My wife recently was driving to work, and her car shut off on the highway.

It almost caused an accident and in the moment she “thought for sure it was going to be over”.

I picked her up from work that night and she completely had a breakdown about how she thought she was going to never see me again. I feel awful for her.

To add on to this:

SG Private Commercial Property Landlords Are Parasitic Scum. They’re the Reason why Neighbourhood shops are Dying.

TLDR: Commercial landlords are parasitic scum on the economy and society. And we are helpless to do anything about it, so we all end up poorer for it.

Just found out today that a friend’s hardware shop family business of over a decade is closing down for good.

When I asked him why, he said that the shopowner landlord had jacked up the rent for the shop from 7k a month to 10k a month effective from next January. Which is in a month’s time. So his family decided it was time to close the business down and semi-retire.

7k/month to 10k/month. That’s a bloody 42% rental jump. Landlord didn’t even blink an eyelid naming the new rental price to my friend’s parents. Same landlord also refused to give the 2-month rental rebate in full during the 2020 Covid lockdown and immediate post-lockdown period, instead attempting like so many other landlords back then to spread the rebate out over the full 12 months and expecting to still collect reduced but substantial rental income throughout the entire CB period. He only gave the full 2 month rebate in 1 lump sum after the Government legislated to enforce it.

42% rental jump. What excuse does he have? GST rise? Bank interest rate rise? Show me a bank interest rate rising 42% anywhere in the world, let alone Singapore. Landlord does NOTHING to maintain his own commercial shopfront. The shop awning in the past decade had to be bought by my friend’s parents themselves. In fact my friend’s parents had to whitewash a fresh coat of paint for the shop interior and strip everything else down bare to hand it over nice and neat and clean to the landlord, before his next carrot head business owner moves in. 42% raise? What’s he worked to deserve that raise?

You might say “oh, let the landlord learn his lesson with his rental hike, see who he can get to pay such overinflated rent”. Thing is… there are still idiots out there who think 10k rental for a neighbourhood shopfront is something they can still base a retail business out of and break even/profit out of. The landlord in question here has already found his next renting business. It’s a new hair salon… setting up along the same neighbourhood block stretch as TWO other hair salons that are already next door to each other and in mutual duopoly competition for the entire area, and a smaller Muslim barbershop. Oversaturation much?

And it’s not just that one landlord in question. Ask any of your friends or family who run neighbourhood businesses, they will tell you rentals have spiked through the roof for the next two year lock-in period at least. All the predatory parasitic private individual commercial landlords, either seeing one last chance to fleece the rental market before the recession hits next year, or they bought their commercial shopfronts by overleveraging their bank loans, and now when interest rates are spiking to heights not seen for years they’re all in deep water and directly passing on the increased repayment of their loans to their renter clients. You overleverage your business, why make it your renter’s problem to help you dig yourself out of the financial hole you’re in?

This is why so many small businesses, many of the family name kind are failing all over Singapore. This is why nowadays you see more and more empty shopfronts in HDB neighbourhoods with no businesses operating there. This is why everywhere you go in SG now, it seems that longevity for small businesses outside of shopping malls no longer exist. Every few months, businesses close down or move out and then something new pops back in, with business owners crazy enough to think THEY will be the ones to make the overinflated rent work for their bottomline, rinse and repeat.

This is why our heartland business culture is dying, everything is increasingly done either online or in shopping malls run by commercial REITS now. Who are equally as predatory, but at least they run centralised retail shopping complexes that still draw in the SG crowd because people still gotta go out to buy stuff and eat. But only big players can play.

The rest of us plebs can go pound sand. And the government will do NOTHING like rent controls or whatever similar they can think of. Because it’s capitalistic, and it worships at the altar of the Invisible Hand Of The Free Market.

I told my boyfriend he had a drinking problem.

I’ve been working since I was 16 years old, and ten years later, I’ve never stopped. Even when I was in school, I was juggling between classes, my two jobs, and my unpaid internship.

Thanks to my master degree, I found a steady job, but I make $1700/month and my rent is like $1100.

I’m a second-gen immigrant and I always feel embarrassed to ask my parents for help. They struggled all their lives, I feel like I should be the one helping them out you know ?

My friends are all pretty well-off too, which doesn’t help tbh (even if I’m very happy for them, it’s just that they don’t really understand my struggles).

Anyways, I feel doomed by poverty. I’ve got a ton of mental health issues and even though i’m powering through it thanks to a wide range of medications, I feel so tired.

I see my friends buying property, having kids, being financially secure, and I just can’t help but thinking I will never catch up, like it’s too late you know?

I really try to save up some money but it’s like it’ll never be enough. And I always feel so guilty when I spend money on myself.

I know it could be worse, so I’ll stop my complaining right there, but, you know. It’s hard sometimes.

A netizen shared a bizarre story online after he discovered his current girlfriend has a collection of hair.

The man describe that his ‘fight or flight’ instincts kick in and had to leave his girlfriend immediately.

Here is the story:

I recently went MIA on my gf after I discovered something disgusting, scary and I don’t even know how to put it into words.

I was helping my girlfriend clean up her wardrobe when I found a Stamp book. I thought my girlfriend collected stamps when she was young but when I open it up it was full of hair.

There were all tied using a red string and there were multiple locks of hair in the book.

The worse part of it there was a label for each lock of hair.

David, Gary, Wei Jie… and so on. Some of the hair are not just from the head, some of the hair are from down there…

Then to my horror, I saw my name under a lock of hair. This is disgusting. I did not confront my girlfriend, she was out of the room when I found it.

I quickly place it back where I found it and I got out of her room and told her that my mom had called and I needed to go home to do some chores.

