The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance issued a joint statement earlier today (12 May), saying that all Singaporean children aged 7 to 20 will get a one-off $200 top up into their Edusave accounts (or Post Secondary Education Account – PSEA).

This is on top of the annual Edusave contribution made by the government, and it will be credited directly into their accounts, requiring no action from them.

This is part of the Household Support Package announced during Budget 2021 to provide additional support to families to alleviate their children’s education-related expenditure.

Letters informing them about the successful top up will be sent to eligible recipients from next month, and about 532,500 children and students will benefit from this.

Image source: Republic Polytechnic Facebook

Following online news coverage of Minister for Law and Home Affairs, K Shanmugam’s speech on racism in Singapore, the minister himself faced racial abuse online.

A netizen commented on the news article on Facebook, calling the minister a “k*leng kia” (which is a derogatory term to describe Indians) who likes to play the “racist xenophobic cards for gods knows what reasons”.

Shanmugam was speaking on the purported rising sentiment against foreign nationals as well as the recent attack on a woman who was brisk walking to work.

Images source: The Straits Times Comment Section Facebook

A 27 year old woman has passed away after jumping of the 6 floor at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Here is the official post from Tan Tock Seng’s Facebook page.

We are saddened that a 27-year-old outpatient had passed on at our hospital today. She was on follow-up care at our clinic and had attended a clinic appointment this morning accompanied by her family. Witnesses had found her at the Basement 2 escalator lobby of our Medical Centre.

CCTV footage shows that she had climbed over the railing and jumped off at Level 6. Our medical staff attended to her immediately. She was brought to our Emergency Department and despite our efforts, had later succumbed to her injuries.

Our doctor and medical social worker are with her family to offer them our full support. Investigations are ongoing and we are working with the police on this matter. Our heartfelt sympathies and deepest condolences to her family. We will continue to render assistance to the family during this difficult period.

Facebook user Jacqueline Ng Su Peng recently posted her negative experience with a photography company after their pictures they took came back unsatisfactory. Many of the pictures were dark and gloomy and one would wonder if they were taken by a 4 year old instead of a photography director.

Here is the full story.

Our 4 years old daughter loves aquarium so much, and we decided to book Ocean Suites at Sentosa to have a photography session for her . The room come with an aquarium and cost almost 2k a night! 2k is a BIG money for us, but we love our daughter so much and would like to leave her some good memories when she grows up.

We know we won’t be able to take nice photo in the room. Thus, we engaged the photographer from this company called Afford-A-Graph. They have junior photographer, senior photographer and director photographer with different pricing. We choose the director photographer named Danish which cost us SGD360 for 1.5 hours. The boss of the company named Russell told us that they just shoot at the same location and will bring along the studio light. Russell was very responsive and proactive during the discussion.

On the day of shooting, the director photographer was late for 30 minutes, but we are fine with that. During the shooting, he was very quiet, do not have much interaction with us and seems not very interested in shooting us. End up we released him at about 1 hour 10 minutes even though we paid for 1 h 30 minutes.

We are disappointed with the picture that he has taken. Basically very dark with poor composition, and doesn’t seems to be the work of a director photographer. We called Danish and asked why pictures are so dark, he said his boss Russell never ask him to bring along the studio light. We were asking if he can at least make the pictures brighter. Since then, both boss and director photographer never reply to our message and call. We called and texted them many times. We also tried to reach out to them via FB and Instagram, but we were blocked by them. Subsequent, we created new IG account, hopefully they will respond to us, also being blocked by them. Eventually they do not allow public to leave comment on their IG.

We attached some of the photos in this post, right hand side picture was taken by them, left hand side was taken by our handphone.

We believe there is consumer right in Singapore? Can anyone advise how should we get them to respond to us? Or we should just give up ?

A video was recently uploaded on the Facebook page SGRV which shows a man letting his child play her tricyle in the carpark which almost caused her to get hit by a car.

Here is the full story.

11may2021 1639hrs blk 783 woodland rise riding against traffic flow quoted Father in video allowed daughter to ride tricycle down carpark ramp, when camcar driver tapped horn once to warn, father shouted ‘horn 什么 lan!? Purpose of video is to remind parents about hazards in carparks and to raise awareness

FULL VIDEO LOADING….

A 49-year-old Singaporean man, Peh Choe Kong, was caught throwing a cigarette butt onto the ground in a public place, he was subsequently fined $3,600 on 7 May and sentenced to 12 hours of corrective work order, where he has to don a CWO vest and sweep the roads in public.

This is the man’s 8th time being convicted for littering, he was previously convicted between 2008 and 2018.

NEA officers witnessed Peh throwing a cigarette butt on the floor outside Tampines 1 Mall on 9 July last year.

Peh however, claimed in court that he actually threw it into a makeshift container on the floor.

The prosecution’s case was accepted in the end and Peh was convicted, with his 7 prior convictions being considered during the sentencing.

Images source: Unsplash (Images used strictly for illustration purposes only)

A video was recently uploaded on the Facebook page Complaint Singapore which shows a confrontation between a drunk man and police officers.

The man was seen shouting and he can be seen smashing the panel of the office booth at an MRT station.

The 3 police officers could be seen moving back several times when the drunk man walked towards them. The drunk man was seen not wearing his facemask properly as well.

FULL VIDEO LOADING….

MOH reported 25 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday (11 May), of which 13 are new community cases and 10 of which are linked to previous cases.

