Blog Posts by Kai Fong

Britain’s Prince William and his wife Catherine charmed residents of Queenstown Wednesday when the couple showed up at the Singapore housing estate.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made the Strathmore Green precinct in the residential district their third stop of their second day in the city-state.

Crowds of energetic cheering fans could barely hide their excitement when the glamorous royal couple emerged from their car, all dressed up despite the humidity and scorching sun.

Kate opted for a pretty printed silk two-piece by Singapore label Raoul for the occasion.

Britain's Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, are welcomed by a lion dance performance during a tour in Strathmore Green at Queenstown public housing estate in Singapore September 12, 2012. The royal couple is in the city-state for a three-day visit that started on Tuesday as part of a tour to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. REUTERS/Nicolas Asfouri/Pool (SINGAPORE - Tags: POLITICS ROYALS ENTERTAINMENT)



A Chinese lion dance troupe, a Malay kompang group and Indian drummers greeted the royals as they strolled into the relatively new five-block heartland estate on Strathmore Avenue.

The Duke and the Duchess, accompanied by HDB chairman James Koh, Member of Parliament (MP) Indranee Rajah and PA chief executive director Yam Ah Mee, among others, were then given a quick tour of the area where the royals met with some residents.

Most Singaporeans feel that they aren’t getting paid as well as their peers in other companies, according to a survey.

In employee-benefits consultancy Towers Watson’s 2012 Global Workforce Study, only 32 per cent of 1,000 employees surveyed in Singapore believed they were paid fairly compared to people in other companies who hold similar jobs. This is lower than the global average of 46 per cent.

When compared with their colleagues at their own offices, only 36 per cent felt likewise, again well below the global average of 52 per cent.

72 per cent of Singapore employees were also found to be less engaged in their work than their regional and global peers.

Said Amrita Prasad, practice leader in Singapore Organisational Surveys & Insights at Towers Watson, “Employers in Singapore need to look at sustainable engagement. They should provide the support employees need to do their work efficiently and effectively (and) also create a healthy work environment — one that supports physical, social

Should teachers be allowed to cut their students’ hair without parental consent?

Parents Yahoo! Singapore spoke to said “no” and that the school should inform them before any actions are taken.

Mdm Lim, a 43 year-old accounts executive and a mother of two, said, “It’s not up to the teacher to cut my child’s hair,” she said.  “I can always take time off to bring my son for a haircut since the school’s regulation is so strict.”

“If it happens to my son, I’ll definitely be angry,” echoed Leslie Goh, a 44-year-old optician.

“I don’t know the specific rules and regulations, or whether the teacher has the capacity to cut a student’s hair, but if she did it without informing the parents, it’s way off.”

“We’re not living in the past anymore,” the father of two said, before adding that most parents are “only a phone call away” and that “it shouldn’t be difficult”.

Both parents were reacting to the case involving how a student at Unity Primary School in Choa Chu Kang had his unkempt hair cut by his

An avid cyclist has written an impassioned open letter to Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew, repeating a growing call for a 1.5-metre lane to be set aside for road cyclists.

“My friend is dead,” wrote Stephen Choy, referring to 48-year-old Freddy Khoo who was killed after a lorry hit him and two other cyclists at Loyang Avenue at about 6.50am on Saturday.

“If, only if, I had written this letter earlier, Freddy might still be able to cycle with me in the next Ironman race,” the member of cycling group Team Cychos said.

In a 10-paragraph open letter addressed to Minister Lui and which has also been emailed to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Choy implored the authorities to take an “urgent re-look” into the issue of cycling safety with the increase in accidents involving cyclists in recent years.

Choy, who shared his letter on Facebook on Sunday afternoon, said he had “chanced upon the wreckage” on Saturday without knowing that the victim was his friend Khoo, whom he described as a “good,

(From left) Mohan Belani, Le Messie, Michelle Tham, Pamela Yeo, Grace Wong, Emily Teng, Zhan Tingjun, Ray Pang (Yahoo! photo)

After an exhaustive month-long process to unearth the nation’s future generation of young talent, Yahoo’s Singapore 9 campaign closed in style with a celebration bash on Friday.

Held at cozy Miami-style bar Lucky 13 at Triple One Somerset and hosted by local TV personality and deejay Vernetta Lopez, the three-hour celebration saw the nine finalists step out dressed in their best to accept their awards.

[See photo gallery of the event]

Held for the second successive year, the Yahoo! Singapore 9 campaign recognizes the best young Singapore talent under the age of 35 in the fields of business, entertainment and social enterprise.

Mohan Belani, co-founder and director of technology outfit e27, emerged tops in the Business category after a week-long final voting phase.

“This was a hobby all along and it's nice to see the mainstream audience recognizing the efforts that we've done for e27 because it's always been a very niche, early-stage-start-up,” said the ecstatic 29-year-old.

“I think

“I'd love to grow old doing what I'm most passionate about – sewing, creating and imagining.” (Photo courtesy of Wong)

When she was ten, she would stitch pretty little dresses from her seamstress-mother’s fabric scraps for her Barbie dolls.

Two decades later, she’s designing and producing creative costumes for Singapore’s thriving arts scene.

Grace Wong, founder and creative director of Awesome Costumes, now wants to put Singapore on the world map with her craft.

“I want to let people know there’s a Singaporean who is awesome in making her costumes,” the 31-year-old, a finalist in the Yahoo! Singapore 9 campaign, said during a recent hour-long interview at her rented work studio along North Bridge Road.

“Whatever you think that somewhere else can do, we can do it here too,” she said. “Sometimes, I just hope that people would look inwards, look at local, homegrown talent, instead of looking out all the time.”

Having been in the costumes industry for the past nine years, Wong has made a name for herself.

Besides designing for local stage and television productions, she’s also been involved in 2010’s Youth

Ghosts hover near him when he works, but that doesn’t bother him one bit.

They’re friends by now and he’s not afraid, shared professional gravedigger Alex Wong.

Affectionately known to his friends as “Tua Ya Pek”, a Taoist god of the spiritual underworld, Wong has been exhuming graves for the past 30 years. Often, his services are needed when the government decides to make way for development. One such project is the eight-lane highway that will cut through Bukit Brown early next year.

But the dead are not always ready and willing to move, said Wong in a recent two-hour interview with Yahoo! Singapore at a kopitiam in Toa Payoh.

“There’re times I hear them cry as I dig their graves, ‘Why are you digging my hole? I’ve stayed here for so long, why are you chasing me out?’” he recounted, in a smattering of broken English and Hokkien. “But this is the government’s land and they want it back. I’ve got no choice… forgive me, I’d say.”

Wong called it a give-and-take process.

“Before digging, I’d

UPDATE at 10:30am, 19 July: The nine SCDF DART officers have been discharged from SGH after being treated for chemical burns, according to the SCDF.

The tragedy at a Singapore subway construction site that left two foreign workers dead and eight others injured was a “localised accident”, albeit serious, said Minister of State for Manpower and National Development Tan Chuan-Jin on Wednesday evening.

Speaking to reporters as the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) wrapped up its search and extrication operation, Tan stressed that there are no safety concerns in the vicinity as well as for the rest of the Downtown Line (DTL) Bugis MRT project, which will continue.

“The public can be reassured there are no causes of concern in terms of the public infrastructure, the buildings, roads and so on in the surrounding areas,” he said.

“The formworks gave way where the workers were constructing the roof slabs,” he explained, adding that such construction work is neither complex nor uncommon.

The