Lucky Tan said:

This week the govt passed amendments to the CPF Act that allows the govt to vary the payout on CPF Life at the Government's discretion. The reason given was that they may have to cut down the payout to ensure the solvency of the CPF Life scheme (due to incompetent management?). What is happening is this : in a life annuity risk is transferred from individual to the insurance company. However, with CPF Life, the govt passed the risk right back to the individuals. So ordinary Singaporeans are forced buy an annuity that we can't count on for a guaranteed income stream. Even with a guaranteed income stream, we are already forced to bear the risk of inflation ...like I said in earlier post, the basic scheme may not even provide enough for McDonald's Happy Meals due to inflation. However, with the guarantee on the income stream removed, the basic scheme may not even be enough for maggie mee! ...all to protect the govt's own scheme from insolvency....(hmm....protecting itself from its own lack of competence?)

Recommended by at82: "What good is an annuity if income stream from it is not guaranteed?! "

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Veron said:

for a long while i have noticed an annoying trend in many sit-down dining establishments. an increasing number of restaurants have a no-water policy: they do not serve free cold water or even tap water to diners. instead, they make us buy their bottled water. i find this highly unacceptable.

serving water is the most basic service that a restaurant can provide. most of the time we are already paying a 10% service charge. even fast-food restaurants with no service charge do not have such a policy!

Recommended by razlan: "A growing list of restaurants which does NOT provide water. If you are one of us who get irritated with such a policy, this is the post to bookmark."

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Mr LOL said

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Mr LOL strikes again with a funny comic strip on the last of the Mohicans reference made by MM Lee recently"

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FCUK Singapore calls for Malaysians to boycott Singapore and Singapore products.

In view of Singapore's daylight robberies, it's about time Malaysians show who's boss. Lets boycott Singapore products....Lets do what we have to do as citizens of Malaysia. Boycott Singapore and Singaporeans' products!

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Reason Magazine said:

Singapore’s first casino, a $5 billion project on some of the most expensive property in the world, has been billed as a microcosm of the city itself. Ambitious, futuristic, pristine, and not especially humble, it is the ideal urban physiognomy of a country straining to stand out among its much larger neighbors. “People know Singapore,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong assured his countrymen in a 2006 address to the nation. “They no longer think that Singapore is somewhere in China. They know Singapore is special.”

Three miles from Marina Bay, in Singapore’s Little India, many thousands of young Bangladeshi and Malay men gather every Sunday—their one day off—to eat, drink, and spend. Weaving through piles of coconuts and stacks of steaming naan, men shout to one another across streets packed tight with bodies. Here the air grows sweaty, the streets smell of garlic, and incense fumes waft from vendor to buyer. This is not the aseptic, polished Singapore of Marina Bay. It is the muscled hodgepodge that will take the Bay blueprints, unload ships full of steel, and build a casino.

As the world gradually learns to locate Singapore on a map (it’s on the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula), Little India is expanding. The Ministry of Manpower says the construction industry will need between 40,000 and 50,000 more foreign workers if projects like the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort are to rise from the page. When the visas are granted, these workers will add to a non-resident workforce of 670,000. That may not sound like much by the standards of the United States, where 670,000 doesn’t even capture the number of undocumented workers who cross the border in a single year. But Singapore is a city-state little larger, and far more densely populated, than the city of Chicago. Its growing foreign population is party to a radical experiment in labor mobility.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Interesting read about guest workers in Singapore and the US.. "

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huiqilemon said:

Bet you guys didn't know that you can also get CHICKEN PORRIDGE if you have a weaker stomach! According to Beatrice (who ordered this dish), it tasted just like her mother's home-made porridge with no aftertaste of MSG. No thirstiness detected after a full bowl of the good stuff. SEDAP! =)

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "I guess it is really interesting for this blogger and a bunch of students to go about testing and trying food around the East! It seems more real to me, then those big Channel 5 stars hosting food shows."

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Veron said:

i have reviewed many restaurants in the past year, and it took me one full month into 2007 before it finally hit me that i should have a “best of” list! rather than letting the good restaurants go forgotten, i have awarded little doughnut trophies to the best ones around, complete with various different awards!

when i started this, my intention was to have just a few basic categories such as “best food”, “best service”, “best ambience”, et cetera. but soon i got carried away and came up with more categories such as “best hawker stall” and “best hidden gem”! they even have nominees a la oscars style!

all restaurant descriptions would be brief since i have already written full reviews previously. the links to these past reviews have been included so you can read them as you go down the list!

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "A good round-up of the best and the worst places in the local food scene for 2006 by popular local blogger Veron. Done by a foodie, for foodies and not-so-foodie people. Awards are given based on the blogger's prior experience with the restaurants."

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Singapore Ahoy spotted this sign at Marché Restaurant.

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MercerMachine said:

Xiaxue: “Everyone who blogs is a blogger?”

MercerMachine: Yes, dear, by definition.

Xiaxue: “…first tell me your name.” MercerMachine: My name is MercerMachine, honey. Xiaxue: “Is it Lumpy?” MercerMachine: Lumpy? Wtf? No, I just told you, it’s MercerMachine. If that’s too difficult to remember, you can call me MM, okay sweetiekins? Xiaxue: “So, Lumpy, if you can manage to swim half a lap without dying, is it right for me to call you ‘Lumpy the swimmer’?” MercerMachine: Christ, woman, I just told you. My name is MercerMachine. And yes, if I can manage a single frigging stroke that makes me by definition a swimmer, at least while I’m swimming. And quit calling me Lumpy, dammit. That rash cleared up months ago.

Recommended by MercerMachine: "because Xiaxue gets it wrong. Again."

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antrix said:

Which brings me to the whole fucking point of this post (you noticed this was filed under rants?) If the editors are not some super important people but just regular folks helping out with some link collection, then why the fuck do they have to keep editing the main posts on tomorrow.sg to add their comments? Why the hell can't the editors use the comment section like the rest of us?

It's because their stupid comments are more important than our stupid comments, that's why.

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Wen complained

So Singapore wants to go all-electronic and all tech savvy, Singapore wants to show the world that we’re oh-so-cool … they even have help stations for those “un-technologically inclined” people (i.e. your uncles and your aunties), because we are now SO sophisticated and there should be no other options. This is supposed to bring Singapore up the ladder in the digital electronic battlefield. Yet somehow, I have just spent the last 45 minutes trying to e-file my income tax return without a HINT of success.

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Wannabe Lawyer said "A position that both asks for the state to be constrained from restricting the liberty of people, and at the same time asks for assistance for others, is simply untenable. Everything in life comes at a price, and ‘assistance’ from the state is no different. What truly matters, is for the creation of institutions that allow people to help themselves, rather than seek what pitiful assistance from Leviathan.

The state is a predator whose hunger knows no bounds. After decades of being locked out of power, one would think that the WP would adopt a position that is greatly skeptical of the exercise of state power. So why are they not?"

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