Dr Christine Cheng

I finally tried a French manicure a few days ago. I've always been curious as to how it would look, but with brittle nails, I always lost one or more, so French was never an option.

It was only when I tried the OPI clear nail hardener a few months ago, that my nails grew longer and evenly. The difference was quite astounding. And just when I thought it was about long enough, I went bowling and spliced off the entire right thumb nail.

Arghhhhhhh!!!!!

So it took a few more weeks to grow out, and finally, it was time to go French!

With over an hour to spare last Wednesday afternoon, I slipped intoDivine MedSpa and got Jam to do the necessary. As usual, the moment I sit down without my computer in front of me, I fell asleep. I got up when my phone went off to say my next patient had arrived. She was half an hour early! I looked down, and my right hand was done, but the left side incomplete! The while tips had only been painted on my thumb and middle finger! Oops!

No choice, had to abandon. And being me, I had no time to do anything about it for days. So I had a really strange looking left hand for the rest of the week. It was only when we got a bit quieter on Sunday that I was forced to sit down again. This time, Jam managed to complete the job. So I have been sporting the almost perfect French finish for the last few days. I say almost because I'm still itchy fingered and can't stop picking at it. So it's not looking too pretty now.

I think I'm better off sticking to the clear varnish. Less evidence of bad habits! )

But our new colours from China Glaze have just arrived. Jam's eyeing the gold polish for the tips! So my hands may look very interesting when she catches me and pins me down on Friday! But she has to catch me first!

Two young boys walked into a pharmacy one day, picked out a box of tampons and proceeded to the checkout counter.

The man at the counter asked the older boy, "Son, how old are you?"

"Eight," the boy replied.

The man continued, "Do you know what these are used for?"

The boy replied, "Not exactly, but they aren't for me. They're for him. He's my brother. He's four.

We saw on TV that if you use these you would be able to swim and ride a bike. Right now, he can't do either."

Everyone loves a discount. Which means I'm always on the lookout for them, and people are always asking me for them.

Honestly, quite embarassing, right?

So when I happened upon this Reverse Auction site, I got pretty excited. With reverse auctions, we spend a credit to find out the current cost of an item. With each click of interest, the price drops by US$0.25. When many people click within a short period of time, sometimes the product price drops down to zero! Yup... Free!!!

The products that are sold on the site are brand new, full warranty, and guaranteed to be lowest price online and offline. So there's zero risk, but huge discounts to gain. Products available include Apple iPods, iMacs, Mac Books, Nokia phones, Juicy Couture jewelry, cameras, laptops, etc. For the USA, they even have cars. People have bought brand new BMW Z3s for US$8000. WOW!

Now I know I'll never go the the Apple Store to purchase anymore of their items again. No point when it's guaranteed to be cheaper this way. This is why this site is growing faster than Ebay, Amazon and maybe even Google has. It's likely to revolutionise shopping worldwide in the near future.

We don't necessarily need electronic items everyday, but we do always spent on our credit cards. So it's not surprising that the most popular items are the Visa/Master/AMEX gift cards? Spent one credit (US$0.80) and average savings is $20. For a $200 card, that's effectively a 10% discount on anything and everything you can buy on credit!

Sometimes, you can strike lucky and have a much bigger saving than that. But with gift cards, I think most people just grab them once they get enough value. I know I'm going to be buying a ton of these in future, just to save a bit on my daily expenses.

Bad news is, this site's not going to be available in Singapore for a few more weeks (the global launch is just over a month away). You can still check out the site and register for free now. For more info on how this works, just watch this video.

And if you'd like me to send you a couple of credits to get you started, just drop me an e-mail through the contact form  (or call me if you know my mobile number) and I'll send you some with my compliments.

And yes, you'll be able to use your giftcard at Simply Aesthetic & Divine MedSpa. I'm more than happy to give you a discount that way! )

There's a rather famous phrase: Singapore is a FINE city. Renowned worldwide for having many laws, particularly fines for littering, chewing gum, jay walking. I even had someone in London tell me that Singapore's banned Coca Cola!

All jokes aside, being a civilian in Singapore is not difficult. As long as you know the myriad rules and stick by them, you're fine. There are so many benefits to living in this city, that minor inconveniences like looking for a dustbin rather than dropping rubbish at will is really not a problem. Especially when the resultant effectis a clean city.

But running a business in Singapore. Now that's a totally different story. I have been self employed for over 6 years now. My first company was a sole proprietorship for private anaesthesia services. Keeping my accounts organised and finding a good accountant was the hardest part of the whole thing. This was converted to a Private Limited company in 2006.

The other two companies were a different story. With bricks & mortar, staff and other overheads, the stress levels were of a different league. Now we had to look at regulations in great detail, making sure we kept to them even if our colleagues did not comply.

Working in Aesthetics in Singapore has certainly been "exciting". I love the new innovations and advances, but the  many changes in regulation has meant services suddenly terminated, stocks wasted. I dread to think how much money has been wasted in this way.

Dealing with the various government bodies has been the most trying. This includes trying to get work passes (appeal after appeal, after appeal... then the staff resigns after a few months), the tedious licensing procedures, IR21 forms for foreign staff who take their time to give me the information IRAS requires, etc.

It's all painful even if the process goes to plan. But when they don't, the business is the first to be penalised. A recent example is the Australian nurse who walked out without notice. Her resignation was planned for end February. She walked out after her January salary was encashed. Now IRAS is hounding us for her income tax, which we were to pay out of her witheld February salary.

An older incident was where we overpaid CPF to a terminated member of staff. She had the employee's contribution refunded to her, then ignored the letters from CPF board, so has kept the contribution, plus the refund. We can't do a thing, and the police aren't interested at all, despite 3 reports about other far more serious matters being made already.

I was discussing this with a patient this afternoon. She's the HR manager of an MNC, and she's faced similar problems before. Employers aren't allowed to withold salary on the off chance that the workers can scarper off and we're just forced to take over the responsibilities. It's extremely frustrating.

So tomorrow, I have to contact IRAS and try to explain the situation to them. I hope they'll do the right thing and look for the individual who really owes the tax, not me. What's the chances of justice prevailing in Singapore??? Or will we be fined for not paying up on time...