buying a burner phone because the government clearly doesn't trust Hong Kong people, so why would I trust them?" said Vincent, 28, an accountant who gave only his first name because of the sensitivity of the issue. Contact-tracing apps have sparked similar privacy and trust issues around the world, from Singapore to the United States. Hong Kong on Thursday lifted limits on how many people could sit together in restaurants to four from two and the cut-off time for dining to 10pm from 6pm. Restaurants and other venues just reopening, such as gyms or beauty salons, are required to write down customers' details or ask them to scan a QR code with the LeaveHomeSafe app, which authorities use for contact tracing. Civil servants have been asked to scan the code before entering and leaving government offices. In the working class neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po, a Mecca for cheap electronics, more than a dozen vendors told Reuters they have seen a spike in demand for old smartphones since last week, when the government announced plans to ease restrictions. "People are just looking for a cheap smartphone that can run the LeaveHomeSafe app,” said Wong, a vendor at Phone House, who said she sold 50 phones in the past week, compared with the usual 10 or so per week previously. Other vendors reported a three- or four-fold increase in sales of cheap phones. "I have seen a lot more people asking about and buying older phones over Chinese New Year," said Andy Kwok of Ah Ling Telecommunications. "I have had to tell them the phone needs to be at least on Android 8 (for the app) to run." The most popular phone was the Samsung Galaxy J5, released in 2015, now selling for as little as HK$300 ($38.70). The app has been downloaded 840,000 times since its launch last November, with more than 70,000 venues participating in the scheme, the government said this week. ($1 = 7.7524 Hong Kong dollars)

SINGAPORE — A woman who was killed after a tree fell on her in Marsiling Park on Thursday (18 February) has been identified as a Mediacorp employee. In an internal note sent to staff, the employee was named as Dag Loke, who worked as a senior technical coordinator with the studios team. The police released a statement earlier to say they found the 38-year-old woman “lying motionless” at the scene. The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that it received a call for assistance at 8.15am and arrived to find a person trapped under a fallen tree. The person was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, SCDF added. The note to Mediacorp staff, seen by Yahoo News Singapore, was signed off by editor-in-chief Walter Fernandez. "Our deepest condolences, thoughts and prayers go out to Dag's family at this very difficult time," he said. The company and studio team supervisors are reaching out to her family to see if they need any assistance, he added. "Many of you knew her well and this will come as a shock. If any of you need time to deal with your emotions please speak to your supervisors," wrote Fernandez. In a post on Facebook, Senior Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad said he has asked NParks to check and review the condition of the trees and the safety of facilities in the area. Zaqy, who is also MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC, said, "Our hearts and deepest sympathies are with the family, a resident of Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC. "We will work with my colleague, Hany Soh, to provide any support and assistance needed by the family," he added. Soh is MP for the Woodgrove ward in Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC.

