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gotrecruit

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As a native Singaporean, I do believe my "exposure" to Singapore society and culture is far deeper than yours so I can counter your points with a certain degree of confidence. I also want to disclaim upfront that I left Singapore a few years ago because I do not like it there, but just because I do not like it does not mean I disagree with the policies that led to our first-world economy.

"Needless segregation" - like another poster replied... "needless"? Can you explain what you mean by needless? Have you ever compared our academic achievements with the same aged counterparts from other highly developed countries including US? If it's "needless", how come we are academically so far superior? What is needless about it?

"Singaporeans..... quickly binge on drugs and alcohol" LOL. as opposed to.... what? Americans who reads books in the dorm rooms? Europeans who sip tea and chat about politics? I've attended 3 different schools in Canada and US, and rarely have I ever seen Singaporeans outdrink and outparty the really wild and affluent Eastern Europeans (Russians, Bulgarians, etc) and even the Americans themselves. Are there SOME singaporeans who party hard? Of course, but your comment is just ridiculous sensationalism.

"They are happy to prevent the Malays from becoming successful" This is the most laughable of your statements. Trust me when I tell you, we did nothing to oppress them. We gave them free education up to university, which is not offered to the Chinese citizens, and yet they remain in the lower rungs of society. Go read Lee Kuan Yew's statements on Malays and you'll read about it from someone far more articulate than me. Wanna know an interesting fact? Even in their native country Malaysia, the rich and powerful are still the Chinese. Can you explain that?

my instant jet lag cure:

1. if i arrive early in the day, make sure i take as much coffee and/or energy drinks as possible to stay awake. then stop about 4 hours before planned bedtime.

2. once it's bedtime, or if i arrive at destination close to bedtime, if possible, i then smoke as much cannabis as is necessary to force me to go to sleep.

whenever i travel somewhere with vastly different timezones, i do this two or three days in a row and i'm usually fixed.

fruit is not healthy for you, contrary to what you may have traditionally heard. you can get everything you need, vitamins and minerals wise, from vegetables, without the sugar that comes with fruits.

where i'm from, apartment is usually considered somewhat lower end, it's usually a unit that is fairly standalone in a building, and offers minimal amenities. apartments are not often gated. a condo is usually gated, with a human concierge or security guard, with much more luxurious amenities such as a nice pool and fitness centre.

don't pay too much attention to stories like that, there are easily countless stories that serve as counterpoint. example, warren buffett mentioned several times in his writings that very often, it's the regular folks who are more capable of spotting potential new investments rather than institutional investors, because they can see businesses succeeding in the real world much sooner than institutional investors spot them on balance sheets.

i have always heard that movies make most of their profit from concessions. if that is the case, i'm not at all surprised they're failing. i've always brought my own snacks because they're cheaper and/or tastier, and i rarely get given shit for it. the minute they make me feel uncomfortable about it, i stop patronizing that theatre.

i agree in principle with your argument, but i imagine the only way to properly track historical players of that machine is if they kept some sort of ledger or database on every single user of the machine, which probably means they'd need to store your personal information somewhere indefinitely. not sure too many gamblers would be cool with that.

There is a similar concept in South Korean cities like Seoul, they're called Officetels. These are executive hotel rooms designed for office workers to sleep overnight if they work too late - inevitably i guess, most of these have been converted in recent years to AirBnB locations.

this is not untrue, but a severely over-exaggerated cliche. whatever amount you can raise your BMR via exercise, is not going to be significant enough to make any kind of difference. not to mention, if we are going the stereotypical way of copious amounts of cardio, even worse because it does even less for your BMR.

[dead] 9 years ago

if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos killed someone, you don't think it'll be news on here?

As a Singaporean born and raised there and then left, you are spot on. Most Singaporeans, esp talented tech workers, do not wish to stay there. It's a gilded birdcage - if your moral values and behavior align with the government's, Singapore is a very clean, safe and prosperous environment for you. If you even have the notion to disagree with the government on anything, go somewhere else.

Because of such authoritarian attitudes in society, Singaporeans are raised to be subservient and fearful of authority (whether they know it or not). This means no creativity - the prevailing mentality in Singapore is "don't try to be clever - do what the authorities say and you won't go wrong", sort of like the local version of nobody gets fired for buying IBM. this is the reason why there is no innovation coming out of singapore despite the govt trying to offer all sorts of grants and schemes to "support local entrepreneurs" - because singaporeans have been psychologically beaten to subservience and are crippled when it comes to thinking out of the box because they have been conditioned by society to believe when you fail, you will be ridiculed and mocked and maybe even punished.

i think the theory is that Amazon's ultimate goal is to dominate all of commerce in its entirety, which is obviously impossible. However, if you consider that as the end goal, Amazon is really far from achieving it. And as long as Amazon can continue to build parts of this impossible machine in a way that does not deteriorate the system (i.e cause major losses that hold back the company), the value of the system will keep going up as the Amazon machine consumes more and more of the world's commercial activities. Since it's practically impossible to achieve that end goal, within any reasonable number of lifetimes, bezos's and amazon's wealth is unlikely to decline without government intervention.

this IS sad, and it's something i've wrote about repeatedly since the advent of the iPhone and the app store, which was really the hotbed for these kinds of apps. the kind that may be based on some fun or cool idea that the founder had, but with absolutely no way to monetize so they get started by giving everything away. some of these ideas are indeed cool and gain traction, but still no way to monetize so ultimately, once you hit critical mass of users, the only way to monetize without driving away your early users is to do it in a way that doesn't cost the users money, thus ads.

i think there should be a lot more innovation in viable business models rather than concept of the product itself, but that doesn't seem to be a popular sentiment.

before i realized jelly was the name of the phone, i had this visual in my head that there was a tiny phone embedded inside a gel, which obviously would make it super smooth to slide inside your prison wallet.

yeah that's the part i'm quite confused by. i've used venmo simply because my friend preferred to be paid that way, and then never after that but that social thing always baffled me because i can't imagine people being so willing to share their transactions with the world. i just assumed venmo being european may come from a different culture where perhaps people care less about privacy, but i never bothered to verify if that was the case.

well yeah there were some demand for snack boxes from customers who were keen on Japanese chocolates and confectionaries like Pocky, Glico as well as exotic chip flavors from Asia. interestingly, there was even a request for a ramen box. it's not something we've written off entirely, it's definitely something my business partner and i still discuss from time to time. if you genuinely are interested in a savory box, drop me an email at sales@supercandyshop.com. i'd be willing to start that new line if there is even a single interested subscriber. i will make sure there's no ramen haha.

as someone operating a similar candy subscription service, we have been considering that offering (a savory snacks box) but the issue with shipping things like chips is that they have so much air in the packaging itself. this is a problem because let's say we ship in a small box, which for us usually contains around 1kg of candies, it can only contain at most four small bags of chips. for four bags of chips, taking shipping costs into consideration, it would cost close to 40 dollars, with more than half of the costs coming from shipping. would people really be willing to pay 40-50 a month for 4 bags of exotic chips?