Smartphones are almost an essential part of our lives nowadays. Even to a point where some people don’t even use their desktop or laptops at home. One of the main reason is the versatility of a mobile phone. In such a tiny device (Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Samsung Note 3 aside), you can watch a movie, surf the net, access facebook, pay your bills, and even do contactless payment. That and a whole lot of other stuff. However, with that power comes a problem. There’s too many apps in the apps store! Be it Apple iTunes or Google Play, there’s probably clones and clones of apps doing the same thing. For me, I’m not much of a gamer, and I never liked filling my phone with tons of apps that I don’t use. However, there are some essential apps that I will always have, and these are some of them. Instagram Instagram is an app we almost can’t do without these days. From using a old school square photo format, to having standard filters that changes the mood of an image, instagram is now the go-to tool for photo sharing. For single images, I would use instagram to take the photo, apply a filter, type a caption and tag the location. Sometimes I would share to facebook, as the process is just hassle free. I do know of people who use hashtag as a way of sharing, but I’m not much of a fan of hash tagging. WhatsApp WhatsApp is almost synonymous to instant messaging nowadays. It was one of the first contender to the mobile phone IM space, even though you could use msn, skype, etc on mobile phones for a long while. Perhaps it was just the simple feature set and low overheads. Nowadays there are many others such as LINE, Wechat, Kakao, etc.. Each has their own appeal, and honestly, I have all installed. But WhatsApp is still the one to use. I’m a little irritated by the annual subscription,...
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SINGAPORE: Dr Tony Tan has been elected Singapore’s seventh President, winning by a 0.34 per cent margin, or 7,269 votes. He secured 744,397 or 35.19 per cent of total valid votes, while Dr Tan Cheng Bock received 737,128 or 34.85 per cent of the valid votes. It was a long and widely followed election. Being one of those years where there was a General Election (in May 2011) and a Presidential Election (in August 2011), the social media buzz was loud and furious. Mr Tan Kin Lian was one of the first few to have utilised social media. Earlier in the year, he was suddenly very vocal about topics and had started to attract interest to his name. He started talking about investments, then about insurance. Ironically, he was slamming most insurance products even though he was the CEO of NTUC Income. He also started to appeal to the unsophisticated investors by showing that he will be the evangelist that fights against the big bully, be it the big corporations, the governments, etc. Mr Tan Jee Say was the next to have increased his social presence. He came out to compete in the General Election as a candidate for the SDP. I wrote a fair bit about him with regards to one of his rally speeches. I personally feel that he has a good head on his shoulder, with ideas that have a high possibility of working. However, being the President might not be the right office for him, and he might be better off as a MP. Unfortunately the SDP reputation wasn’t particularly good, and that might have cost him some points. But being the way he is, it is also unlikely that WP will be a good match to his confrontational style. Dr Tan Cheng Bok also came out during the General Election. He already stepped down from active MP duties earlier on, but I told my friends that he was one of those competent PAP members still around today. It was then that I discovered...
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In Singapore most young adults usually think that we have a lousy bargain in terms of the ruling PAP government. But the recent Thailand election has been quite an eye opener for some, though being a typical human, people are usually only concerned with matters affecting them. I found this video, and thought it’s quite an interesting video. Most people always look things from their own point of view. But the things affecting us is affecting the world (Inflation, social unrest, unemployment, asset prices going mad, etc) Take a look at this video from the Malaysian point of view. There are probably a few more worth looking at.. (eg: Greece 40% unemployment for young adults. Spain 20% unemployment, etc) Perhaps we’re all demanding too much for our own...
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In classical economics, price discrimination is when an identical product is sold for different prices to different customer segments. Of course, theoretically this should not happen, but we see it all the time! A Sweet Talk bubble tea sold at a busy MRT station can be $1.80, whereas a location slightly further away from the same MRT station can be sold for $1.50. A dress sold at a pushcart can cost $20, while the exact same dress (since most pushcarts and blogshops tend to get it from the same manufacturer) can be sold for $16 online. Likewise, airlines practice price discrimination in order to maximise their profit. People who are willing to book tickets 9 months in advance can get tickets as low as $1 (not including taxes that is), whereas people booking tickets 3 days before a flight would have to pay a premium. However, there is yet another form of price discrimination that people don’t usually know about. The booking of 2 single trips VS a return trip! Take a look at the fares above. I got the screen shots within 5minutes of each other. At this point of time according to XE, the THB to SGD rate is 0.0403021. So, a return fare is S$246.90, whereas 2 single trips booked is S$114.95 + THB2699.00*0.0403021 (S$108.78)= S$223.73! A savings of S$23.17 with just 5 to 10 minutes of additional effort! Of course, your credit companies might charge you a lousier rate for the exchange, but they would typically not charge more than 1% spread. I use Mustafa Forex as a typical money changer indication, and they are currently quoting 0.040/0.0409. Based on Visa’s rate and a administrative fee rate of 2.5%, I got 0.0416. That means at worst, you would be charged S$112.28 for the BKK to SG single trip. That’s still a saving of S$20 or so. Likewise for another airline, A return fare costs S$222.87, whereas 2 single trips costs S$80 + THB3570 * 0.0403021 (S$143.88) = S$223.88. In this case, there is...
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Social experiments are quite a funny thing. On 1 hand, people may feel cheated when they find out they were involuntarily part of a social experiment. On the other hand, it exposes us to the good(or bad) nature of humans when we are unaware of the experiment.. A group of 4 girls decided to do a social experiment 1 day, inspired by a movie, Living Without Money, which talks about how a woman who decided to stop using money and to live a life based on exchanging favours. The question was, can it be done in Singapore? Singapore is always known to be a place full of apathetic, jaded people. Particularly so after the numerous charity fiascos like Joachim Kang, NKF, Ren Ci, and potentially a City Havest Church one. People suddenly became very tight with the purse when it came to random people coming up to them on the streets to ask for donation for <insert name here> charity. So the plan was to go out to food places, and try to get a meal without paying for it. They tried it out on 4 different types of establishments and well, it’s interesting how people reacted. Enough said. Read more at their blog! For 1, I don’t think I have the courage to go out and ask people for...
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I had a shock this morning while checking my emails when I saw an order delivery email from iHerb since I didn’t order anything from them recently. However, after reading through the rest of the emails, I realized that there is a social media department in iHerb and they saw my blog entry on iHerb where I talked about where you can get supplements cheap and fast. One of my most commonly ordered product is the Omega 3 fishoils which I think everybody should be taking and iHerb actually sent me a bottle for free! So a big shout out to Abby and the rest of you guys at iHerb for the pleasant surprise! Till date, I have did numerous orders with iHerb and all the experiences have been pleasant. Hassle free ordering process, cheap shipping starting from US$4 to Singapore, and relatively quick delivery times. Using express delivery which costs more but would make sense for big orders takes only 3-5 working days, and international airmail takes slightly less than 2 weeks. Most of the time, the supplements available are at least 20-50% cheaper than retail shops in Singapore, and thats including shipping to your doorstep! Even some of the weird supplements like those used in the Tim Ferriss Slow Carb Diet (The 4 Horsemen of Fat Loss) can be found there cheaply! Besides those points mentioned above, go check out the 10 reasons to make iHerb your number 1...
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