SINGAPORE — After losing money from gambling at a casino, a man asked his girlfriend to sell nude photos and videos of herself to make a quick buck. The woman, who had just turned 18, agreed to help him. However the 28-year-old man’s suggestions escalated when he failed to find a job. He then asked his girlfriend to support him financially by performing nude phone calls, and sell her used underwear. When the victim’s customers began asking for sexual services, the man convinced the reluctant woman to take up the offers and turned violent when she did not want to. The victim’s plight came to light when her nude videos were found in the “Nasi Lemak” Telegram chat. By then, the victim had earned more than $40,000 from all her services, with the man using the money to pay for his living expenses. The man, who cannot be named to protect the victim’s identity, pleaded guilty to two charges under the Women’s Charter for knowingly living in part on the earnings of prostitution by his girlfriend and by managing the provision of her sexual services. He had been convicted in 2016 for prostituting women, aged 17 to 22, and was sentenced to jail. But he further committed offences while out in remission. Separately, the man pleaded guilty to one count of criminal breach of trust and will have two other charges of a similar nature taken into consideration for sentencing. The man began dating the woman, now 20, after meeting the Filipina through a dating application while in the Philippines between September and October 2018. She was 17 at the time. In January 2019, he asked the woman to accompany him to Singapore to meet his parents. He also asked her to remain by his side as he needed her to bail him out in case that police were investigating him. However, the couple returned to the Philippines a few days later without incident. During the same period, the man began losing money from gambling in the casino. He suggested that his girlfriend sell nude photos and videos, as well as perform live video calls performing sexual acts. The woman, who had just turned 18, agreed. The man would then take nude photos of the woman and send them to her customers, charging $10 for four photographs, and $10 for a minute of a video. Video calls were pegged at $25 for every five minutes. The couple returned to Singapore on 3 April 2019 and the man was arrested for prior offences. His girlfriend sought help from the man’s parents to bail him out. The man’s father declined to do so, and instead purchased the woman a plane ticket to Philippines. After the man was bailed out, he begged her to remain in Singapore and kept her passport so that she would not leave without his knowledge. He asked her to enrol in a local school to remain with him and she agreed. Unable to find a job, the man began asking his girlfriend to sell her used underwear to supplement their income. They charged $35 for each pair of underwear, delivered to customers through POPstations, $50 to have the underwear delivered in person, and $80 for the girlfriend to remove her underwear in front of her customers. When the woman’s customers started asking for sex in May 2019, the woman was reluctant. However, the man managed to persuade her, claiming that he needed money to engage a lawyer. The woman charged between $150 and $1,000 for her services. The man managed her bookings and even pretended to be his girlfriend while contacting her customers. Eventually, when the woman became even more reluctant, the man hit her and threatened to expose her nude photos to her mother on her social media account. She continued providing sexual services out of fear. The woman reached out to the man’s father and two of her customers for help, and they advised her to lodge a police report. However, she did not do so for fear of her mother finding out and getting the man into trouble. Her plight still came to light after her nude videos surfaced on Telegram. By then, she had had sex with 20 to 30 customers, and earned between $9,000 and $13,500. Police officers raided the victim’s unit on 14 October 2019 and she was later placed in a woman’s shelter. Meanwhile, the man went on the run and sought help from a Vietnamese prostitute who had previously serviced him. He promised to pay off her debts in exchange for her help in registering for hotel rooms. Separately, he siphoned $40,000 from a company whose director he had cheated. He helped the director set up the company, from which he committed criminal breach of trust. Of the pocketed money, the man used $22,800 to buy a Rolex watch and a gold bangle to compensate the Vietnamese prostitute. The remaining cash was found on him when he was arrested. Between 15 and 18 October 2019, the girlfriend managed to procure a phone to contact the man in secret. This phone was seized by the police and the man was arrested in a hotel room on 18 October 2019. The man will be sentenced on Friday by District Judge May Mesenas.

SINGAPORE - Satellite images of Kranji woodland shared on social media on Thursday (Feb 18) showed over 8ha of forested land being cleared since last March, nearly a year before developer JTC Corporation knew about the mistake. This is almost half of the site slated for the Agri-Food Innovation Park, which is equivalent to 33 football fields, and over 10 per cent of the 70ha woodland area. The images of the unauthorised clearance of the land parcel around Kranji Road and Kranji Close come after JTC told The Straits Times on Tuesday that the "erroneous" clearing started last December before environmental assessments were complete. Independent checks by ST on Global Forest Watch - a monitoring service run by World Resources Institute that uses satellite data - revealed forested land disappearing from March 1, 2020. Green patches totalling at least 8ha - or 11 football fields - were cleared by Jan 25, according to satellite Sentinel-2B used as part of the European Union's Copernicus Earth-monitoring project. Photos on Google Street View also showed a sign saying "proposed site clearance and earthworks at Kranji Road for Plot 9" at the deforested land next to Kranji Road last September. On Tuesday, a JTC spokesman said the mistake was discovered on Jan 13, more than a month before aerial images of the deforestation were posted on social media on Sunday. JTC added that an environmental specialist was engaged to carry out a Biodiversity Baseline Study last December to work out an Environmental Monitoring and Management Plan for specified plots of land, which were expected to be completed in April. Following these assessments, the statutory board said that it had "plans to engage key stakeholders, including nature groups, to discuss its development plans". On discovering the error on Jan 13, JTC ordered all clearing works to stop and issued a stern warning to the contractor, it added. According to a book published by Nature Society (Singapore), titled The Green Rail Corridor, the forested area cleared for the park is part of Kranji Woodland-Scrubland, spanning about 70ha. A rapid survey from the rail corridor found 47 species of birds - a mix of resident and migratory species - which account for 12 per cent of Singapore's total records. On Tuesday, the National Parks Board (NParks) said it was investigating the unauthorised clearance. Under the Parks and Trees Act, it is illegal to fell a tree with a girth exceeding 1m growing on any vacant land, whether within or outside a tree conservation area, except with the approval of NParks. ST has contacted JTC for comments.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336290/ARTHA/

