Yesterday I met a man my age (in his 50s), and during the group activity we did together we talked a bit, and I overheard him talk with other people. I came to know that his girlfriend had broken up with him a couple of weeks before.

He was kind of miffed because he said it was “such a beautiful relationship”. They didn’t even fight a lot and treated each other with kindness. He was at an absolute loss why someone would end such a relationship. He asked me directly what a man is supposed to do “when even being kind is not enough”. He thought he might have to be meaner in the future.

The kicker is, from the conversation I got that his girlfriend was still a student, so I asked him whether she was a lot younger than he. He said yes, in her 20s.

I was a bit at a loss how to phrase this politely, but I said to him that being kind is just the bare minimum. You should be kind to everybody. In a relationship, there’s a lot more that matters than being kind and the initial attraction. There are other things like shared values, goals, and where everybody’s at in their lives.

I noticed that he had stopped listening halfway through the sentence and his reply immediately after I stopped talking? “You’re just jaded from your recent divorce”.

Crickets

You can imagine that this interaction did nothing in order to change my resolution not to get romantically involved with a man ever again.

I work in a retail company. The work is simple, but hella boring and exhausting.

There is a lot of different work post and we usually change every week, depending on the need of the company, me now, I’m on the “refilling fresh products inside the refrigerator” one.

We start at 4.30 am to finish around 11.30 am, and we can take our 30mim break whenever we want, we just need to warn our boss before. Anyway, one of my colleagues (let’s call him Bob) wanted to smoke a cigarette around 9.30. So he asked our boss for a 5min break.

Our boss said “no, it’s a hard day, you can take a break once you finished this area.” Bob was frustrated, even though he understood the reason, but Bob wanted at least to take time to pee. So Bob followed our boss out of the area, without him realising that he was being followed. While going to the toilet, Bob saw our boss checking for a break after telling us that we need to finish our job before taking a break.

Bob came back in the area furious, claiming how unrespectful it is, he even planned on complaining to our boss about how it is unfair that he can take a break but not us. Me and another co-worker agreed and we accepted to support him afterwork, 30min later, our boss came back from his break and come straight at us to give us even more chores which will make our break time staggered again.

This anger Bob even more, he was raging, Bob exploded to our boss saying “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to listen to you, you can do your chores yourself” a fight started between the two, they are “friends” outside of the work environment, which mean that Bob took the liberty to talk to our boss like that, knowing he doesn’t risk much.

At some point in the fight, Bob screamed “even the guys are supporting me !” Me and the other guy looked at each other, thinking we are done, the other guy ran away from the scene saying he has the next area to do, leaving me alone against the boss. He came in front of me, really close to my face, saying “You too have something to say to me ?” And I answered “We all woke up at 4 a.m to work here, and you arrived at 7a.m, you should let us take 5min break when we want at least”, he replied that he is the boss and do whatever he want, and we should just listen to him without complaining, and then, he finished by saying that we will all see him in his office after work to talk about this issue and stormed off.

Bob was mad that I didn’t try to defend him, I told him that getting angry was useless, and we should have waited for the end of our shifts to talk calmly to him. Now we need to manage our boss so we can have the smallest sanction we can have. We arrived in the big office at 1130am and our boss scolded us like we are just little kids, and make the 3 of us work at 4h30a.m for the rest of the month.

How could I defended myself?

Is there any cons if I want to work for money and benefits only?

I am in a contract role in the science sector doing routine testing and I don’t know why but I find myself no longer wanting to put in effort in my job and wanted to coast around.

The thing is, there is quite limited things to learn as my colleagues are all busy with work and couldn’t take time off from their daily tasks and routine work to train me in newer stuff, resulting in me doing the same old tasks everyday, which I am quite sick of. The only good thing of this would be because I am not trained in a lot of stuff, I can’t perform the more important tasks which means that I can get a bit of time to slack.

In the meantime, I am job hunting for something that is better than my current role, preferably something that pays more and have more benefits than my measly contract position. Compared to my previous position as a trainee in the same company and department, I have lesser benefits now and took a slight pay cut in my current contract role. Somehow I don’t know why but I think I am too fixated with salary and other benefits that I think I would be happier with more salary and benefits? I can’t think of anything else that would made me more happy than more salary and benefits.

Currently, I am required to help out in my previous team when I was a trainee when they are having manpower issues and also do my routine work in my current role and I am wondering is it worth to do so much work when my pay is not so much?

