We are often taught to measure work by how long we can endure it. Leaving, especially when something is still standing, is often mistaken for giving up. For the millennial behind Eva’s Pancake, closing her S$1.20 min jiang kueh (peanut pancake) hawker stall on Feb 16 after six years marks a poignant end to one chapter and the beginning of something new. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” Eva Lee told 8days.sg. Lee first entered the hawker trade in 2020 under the National Environment Agency (NEA)’s incubation stall programme. Previously, the 33-year-old, who has a diploma in accounting from Johor, was an accountant. Under the programme, she underwent an eight-week apprenticeship with min jiang kueh chain Granny’s Pancake before setting up a kiosk in a coffeeshop at Toa Payoh Lorong 4. Advertisement     When her tenancy at the Toa Payoh coffeeshop came to an end in late 2023, Lee was allocated a unit at Geylang East Market & Food Centre under the NEA programme. Why close shop after devoting so much time to the business? Lee told 8days.sg that the physical toll has become harder to ignore. She still wakes up around 4am daily. She sets up shop early so she can start selling her pancakes by 6.30am, working through to about 1.30pm or when she sells out. By the time she cleans up, restocks and preps for the next day, it’s already close to 5pm. Lee pointed out the strain on her right wrist, which has become injured from constantly pouring batter and working the griddle. There is also discomfort in her legs, where long hours of standing have caused varicose veins to surface. “It’s tiring,” she said with a laugh.  “My back hurts, my wrist hurts. I really respect the older hawkers who can do this for decades. I don’t know how they manage.” She added, half-jokingly: “If I continue like this, I think one day I might really fall sick.” Lee whips up about 200 pieces of min jiang kueh a day, and earns on average about S$6,200 a month, but only takes home about S$2,000 after paying her parents who help out at the stall, rent and other expenses.  Advertisement   “Overall, I have broken even but I don’t earn a lot of profits,” she added. “But the finances is one of the factors [resulting in the closure]. Sometimes I’d think, if I worked 12 hours for someone else, I could probably earn more.” “Every time I took the MRT home and saw people getting off work, I was also ‘ending work’, but I’d been up so much earlier than them. Over time, that feeling of imbalance just kept growing,” the Singapore permanent resident added.

(Bloomberg) — Singapore’s top 20 per cent households are richer than all the other families combined, a reflection of the extent of wealth inequality in the city state. The top quintile of resident households held an average wealth of about S$5.3 million (US$4.2 million) in 2023, the latest available figures based on a study published on Monday (9 Feb) by the Ministry of Finance (MOF). Property accounted for at least half of their worth.   That compares with a combined average wealth of about S$3.5 million for all other households, with the bottom 20 per cent having a net worth of S$293,000, the data showed. Singapore’s wealth inequality stood at 0.55 in 2025, the first time the government has released such data following concerns of inequity in one of the world’s richest cities. The finance ministry acknowledged the challenges in measuring wealth. The wealth Gini coefficient is “broadly comparable” to other developed economies including the UK, Japan and Germany, the ministry said. The city-state had the 11th highest wealth inequality in 2024, according to UBS’s Global Wealth Report. Globally, the gap between the richest and the poorest has widened. Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has risen at about 8 per ent annually, nearly twice the pace experienced by the bottom half of the population, according to a World Inequality Report. Income inequality in Singapore fell to a record low of 0.379 in 2025, compared with 0.437 in 2015, according to the finance ministry’s data. The city recently updated the figures to factor in other sources like rental income and investments, tweaking the methodology for figures since 2015. Previously, the metric was measured based only on income from employment.   Singapore has been trying to navigate a tricky balance. It strives to keep inequality low without excessively taxing the rich, including high net worth foreigners. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s government has raised taxes on high-end property and cars and warned that Singapore risks losing out to other hubs seeking to woo wealthy foreigners if it’s too heavy handed. His administration has provided housing and healthcare subsidies to ensure affordability as well as cash handouts to help residents cope with rising costs. Wong is scheduled to present his annual budget speech on 12 Feb.   “We are refreshing our approaches and renewing our social compact,” Wong said in a video posted on YouTube. “Every Singaporean has real and meaningful opportunities to progress, and we continue to move forward together, even amidst a more challenging global environment.”   https://sg.yahoo.com/news/singapores-richest-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-80-combined-084056154.html

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[Local] 12 bullet holes found in windows of a HDB flat in Hougang. Multiple windows of two HDB flats in Hougang were suspected of being shot with a slingshot. A total of 12 glass marble holes were found on the second and third floors. Police cordoned off the scene and launched a large-scale investigation. The incident occurred yesterday in the second and third floors of a five-room HDB flat at Block 575, Hougang Street 51. Ms. Huang (50 years old, IT manager), the second-floor homeowner who was affected, said in an interview that she was awakened by a loud noise while she was sleeping, and then heard the sound of glass breaking before she discovered the pinhole. Police found at least 38 glass marbles at the scene. When contacted, police said they received a call for help at 7:40 a.m. yesterday. No one was injured at the scene, and the case is still under investigation.