GOOD news for singles who want to buy a Housing Board flat to live with their parents.
They will get a higher CPF housing grant of $20,000 - from the current $11,000 - from April 1, the HDB announced on Thursday morning.
This higher-tier singles grant will also apply to eligible singles buying flats under the Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS).
The catch is: the eligible single must commit to living together with his parents in the resale flat for at least five years.
Within the five years, the parents cannot buy or take over the ownership of another HDB flat, or invest in a private property, said the HDB.
Under the single Singapore citizen (SSC) scheme, single Singaporeans aged 35 years and above can get a CPF housing grant of $11,000 to buy a HDB resale flat if they satisfy the eligibility conditions.
Minister for Prime Minister’s Office, Mr Lim Boon Heng, announced the higher singles grant in Parliament on March 8.
‘It is a pro-family initiative to encourage children to look after their parents,’ said the HDB.
The higher-tier singles grant will apply to resale applications or booking of DBSS flats from April 1.
All other prevailing policies such as the income ceiling, minimum occupation period for resale, will apply.
March 28th, 2008
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NEW YORK: US financier Warren Buffett has overtaken Bill Gates as the world’s richest man, according to Forbes annual billionaire’s list, which this year saw Russia, China and India making increasing inroads.
Buffett, the 77-year-old chief of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, saw his wealth jump from 52 billion dollars last year to 62 billion, pushing Microsoft co-founder Gates into third position after 13 years at the top.
Mexico’s telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu grabbed second place with a tidy nest egg of 60 billion dollars, up from 49 billion last year.
Buffett, who announced in 2006 he was giving the majority of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, saw his wealth spike mostly due to the rising value of his Berkshire Hathaway stock.
In total, this year’s list sees 1,125 people around the world making the billionaire’s list, up from 946 last year. Their total net worth stands at 4.4 trillion dollars, up from 3.5 trillion dollars in 2007.
By nationality, the United States still easily led the rankings with 469 billionaires up from 415 last year, but Russia replaced Germany as the second placed country with 87 billionaires.
Third-placed India saw the number of its super-rich jump to 53 entries on the list - four of them in the top 10 - although China and Hong Kong if taken together would overtake it, with 42 and 26 billionaires respectively.
Japan, although still the second largest economy in the world, saw its number of billionaires trailing at 24 - overtaken by Turkey, which this year saw its number of mega-tycoons on the list jump from 22 in 2007 to 35
March 8th, 2008
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Here’s an interesting article I came across today by Brian Tracy. It’ll help you with the creative process whether you’re a marketing professional, strategist or business owner. Enjoy…
Einstein once said, “Every child is born a genius.” But the reason why most people do not function at genius levels is because they are not aware of how creative and smart they really are.
I call it the “Schwarzenegger effect.” No one would look at a person such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and think how lucky he is to have been born with such tremendous muscles. Everyone knows that he, and people like him, have worked many thousands of hours to build up their bodies so they can compete and win in bodybuilding competitions. Your creative capabilities are just the same. They actually grow as they are used.
But you don’t need to spend thousands of hours to increase your creative-thinking abilities. By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you come up with.
Let’s start off with the definition of creativity. In my estimation, after years of research on this subject, the very best definition of creativity is, simply, “improvement.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an artist in order to be creative. All you have to do is develop the ability to improve your situation, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. All great fortunes were started with ideas for improving something in some way. In fact, an improvement needs to be only 10 percent new or different to launch you on the way to fame and riches.
It has been estimated that each year, driving to and from work, the average person has about four ideas for improvement, any one of which could make him or her a millionaire. The problem is not that you don’t have the ideas you need to accomplish anything you want but, rather, that you fail to act on those ideas. Most people dismiss their own ideas because they think that those ideas cannot be very valuable if they were the ones who thought of them.
Thomas Edison, arguably the most successful creative genius in human history, once said that creativity is 99 percent perspiration and only 1 percent inspiration. Extensive research on creativity tends to bear him out.
There are four generally accepted parts of the creative process: There is preparation, where much of the work is done. There is cerebration or rumination, where you turn the matter over to your subconscious mind. There is realization, where the idea or ideas come to you. And finally, there is application, where you work out the creative idea and turn it into something worthwhile. Of the four, preparation seems to be the most important, and it involves gathering the right data and asking the right questions.
Your success in life will be determined largely by the quantity of ideas that you generate. It seems that the quality of ideas is secondary to the quantity and that if you have enough ideas, one or more of them will turn out to be prizewinners.
You can begin building your creative muscles with focused questions. Some that you might think of are the following: What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? What are our assumptions? What if our assumptions are wrong?
All improvements begin with questioning the current, existing circumstances. If you are not making progress for any reason, stop and think, and begin asking yourself the hard questions that will stimulate your mind to consider other possibilities.
When they were doing the research to land a man on the moon, scientists were stumped for months and even years. They could not figure how to send a rocket to the moon with enough fuel to land on the moon, blast off, break the moon’s gravity and come back to earth. The problem was that if the rocket had that much fuel to start with, it would be too heavy to take off from the earth in the first place. Finally, they began to question the assumption that the lunar rocket ship had to land on the moon. When they questioned that assumption, the scientists concluded that a main rocket could orbit around the moon while a smaller module dropped to the surface of the moon and then rejoined the orbiting rocket for the trip back to earth. The mental logjam was broken, and the rest is history.
