Clara Lim

They say that every cloud has a silver lining, but did you realise it works the other way around too? That’s right, even stellar things like having excellent WiFi coverage in your home (some say best in your ‘hood too) can have its bad points. But why??? It seems like an obviously good thing to have in the era of work-from-home — and Covid-friendly hobbies like gaming. Duh. What kind of downsides could there possibly be?!

Running a small-to-medium F&B business in Singapore is seldom easy, especially given the competitive landscape and high operating costs here. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges that many local eateries and restaurants continue to grapple with, even today. Even as we approach the two-year ‘anniversary’ since COVID-19 hit our shores, the fight is far from over especially with the new variant Omicron threatening the way of life yet again.

This post was written in collaboration with Singtel Dash. While we are financially compensated by them, we nonetheless strive to maintain our editorial integrity and review products with the same objective lens. We are committed to providing the best information in order for you to make personal financial decisions with confidence. You can view our Editorial Guidelines here. Clearing annual leave and racking your brains for ways to fill up all that free time? Completely understandable. There’s

This post was written in collaboration with Sleek. While we are financially compensated by them, we nonetheless strive to maintain our editorial integrity and review products with the same objective lens. We are committed to providing the best information in order for you to make personal financial decisions with confidence. You can view our Editorial Guidelines here. As a newly minted freelancer, I hope to start my own business one day. But as cool as it sounds to be CEO of my own company,

Welcome, friend! Let me guess: You’re here to look for essential oil recommendations, right? Perhaps you’re new to essential oils, or maybe you’re looking for the best essential oil for a certain situation. Well, look no further. I, Ollie, have compiled a useful list of excellent essential oils just for my friends in Singapore. Why use essential oils in Singapore?

Confession: I’m a train otaku. Ever since I found out that you can take a train to JB from Singapore, I’ve been making up excuses to go to Johor. Need to buy bread? Go JB. Need to visit dentist? Go JB. Want a massage? Go JB. Plus, the current SGD to MYR exchange rate doesn’t hurt my cause… But even if trains don’t make you go all <333, the train is still an excellent way to travel to JB because they cut out all the stress and waiting of traffic jams and queueing up at customs.

By now, you must have heard the news that the richest person in Singapore in 2019 is Zhang Yong, the founder of Hai Di Lao a.k.a. everyone’s favourite hotpot restaurant. What makes this all the more mind-boggling is that Haidilao’s founder was never the scion of some wealthy cosmopolitan family. According to Wikipedia, Zhang Yong was a rural Sichuanese, and worked in construction and manufacturing before opening a tiny little hotpot eatery.

Judging by the response to a previous blog post about the best things to buy at 7-Eleven, I gather that quite a few of you are closeted fans of convenience food, just like me. High five! You might not realise this, but Cheers, too, has a range of packaged convenience foods that can give 7-Eleven serious competition. So which chain delivers more gastronomic bang for your buck? 7-Eleven vs Cheers Singapore — battle of the convenience foods

So the other day, when I was looking up the map of Muji outlets in Singapore — just, you know, a regular day for me — I saw this and nearly fell off my chair: OMG, Muji is opening 2 new outlets in JB in 2019! The first of the two new Muji outlets in Johor is in Aeon Mall Tebrau City (practically next to IKEA Tebrau, FYI), and its first day of operations was last Friday, 21 June 2019. (The second one opens in October.) … Guess who took leave last Friday to go to JB?

Before researching and writing this article, I would be the last person you’d ask about Qoo10. I totally respect that Qoo10 isn’t a generic e-commerce clone… But why oh why does it have to be so complicated, with its own weird logic and jargon?! I’m really lucky that my partner is something of a Qoo10 expert, so if I want something on the site, I ask him to buy it. The fun part is asking him how much he paid for it in the end.

Most older Singaporeans I know still frown upon anything second hand (“what if the previous owner died?!”), but whatever, they’re totally missing out on the amazing deals you can get on used furniture in Singapore. By second hand furniture, I don’t mean some $200,000 antique suar wood dining table, carved from a single tree felled in a primary rainforest.

Even though there are tons of buses, coaches and direct flights from Singapore to pretty much anywhere you can think of in Malaysia, my first choice is always to take the KTM train. On the train, I get to stretch out, sleep, have a meal at the restaurant car, go to the toilet whenever I want, and look out of the window to soak up the scenery. Plus, taking the train in Malaysia is ridiculously cheap, especially now that the SGD to MYR exchange rate is at its 17-month best.

These days, it’s not just bag ladies and homeless old folks who are rooting through the dumpsters and eating other people’s leftover fries at McDonald’s. Nope, it might very well turn out to be an Instagram-savvy 20-something, because the unthinkable has happened in ultra-hygienic Singapore: Dumpster diving is going mainstream. Lock up your kids!

Contrary to what the pushy salespeople at Virgin Active or Fitness First would have you believe, that $300 monthly gym membership is, in fact, completely optional. That’s right! No one has actually put a gun to your head and made you cough up a significant chunk of your income for the privilege of queueing up endlessly for the squat rack and bathing in a communal shower. You did it to yourself.

I’m one of those people who would rather queue at the self-checkout line than be silently judged for my grocery choices by a human cashier. So when Honestbee Singapore opened its high-tech supermarket Habitat, I definitely felt the need to visit. For the uninitiated, this whole high-tech supermarket thing has been going on for a while elsewhere. The US already has Amazon Go, while China has Alibaba’s Hema and Carrefour x Tencent.