She tried to ask more questions before I leave but I got out of her house quickly in a panic. Then I started to slowly recall that those are the names of her ex-boyfriend.

What should I do? I have been avoiding her for 3 days and I do not even know if I can accept any form of explanation from her.

I feel hurt that my boyfriend is still friends with the girl he cheated on me with

I don’t know where to go or whom to talk to about this, so I’m here in hopes that someone will help me out My boyfriend (20M) of about 2.5 years cheated on me (19F) with a girl from his class, who also happens to be in the same friend group.

I feel that I cannot ask him to completely cut contact with her considering they’re in the same friend group and also in the same class..

He says that he willingly doesn’t want to hangout with her anymore and has been putting a lot of efforts to make us work, which I can see and I sure do appreciate.

He said he stopped talking to her completely and whatever happened, he tried to avoid or ignore her at every possible interaction.

He stopped hanging out with friends if he knew she was gonna be there too. All this I rlly did appreciate and hoped he’s actually changing and we could make this work.

He is my first love, after all.. All his friends recently went on a trip, he refused to go but they convinced him and took him too. It is hard for me to trust him the same way again but I believed he wouldn’t do anything to break my heart again.

Now, that girl posted a picture of them on her story, just the two of them on the boat, and he is wearing her bucket hat.

Not just that, even in one of the group pics, he’s sitting next to her and has his hands on her shoulder. Looking at these pictures I feel miserable. I feel heartbroken. I feel so helpless. It’s so painful I don’t want to let him go but it hurts me so bad to witness things like this..

I hate that I’m in this situation but I’d also hate to have to say goodbye to him. I hope it’s not wrong that I feel hurt because he’s still friends with her..

I’m finding out my girlfriend of 1 year is deaf as I’m on the bus on my way to see her for the first time.
Holy shit I’m trembling, I need to let it out somewhere

I (f20) met her (f21) in a match of LoL two years ago. We talked a lot, became really close and basically started dating one year ago.

We send each other pictures all the time and videos as well so I never understood her apprehension to facetime me. We tell each other everything, I mean EVERYTHING. She’s presented me her parents and I know all her family.

Today I was gonna surprise her by visiting for the first time. I talked with her sister to make sure it was ok. Less than 30 mins ago I get a text from her (and im copypasting a translated version) :

“Hey love you are so sweet and beautiful and you deserve so much better. I know you are coming because S told me. I’m sorry to ruin your surprise is just I’d hate to see your face when you find out. I know we promised to always be truthful but I’ve been lying to you all this time. “

That was her first paragraph and I was shitting myself cause I thought she was breaking up with me, but then she continued:

“You are too caring to ask why I never speak, why I never sent you a voice note. You are just too perfect and there’s no way you’d be with me if you knew. The reason is very simple, I was born deaf. I’m sorry you have to find out this way. I’m just a coward for not telling you sooner. I’ll understand if you don’t wanna be with me anymore”

I was expecting something totally different and now I’m scared cause I’ve never interacted with a deaf person and I want to make sure she gets that I love her either way. I’m still in disbelief that she thought it’d a deal breaker for me.

Recently my girlfriend has become in need of a car. She got into an accident and it’s totaled.

A netizen shared his story online on how his friend always pretends to act high class but deep down he is in financial trouble.

He said that the friend grew up with a silver spoon has no means of earning money but always flaunts his so called “wealth”.

Here is the story:

I have this friend who claims that he is an entreprurener, he always have tons of ideas to make money but most of the time none of them are working.

He always jio me to go Malaysia to play golf and said that by playing golf he will meet other rich people who will provide him with more opportunities.

He is also always wearing branded T-shirts that cost at least few hundred dollars a piece.

So the problem hit him when we were out drinking. He started to claim that his so called business is doing well and asked if his friends are interested to join him.

None of us said yes to him as all of us smell something fishy.

As it turns out he has been pouring money into this so called “lup sup” bar with alot of foreign hostess but his money has been decreasing rather than increasing.

It did not concern me until he started asking me and my other friends to lend him money.

He wanted to lend $50 which i find it amusing as he is so called “rich” why would he need a loan of $50.

My other mutual friends and I started to exchange information and found out that he is heavily in debt and owes at least 10 different people money.

Never judge someone by what they wear or do. Sometimes it’s nothing but a sham.

I have a close friend who works as an insurance agent straight after he graduated from his degree.

At the beginning of his insurance career, he would always try to schedule appointments with me to let him ‘practise’ his presentation and selling skills.

I obliged because we were considered close and bought a few insurance policies from him.

I even recommended him to people whenever they were looking for an insurance agent and a lot of my family and friends also bought policies from him.

He was very ‘on the ball’ and enthusiastic while prospecting and trying to close the case and would even offer to buy me meals as a way of thanking me for introducing clients to him and for my support in helping him kickstart his insurance career.

However, all these enthusiasm and his ‘on the ball’ spirit died down when my brother went for an operation and wanted to submit some insurance claims.

When my brother contacted him, he would always say ‘okay I will make time to meet you’ but would always later cancel the appointment stating that he is ‘not free’ as he already has other appointments or last minute meetings planned out with his insurance boss.

He would always use this ‘not free’ excuse and it has been almost half a year since my brother’s operation but nothing is done by my insurance agent friend yet.

However when my other friends wanted to meet him to discuss buying some new insurance policies, he would always be available for them.

My brother has been complaining to me about my insurance agent friend as it has been quite awhile ever since his operation ended.

Every time I give him a call, he would always not pick up and send me a message saying that he will call me back but the call never came.

He would also purposely not see our chats to avoid ‘blue ticking’ me.

What should I do?

Image source: Unsplash