Asking focused questions-hard questions that penetrate to the core of the matter-is the real art of the creative person. The next step is to have the courage to deal with all the possible answers. Once you have come up with a possible solution, ask yourself, “What else could be the solution?” If your current method of operation were completely wrong, what would be your backup plan? What else would you or could you do? What if your current procedure or plan turned out to be a complete failure? Then what would you do? And what would you do after that? All of those questions will force you to think further and come up with better answers.
The second way to build your mental muscles is with intensely desired goals. The more you want something and the clearer you are about it, the more likely it is that you will generate ideas that will help you to move toward it. That is why the need for clearly written goals and plans for their accomplishment is repeated over and over. Any intense emotion, such as desire, stimulates creativity and ideas to fulfill that desire. And the more you write down your goals and plans, and review them, the more likely it is that you will see all kinds of possibilities for achieving those goals.
The third generator of creative-thinking muscles is pressing problems. A good question to ask is “What are the three biggest problems that I am facing in my life today?” Write the answer to this question quickly, in less than 30 seconds. When you write the answer to a question in less than 30 seconds, your subconscious mind will sort out all extraneous answers and give you the three most important ones.
When you have your three most pressing problems, ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen as a result of each of these problems?” Then ask yourself, “What are all the things that I can do, right now, to alleviate each problem?” If you have a problem that is worrying you for any reason, think about what you could do immediately to begin alleviating that concern. This is a prime use of your creative powers.
So a key to success in creative thinking is clarity. Take the time to think through, discuss and ask questions that help you to clarify exactly what you are trying to accomplish and exactly what problems you are facing at the present moment. Just as fuzzy thinking leads to fuzzy answers, clear thinking leads to clear answers.
A second key is concentration. Put everything else aside, and concentrate single-mindedly on focusing all your mental powers on solving one single problem, overcoming one particular obstacle or achieving one important goal. The ability to concentrate on a single subject without diversion or distraction is a hallmark of the superior thinker.
A third key is an open mind. The average person tends to be rigid and fixed in his thinking about getting from where he is to where he wants to go. The creative thinker, however, tends to remain very flexible and open to a variety of ways of approaching the problem. The average person has a tendency to leap to conclusions and determine that there is only one way to achieve a particular goal. The superior thinker, on the other hand, tends to be more patient and willing to consider a variety of options before moving toward a conclusion.
There is one other creative concept that can be very helpful when it is used in combination with what we have already discussed, and it is called the “limiting step.”
Between you and any goal that you want to achieve or any problem that you want to solve, there is almost invariably a limiting step or a “choke point” that determines the speed with which you move from where you are to your destination. This limiting step may be another person, a particular obstacle, a specific difficulty, or even a lack of some information or skill. Invariably, there is a particular factor that determines how fast you get there. Your job is to think about it and decide what it is, and then go to work to remove it.
For example, if you are in sales, your limiting step may be the number of prospects you have. If this is the case, then your job is to do everything possible and to use all your creative capacities to increase your number of prospects until it is no longer a problem. Then, of course, there will be another limiting step, and your job is to go to work on that.
If you have a business, your limiting step may be the number of qualified people who are responding to your advertising. If this is the choke point that hinders the amount you sell and the speed at which your company grows, it behooves you to concentrate your mental powers on relieving that bottleneck. You must concentrate the very best thinking abilities of yourself and others on increasing the number of qualified prospects that your advertising and promotional efforts attract.
In relationships and misunderstandings between people, there is almost invariably a sticking point or subject area that needs to be resolved in order to bring about harmony again. Your job is, first, to identify this limiting step and then, second, to find a way to alleviate the difficulty to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
You are a genius, and you were born with the potential for exceptional creativity. But creative abilities are latent. They are like muscles that grow with use. You can increase your creative powers by using them, over and over, in every situation, deliberately and specifically, until creativity and a creative response to life is as natural to you as breathing in and out is. There are very few things that you can do that can have a more powerful positive impact on your entire life than becoming excellent in creative thinking. And you can if you think you can.
February 27th, 2008
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Just look at this Report.
You need to really go through it because it might affect you in 2008.
I’m ready to write a long articles because I care for you and I will do extra things to make sure you are all well and protected. By doing that, your family will not be affected and maybe with our small little strength of spreading the word around, we can make a larger impact on other people’s lives.
I’m going to give you an situational assessment of the surrounding, particularly in Singapore since I reside here.
Please take what I have to say with a pinch of salt as I’m no economist.
Things To Do And Prepare To Have A Safe 2008
Fairytale Job Market
On average Civil Servants in late 2007 had a bonus of 2.5-2.8 months bonus. The government of Singapore has asked the private sector to increase bonuses and salaries of their staffs to cope with rising inflation. If you’re in the Civil Service, let me congratulate you. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR JOB! It’s highly unlikely that bosses in the private sector will be increasing their staffs salaries.