Recently, with colleagues clearing leave and taking MC, sometimes I regret coming to work because there is so much work to do, and I don’t want to help my colleagues who are on site to do the routine work because I want to slack. I know that I sound selfish but I am quite sick of helping the team to fight fire on all grounds.

I want to have a 1 to 1 session with my boss but I don’t know what to tell her. Would she be angry that I am actually a slacker who just wants be paid well only?

I am a classically-trained French chef. I have spent the last 11 years training and cooking in restaurants in France. I met my wife 5 years ago when she was on vacation in France, we fell in love and she lived with me in France. When we decided wanted to start a family, she expressed a desire to move back to her hometown in SG so we can be closer to her family. We have made the move as of last week.​

When we made the official move into our house, moving in some furniture from France and some bought furniture, we had a bunch of neighbors come out and help us. What was expected to take 4 or 5 hours of moving in and arranging and putting away ended up taking 2 hours as suddenly 15 people came over to help, with snacks and drinks and advice about the home and neighbourhood. I was so grateful and surprised at this kindness, so I offered to cook them all a grand meal 3 days later. Some turned the offer down because of their kids or schedule.

I ended up cooking a 4-course French dinner for 3 other couples. They all absolutely loved my entree of Gigot qui Pleure with a pan sauce, some even asking for seconds of it. I ended up making copies of the recipe for them as a final thank you since they loved it so much. When I gave them the recipes they looked absolutely shocked, they didn’t realize the pan sauce had red wine in it and they are not allowed to consume alcohol because of their religious reasons.

They ended up getting very angry at me, saying I am trying to corrupt them with alcohol and that I should respect other people’s beliefs and dietary restrictions. My wife is very upset and feels like I ruined our first chance at making friends in our new neighbourhood.​

People I have talked to about this have been very split about if I am wrong or not. Some say I should have studied up on the local dietary restrictions and modified my recipes to match, while others have said that as the people with the dietary restrictions, they should have mentioned them well before the preparation of the meal to make sure those restrictions are met, just like someone with an allergy would mention it.

Have I done wrong?

More help for foreigners

The Singapore government should have more agencies to help foreigners. They are the one who wants more foreign talents to work in Singapore, so more help should be provided.

Other countries like New Zealand have free school & healthcare for foreigners. What about Singapore? They should provide more subsidies for foreigners. House rental subsidy as the rentals now are sky rocketing, healthcare subsidies, education subsidies, etc.

They should also assist the foreign families. Allow their spouse to work with a LTVP pass instead of banning them. Singapore needs these foreigners to strive, so they should focus more on foreigners too.

Here are what netizens think:

• If you are a “foreign talent” then do your math before moving here. If you can’t, then clearly you aren’t.
• No free lunch in this world. Someone else will have to pay for what you want “free”.
• Not happy go back loh.
• I think you can take a look at the difference in the income and business taxes for both countries before sharing further. What may be viable in one country may not be viable in another.
• Since you say other countries, then u go other country la talk so much.
• There’s high education foreigners and low education foreigners. High education foreigners are paid $xxk/mth by their own companies and had extensive package which will cover the entire family.
• If by giving foreigners a job in Singapore is not helping, then stay in your country try and ask your government to help you with your suggestion.

As someone who have been in the workforce for a few years now, I am genuinely concerned for students who have just graduated/graduating soon.

While they are probably smarter and are more exposed to the world than the previous generations, I wonder how is the situation in terms of insurance nowadays?

Back in the days we take agents’ words at face value and believe we are indeed getting good advice. Students, please do some reading before getting insurance! There are many agents out there who are really good at giving half-truths to secure a deal. I have taken losses before in the past and so I do not wish for such things to happen to you????. There are companies like MoneyOwl (I am not affiliated nor paid to do so, but just believe in what they do) that can provide conflict-free advice and they will never push you to buy.

Even if you decide not to buy from them you learn what you need and buy from others(your friend or whoever), but at least you probably won’t buy unnecessary policies. Think about how many bbts you can buy from saving 3-5k/yr.

My only wish is that future generations of people won’t end up paying for unnecessary policies. please do university outreaches to educate our younger generation????. Alright sorry for the boring rant.

(PS: A loved one just kena from agent which really infuriated me)

(PPS: There are indeed good agents out there, but not everyone may have the luck to meet one or the ability to discern)

Sorry if this isn’t appropriate for this but how long do you ladies usually date someone before getting into a relationship.