Costlier Breathe
8th March 2006, Wednesday
Got a rude awakening this midweek morning...
Running short of my usual fresh breathe mint cum lozenges, "Fisherman's Friend", I went to purchase a packet from the newstand in the Yishun MRT station and was taken aback that a packet now cost $1.70, which is an 10 cent increment.
Didn't they raise the price tag not too long back?
Seriously since I started consuming this product a few years back I had seen like a jump of 30 cents in the price...
Of course this is peanuts' crust compared to the increment our smokers friends had to endure but seriously for a packet of the most 20 pieces of strong mints, $1.70 definitely seems a bit steep...
However if you start to look at the standards of living in our local context, almost every niggling aspect of life seen an increment in prices...
Barely a fornight ago, the Coffee Association (yes there's one association for almost every thing in the world, not to forget my fave "Please, Please, Please Get a Life Foundation") stated that due to lower production or other reasons, prices of coffee powder has seen a stark increment over the months and retailers had to fall back on the consumers with an price hike in each cup of coffee served...
Though I'm a connoisseur in coffee tasting, I seldom have "kopi zi puei" in the usual kopitiams on daily basis, so it didn't really affect me so much...
Eggs are another item which see an incredible hike in price due to the epidemical avian flu (damn those bloody mutating virus)....
My household started subscribing to Straits Times, mainly for the "Recruit" section as my soon to be graduating sister is looking for a job desperately...and an issue which used to cost like 50 cents a copy is now 70 cents if you do subscription and 80 cents if you buy off from the rack...
wow imagine you have to read everyday, that would be $2.10 a week more and $109.50 more a year....
No wonder people are fighting for that free issue of "Today" only to be digusted by those aunties and uncles who would snag a whole stack to sell to "Karang Guni" for a petty dollar or so...
Seriously I am just another average joe in our high contemporary society with what I felt a rather measley wage package, thus every cents counts..and if you add into the increment in the cost of transport, you will know how much more I am paying for basic necessities now as compared to a few years back...
Ok we are still manageable as compared to other top class societies lke Hong Kong, Japan, the Scandanvian cities and other major European countries, but when everything increases but your pay, you will start to feel exasperated...
I'm not economic student (despite a bad experience coping with it in my first year of JC which only "demand & supply" and "marginal utility" remains in my brain cells), but the higher cost of living is down to depleting fuel supply in the world due to war, embargo, natural disaster or just basic running out of resources...
We are living in a world which depends so much on transportation and connectivity thus fuel is an undeniable invaluable asset...without it I can't be even typing this post now....
But when the repercussions started to hit the normal people, it just left us regretting over the fact that we humankind are afterall the root of destruction of our own earth and are reaping what we sow now...
Well had a chat with a fellow RT mate in a rather enjoyable session last evening and we were talking about income in Singapore and he was surprised that my company only offer fresh graduate around $1,800 - $2,200 in starting pay when the standard now is around $2,500 well at least in the IT industry he is dabbling in...
He also mentioned that to have a jump in pay, the only mean is to find greener pastures and the norm of the "job-hopping" workers of Singapore is not more than 2 years in a single workplace...well as you can see JxMMy is definitely not in the norm category..neither am I with my current stint reaching it's 4th anniversary in September which always surprised my friends with how I could maintain that sort of longevity in a single place which offers me such low pay...
I wonder as well as I had ponder upon for the last few months, which is quite blatant from several previous posts before...
Maybe I should heed everyone's advice and look for somewhere which could fulfill that amount I am dreaming of for my work experience thus far...and since "money is the root of all evils" and "money makes the world goes round", I would really hope for a day I would not lament over a petty 10 cent increase in the price of the mints to keep my breathe fresh every morning....
Got a rude awakening this midweek morning...
Running short of my usual fresh breathe mint cum lozenges, "Fisherman's Friend", I went to purchase a packet from the newstand in the Yishun MRT station and was taken aback that a packet now cost $1.70, which is an 10 cent increment.
Didn't they raise the price tag not too long back?
Seriously since I started consuming this product a few years back I had seen like a jump of 30 cents in the price...
Of course this is peanuts' crust compared to the increment our smokers friends had to endure but seriously for a packet of the most 20 pieces of strong mints, $1.70 definitely seems a bit steep...
However if you start to look at the standards of living in our local context, almost every niggling aspect of life seen an increment in prices...
Barely a fornight ago, the Coffee Association (yes there's one association for almost every thing in the world, not to forget my fave "Please, Please, Please Get a Life Foundation") stated that due to lower production or other reasons, prices of coffee powder has seen a stark increment over the months and retailers had to fall back on the consumers with an price hike in each cup of coffee served...
Though I'm a connoisseur in coffee tasting, I seldom have "kopi zi puei" in the usual kopitiams on daily basis, so it didn't really affect me so much...
Eggs are another item which see an incredible hike in price due to the epidemical avian flu (damn those bloody mutating virus)....
My household started subscribing to Straits Times, mainly for the "Recruit" section as my soon to be graduating sister is looking for a job desperately...and an issue which used to cost like 50 cents a copy is now 70 cents if you do subscription and 80 cents if you buy off from the rack...
wow imagine you have to read everyday, that would be $2.10 a week more and $109.50 more a year....
No wonder people are fighting for that free issue of "Today" only to be digusted by those aunties and uncles who would snag a whole stack to sell to "Karang Guni" for a petty dollar or so...
Seriously I am just another average joe in our high contemporary society with what I felt a rather measley wage package, thus every cents counts..and if you add into the increment in the cost of transport, you will know how much more I am paying for basic necessities now as compared to a few years back...
Ok we are still manageable as compared to other top class societies lke Hong Kong, Japan, the Scandanvian cities and other major European countries, but when everything increases but your pay, you will start to feel exasperated...
I'm not economic student (despite a bad experience coping with it in my first year of JC which only "demand & supply" and "marginal utility" remains in my brain cells), but the higher cost of living is down to depleting fuel supply in the world due to war, embargo, natural disaster or just basic running out of resources...
We are living in a world which depends so much on transportation and connectivity thus fuel is an undeniable invaluable asset...without it I can't be even typing this post now....
But when the repercussions started to hit the normal people, it just left us regretting over the fact that we humankind are afterall the root of destruction of our own earth and are reaping what we sow now...
Well had a chat with a fellow RT mate in a rather enjoyable session last evening and we were talking about income in Singapore and he was surprised that my company only offer fresh graduate around $1,800 - $2,200 in starting pay when the standard now is around $2,500 well at least in the IT industry he is dabbling in...
He also mentioned that to have a jump in pay, the only mean is to find greener pastures and the norm of the "job-hopping" workers of Singapore is not more than 2 years in a single workplace...well as you can see JxMMy is definitely not in the norm category..neither am I with my current stint reaching it's 4th anniversary in September which always surprised my friends with how I could maintain that sort of longevity in a single place which offers me such low pay...
I wonder as well as I had ponder upon for the last few months, which is quite blatant from several previous posts before...
Maybe I should heed everyone's advice and look for somewhere which could fulfill that amount I am dreaming of for my work experience thus far...and since "money is the root of all evils" and "money makes the world goes round", I would really hope for a day I would not lament over a petty 10 cent increase in the price of the mints to keep my breathe fresh every morning....
Japanese word of the day: お菓子~o-ka-shi~(Candy)Seriously no matter how tasty it is or how well it is packaged, the mits are just candies and should not cost that much....
posted by Kei at
10:43 AM
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