China's state prosecutor has ordered a nationwide crackdown on profiteering and fake vaccines amid a mounting wave of fake COVID-19 vaccine cases, state media reported. "The Supreme People’s Procuratorate has ordered state prosecutors at all levels of government to "act quickly and resolutely crack down on coronavirus vaccine crimes," state news agency Xinhua reported. So far, the authorities have arrested 70 suspects in 21 cases linked to coronavirus vaccine fakes and racketeering, it said. In some cases, fake vaccines had been made using saline to attract government subsidies for clinics offering emergency vaccinations to members of the public, it said. It said one suspect surnamed Qiao had recruited friends and relatives from his hometown to manufacture the fakes in hotel rooms and rented apartments, to fill vials copied exactly from the design of genuine vaccine vials. Qiao, a suspect surnamed Kong, and others had made and sold around 58,000 of the fake vaccines before their detention in November, it said. Many were sold privately at hugely inflated prices and injected into the arms of customers in their own homes, or even in their cars, the report said. Some of the fakes had made their way overseas, "tarnishing the image of the country," Xinhua said. Plausible deniability A businessman from the northern province of Hebei who gave only a surname, Guo, said the claim that some of the fakes had been taken out of China was worrying. "Surely the likelihood that fake vaccines could get exported overseas is minuscule," Guo said. "There must be very strict testing and verification procedures in place." He said it was more likely that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was laying the groundwork for plausible deniability of responsibility for any substandard vaccines exported overseas by Chinese pharmaceutical companies. "They are putting a plausible explanation out there for any problems with Chinese vaccines overseas," Guo said. Lu Jun, co-founder of health NGO the Beijing Yirenping Center, said the focus on criminal activity was a distraction from the genuine threat to people's health from shoddy, out-of-date, and incorrectly handled vaccines from legitimate sources. "For example, there have been injuries caused by vaccine scandals, in Shanxi in 2007 and in Shandong in 2016," Lu said. "But they were caused either by shoddy vaccines produced by regular manufacturers, or else by irregularities or illegal operations linked to government procurement and distribution processes," he said. Lu said there were many more cases of harm to people from officially produced vaccines than had emerged in media reports. 'Fake and shoddy products' A Chinese resident surnamed Cai said quality control issues are endemic in Chinese supply chains. "Actually we see this problem occurring in almost every sector," Cai told RFA. "There will be fake and shoddy products being manufactured and sold in almost every sector as long as it is profitable to do this." "It's hardly surprising that we are seeing fake Chinese vaccines appearing, given that vaccines are in short supply right now," he said. Xinhua reported on Feb. 1 that Chinese police detained more than 80 people and confiscated more than 3,000 fake doses of COVID-19 vaccine, and that all fake doses in China had been tracked down. It was unclear whether the arrests were the same as those referred to its Feb. 15 report. The Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to CCP mouthpiece the People's Daily, cited a source close to a major Chinese vaccine producer as saying that some of the fakes may already have made their way overseas. The arrests were part of a nationwide police operation that included Beijing, Shanghai, and the eastern province of Shandong, Xinhua said. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/fake-02162021090947.html

ya global warming my ass