The remaining 3 community cases are unlinked, with an Ng Teng Fong Hospital staff and a Starbucks barista among the infected.

Unlinked cases

A 27-year-old Malaysian working as a manufacturing operator at Siltronic Singapore Pte Ltd, tested positive for the virus after developing body aches on 6 May.

He sought treatment at a GP on the same day and developed a cough on 8 May.

He then went to another GP and was tested for Covid-19 the next day, and it came back positive on 10 May.

2nd unlinked case

A 50-year-old Singapore PR working as an IT Support Staff at Kulicke and Soffa Pte Ltd, as well as at Starbucks Plaza Singapura as a part-time barista and a general worker at LBC Express at Lucky Plaza, tested positive for the virus on 10 May.

He developed a cough and shortness of breath on 6 May but didn’t seek medical treatment.

His symptoms persisted on 8 May and he went to a GP on the same day, and he was tested for Covid-19 the next day.

His result then came back positive on 10 May.

3rd unlinked case

A 42-year-old Malaysian man working as an Operating Theatre Technician at Ng Teng Fong Hospital also tested positive for the virus on 10 May.

He was in Malaysia and returned to Singapore on 10 January, before serving a SHN until 24 January

His Covid-19 test on 23 January was negative.

He then developed a cough on 21 April but didn’t seek medical treatment until his cough worsened on 10 May, where he then sought treatment and was tested for Covid-19.

His test came back positive on the same day, with his “Ct value” being very high, which means he has a low viral load and his serology test result also came back positive.

MOH said that he could be shedding “minute fragments of the virus RNA from a past infection”.

MOH added that they are not able to conclude when he had been infected, and are taking all public health actions as a precaution.

The hospital also posted an announcement on Facebook:

Images source: JurongHealth Campus on Facebook and Google Maps

A Singaporean man recently posted on Facebook after he felt that he is losing respect from his wife due to her relying on her brother to satisfy her luxury lifestyle. It is believed that she is receiving $20,000 a month from her rich brother. She once even spend a few thousand dollars on shopping in a few hours and she said the shopping she did was therapeutic.

Here is the full story.

I am having an upsetting issue with my marriage and I wish just to have a discussion with helpful commenters here.

I am married to a woman whose older brother has inherited their parents’ business. Let’s just say he makes a shitload of money and I don’t know how much he earns. He lives in a landed detached near Nanyang Primary School. It’s worth mentioning that that company is split 90/10 between my brother-in-law and his mother. My father-in-law is dead, never met the guy. My wife got a 3-bed condo from her dad. We live in it now.

My wife is a housewife. She became a housewife ever since we had our first child. Now we have 2 children, aged 5 and 2. I don’t make a lot of money (I’m a civil servant), and my wife is uniquely high maintenance. Although I would be lying if I didn’t also say that she has changed a lot since we met in uni. In those days, she would walk into ION, spend a couple thousand dollars in a few hours, and call it “therapeutic.” I made it very clear to her when we were dating, repeatedly I might add, that I am low SES and she was the one who agreed to still go out with me, eventually agreeing to marry me. Recently, because of the stress of raising my two children, she has started to ask for significantly more money to spend. She started going back to cafes with her friends at Orchard, something she has stopped doing for a long time, and she has started buying branded stuff. The cost of raising children has also been more expensive than I had predicted. But to be completely honest, if I reduce my savings to negligible numbers, I can support both my wife’s lifestyle and all the household expenses. I don’t make a lot but I think I am comfortably middle-income. The thing is I want to save up for retirement. I think it is my responsibility to save up for retirement because I do not believe in asking anything from my children. So for a few months, I have told my wife that I have not enough money to give her apart from what I usually give her. We didn’t use to fight. But we have fought more in the past 6 months than our entire history together combined.

I think 2-3 months ago, she started having money to spend all of a sudden. She could buy all her branded stuff, go to cafes etc. A few weeks ago, we went to Takashimaya and my son saw this $500 toy that he really wanted. I obviously told him no. I didn’t have the budget for it. He threw a tantrum and I held my ground, as I have always done. Without hesitation, my wife just came over and told him “daddy doesn’t have money, mummy buy for you.” I got so angry I just drove home, leaving them all behind.

Two days ago, I finally found out my wife has been getting money from my brother-in-law. I found out by accident because she left her iBanking session active when she was cooking. In that past 5 months alone, my brother-in-law sent her $20,000 a month. Ok, let’s just get something straight here. I don’t have a good relationship with my BIL. He is really smart and really rich. Because I always feel very insecure about how smart I am, I always try to sound smart during family dinners. But he frankly just knows so much about so many things once he starts talking everyone just listens to him explain shit. It is frustrating and I really don’t like being around him. So I can’t talk to him about leaving my family business to me because I’m sure he would just say it’s his money and he can give it whomever he wants.

I talked to my wife about the money she’s been receiving, and how we should review our household finances and she was adamant in saying that the money her brother sent to her is “her brother’s money,” earmarked for “her to spend” and I’m not allowed to have a discussion on how it constitutes an increase in our household income.

I’m not angry at the money that she’s been getting. I’m just upset that I get the sense that my wife has lost all respect for the kind of money I make, the type of work that I do, and the person I am. For example, she’d suggest a place to have dinner, like a really expensive place, and I stopped being able to use the excuse that we cannot afford it because she’d say it’s her treat. I feel like nobody respects me in the family and I don’t even know what to feel anymore.