With the GST raised to 7%, shops that used to absorb the 5% GST will no longer do so and many had decided to throw the 7% GST at consumers instead. What happened is a chain of reaction. Food has gone up, suppliers have raised their charges, power supply is up also. More importantly rental has shot up anywhere from 80% to 250% in the urban areas.
The Reality Check
No boss is going to give you higher salary unless you have a specific skillset that is in demand. E.g. SAP/Oracle/Siebel Consultants. If you’re a Office Administrator, Accountant, Sales & Marketing Professional, Blue Collar worker, it’s likely that you’ll be in for a tough ride. Expect your bosses to push you harder. Stop having that idea of quitting and taking your time to find a better job. If you want to, get a better one before quitting.
Property Market’s Cooled Down.
I have consulted many of the property agents I’ve known and many have told me that it has cooled for sometime. Now is a better time to sell, downgrade and accumulate your cash for the next upturn.
Stock Market - Down Down Down!
Officially Singapore and Hong Kong are classified as Bear Market. It will be a tough correction. More bad news to come from USA.
What Can You Do To Protect Yourself?
Don’t quit your job. Find a better one but make sure you study the company’s credentials and are very sure they’ll last at least 2 years. It’ll be a wild ride the next 2 years.
Stop speculating in things you have no control of. Instead, upgrade your skills, not by getting degrees but rather industry specific certifications. Try going for short term courses that will give you a new skill to generate more income rather than taking 1-4 year programs. Why because the market changes and generic skills like ACCA, BA, MBA is all too common.
Focus on Revenue Generating Activities.
Stop going to coffeeshop or hang around with the wrong people. Ask yourself this question, how has the meeting helped you? Increase your knowledge in accumulating wealth, improving knowledge or just some plain complaining of things that are insignificant?
Are you an entrepreneur? An intrapreneur (an entrepreneur within a company)? A business owner? A stay-at-home mom looking to start a business? A college student looking to excel in life now? Or do you just want to ROCK your career and your personal life?
Join Christine Comaford-Lynch for
Secrets to Startup Success 6 Week Telecourse
You WILL learn how to effectively combine all the elements she has
used to catapult to entrepreneurial success!
Click HERE to register today!
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Spread the word. Share this good stuff with your friends.
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January 18th, 2008
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While many bloggers maintain a blog for personal or social reasons or to generate an income, there are other bloggers who utilize their blogs to promote a cause. These blogs may be aimed at targeting a specific political or social cause depending on the interests of the blogger as well as blogger’s opinion that the blog can produce the political or social changes they are seeking. Blogs which are committed to promoting a particular cause may face more adversity than blogs with a lighter theme but they can also be very effective. However, blog owners who opt to maintain this type of blog should be aware of the ramifications of this type of blog. For example blog owners may receive negative comments from readers of the blog who disagree with the cause. This article will offer a few tips for choosing a cause for a blog and for promoting the blog to interested visitors.
Choosing a Cause for a Blog
Choosing a cause for a blog can vary in difficulty from extremely easy to incredibly difficult. The difficulty in making this decision will depend largely on the personal beliefs of the blog owner. A blog owner who is already committed to a particular cause will likely find this decision to be rather simple while blog owners who either have no strong social or political convictions or who have a wide variety of causes they wish to promote can find making this decision to be rather difficult. There are, however, a few factors the blog owner should carefully consider before selecting a cause to promote in a blog.
First and foremost a blog owner should select an issue for which they are either already quite knowledgeable or for which they are willing to do a great deal of research. This is important because the blog owner should post blog entries on a regular basis. These blog entries should be accurate and informative to the reader. Therefore, the blog owner should be well versed in the subject matter or at least interested in learning more about the subject matter.
Blog owners should also carefully consider the potential for influencing blog visitors regarding the topic of the blog. Although it will not be possible to convince all visitors to the blog to believe in the cause promoted by the blog, the blog owner should select a subject with which he is confident visitors to the blog will be influenced to agree with the viewpoints he presents in the blog.
Promoting the Blog to Interested Visitors
Once a blog owner decides on a subject for the blog, it is time to figure out how to promote the blog to the target audience. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways. For the sake of brevity, this article will discuss promoting a blog through search engine optimization and promoting a blog through participation in relevant forums.
Search engine optimization is a very effective way for promoting a blog. This practice involves making efforts to increase the search engine rankings to ensure interested Internet users are directed to the blog. This can be done in a number of different ways including careful use of appropriate keywords, appropriate use of tags such as title tags and image tags and generating back links to the blog. All of these efforts can help to improve search engine rankings which should also improve blog traffic.
Blog owners can also promote their blog by participating in relevant forums and message boards. The blog owner may simply participate in these forums and offer relevant input while including a link to the blog in his signature. Other forum users are likely to click on the link if the blog owner is well respected within the forum. The blog owner may even be able to incorporate a link to his blog in the message body of forum posts if it appropriate and acceptable according toe the message board guidelines.
December 15th, 2007
Posted by
Coldie |
Articles, Blogging, Forums |
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