There are always headlines that make us go WTF in Singapore and this time, Zouk lands itself in hot soup, a foreign worker was supposedly made to wait at a local A&E and telcos are having a price war. Here’s what’s new and annoying lately:
DJ Fila vs DJ Norashman
Zouk
Local clubbers were outraged to discover that popular DJ Fila (of Egyptian trance duo Aly & Fila) was allegedly told to end his set early by Zouk’s new management, as they wanted him to make way for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s youngest son, Norashman. The DJ, who is known to play extended sets, said to the crowd (who paid to see him perform), “I will see you somewhere in the future, not in Zouk anymore, because I won’t play in Zouk any [expletive] more.” However, Zouk has released their side of the story, saying that “DJ Fadi (Fila) was not at any point of time asked to end his set prematurely before the contracted set end time of 3.30am.” We’ll let you be the judge.
When on holiday, women are actually interested in nature
Tourism Authority of Thailand
In a ground-breaking piece by Today, a survey by Tripadvisor revealed that women are more interested in natural attractions than shopping when in comes to planning their vacations (gasp). According to the report, Singaporean women “contributed financially to their trips and were heavily involved with travel plans” and “almost three-quarters of Singaporean female travellers surveyed said they considered-natural attractions—such as national parks and waterfalls—the number one factor when it came to planning trips.” Who knew?
Foreign worker was allegedly made to wait at A&E
Photo credit: Jirka Matousek
A viral Facebook post which claimed that a foreign worker with a bleeding hand was not attended to immediately but was made to wait 42 minutes after he arrived at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital’s A&E caused a stir earlier this week. But according to The New Paper, who launched their own investigation, the hospital’s CCTV footage seemed to contradict some of the allegations made, and showed that the man was attended to by a nurse as soon as he arrived. In a “they said, she said” debate about what actually happened, the author of the post “stood by her story”, saying “I shared because I wanted Singaporeans to treat foreign workers with respect and not take them for granted. They helped us build our homes, roads and rails.”
Telcos are slashing prices
Forget the all-important search for free wi-fi: there’s a price war on data plans between telcos M1, Singtel and Starhub, which may or may not have been sparked by the impending of a fourth telco in Singapore. Local telco startup MyRepublic revealed plans to offer an affordable $8 a month mobile plan with 2GB of data and soon after, M1 and Singtel started rolling out promotions with heavily slashed data plans. While we’re not complaining about the unbelievably cheap prices, this begs the question of if we were actually (exorbitantly) overcharged before. Hmm…
The Tesla saga continues
Elon Musk, photo credit: OnInnovation
Following reports about how a local consumer spent months trying to get his electric Tesla Model S car licensed and was taxed $15,000 for having a non-fuel-efficient car instead, co-founder Elon Musk of Tesla Motors had a phoner with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and tweeted that “he said he would investigate the situation”. It also led to a parliament discussion, with Member of Parliament Ong Teng Koon saying, “From the government’s perspective, this is a rare carbon emissions reduction policy where the abatement cost would be voluntarily borne by consumers… rather than being paid for by the government.”
