BALUCHAR, BANGLADESH: When Mohd Yusof came up to speak to us out of the blue, my younger colleague Chiew Tong burst into hysterical laughter. “I’m so shook,” she declared her excitement in typical Millennial speak.By this time, we were halfway through our production trip in Bangladesh and had gotten used to curious locals approaching us with questions about where we were from and what we were doing. What set Yusof apart from them was the accent. We did not expect - at the end of a long day in a small riverside village 30km south of Dhaka - to suddenly get a dose of home from a man who looked typically Bangladeshi but spoke fluent Singlish, ah beng-style. “I've worked in Singapore for almost ten years mah,” he explained, drawing another guffaw from Chiew Tong. In retrospect, we should not have been surprised. Baluchar, with a population of 100,000, may be a rural backwater, but one in three adult males here work abroad. And … [Read more...] about How Singapore left its mark on a backwater village in Bangladesh
Millennials banking habits
Tech support a burden on younger generation, says survey
The company said in a press release on Thursday that this is because they are automatically turning to younger family members for all forms of tech support, leading to cries of “Can you just… fix the internet?”, “… show me how to upload to the cloud?” or “… secure my online banking app?”. But at a time when the younger generation is trying to buy houses, have children and advance their careers, the demands from overwhelmed and uninformed family members to provide free technical support can be a step too far. Whilst more than half of millennials (55 per cent) feel duty-bound to provide on-demand tech support to older relatives, a quarter (25 per cent) say that they actively avoid family members who they think will ask for help. With half (52 per cent) of over 55s admitting they are not knowledgeable about tech, four-in-ten (41 per cent) phone their children or other younger family members for remote IT support. An … [Read more...] about Tech support a burden on younger generation, says survey
From glam fashion maven to… OMG, a brave new life
After crying myself to sleep the first few nights, I soon learned to revel in my new persona — that of a superhero on a mission to eradicate shoplifters. Hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” The fact that he was from Canada is incidental and had no bearing on the unbelievable decision I made when I moved there two years ago. I felt life was, indeed, a sport, and so, armed with Mr. Gretzky’s wisdom, I took a deep breath and went for the shot. Not many people would, at midlife, uproot themselves from an already comfortable environment, not to mention a highly successful career and reasonable standing in Manila society, and attempt to create a new life from scratch. Never mind that the target destination was a First World country. The operative word here is “midlife” — when ways are set, habits formed and learning new tricks is a painful process. I was working for the biggest lifestyle … [Read more...] about From glam fashion maven to… OMG, a brave new life