r/singaporespeaks

I don’t have an ”elitist mindset” at all. Drop some of your elitist mindset and share with the world. I always choose to speak singlish when possible, dress casually anywhere. share what you think

My version of “elitist mindset” means getting president scholarships, ocs, nus law/medicine, etc. Sure must be related something like this. something about Integrated Program or IP something lah. Remember, I’m not sure, so correct me if I’m not right.

I sell toys in shops, and nowadays kids will just open the packages and play with the toys. And when I tell them off, they go tell their parents, and the retarded parents will blame me for not putting the toys out of reach of their spoiled retarded kids, instead of offering to buy the toys that are opened.. I even try taping the toy packages and making it harder to open. Yet seems like I end up motivating them even more to try to open the packages to play with the toys.

Really..... it seems like whatever their kids do these days, to them it's right, and their stupid kids deserve to turn other people's shop into their personal playroom. And the worst part is when they purposely destroy the toys and make it not sellable.

I am not working and selling things to cover my daily expenses and also the expenses for bringing my dog to do volunteer work. And my dog behaves way better than their stupid kids.

Gg liao this guy. Still got anyone dare claim it was justified self defence?

This post isn't directed at everyone but it always happens to the usual suspects - people who look like they have a problem. I legit don't understand, how come it's always the same people who look like they have a problem who always acts out. Not just kids or teens, even adults and elderly. I had the priviledge to get into an argument with one of such person recently, and instead of talking rationally, this person continues to insist and shout on a point they make which sounds very ridiculous, but because they keep shouting and rambling about their point, I had to give way to him because there will be no end unless he gets his way. At work also, always the same usual people, low eq or ???. Even people I see on the news recently, what taking pics of others, sa underage minors, pushing elderly, tocuhing people's kids head, all look like got problem. Cb, today also, I waiting at the traffic light, another guy pressed the traffic light button, this other guy walk infront, pressed the button 3-4 times again rapidly like he cannot wait already, the moment light turns green, he immediately walk like he trying to show his dominance. Then, I walking down the staircase at the mrt, these 2 guys, just fucking sit down at the staircase, blocking everyone, I say excuse me they look at me like I am the one blocking them. Legit, fucking sick and tired of this people. I also don't want to argue with them cause their brain confirm got some damage also. Fucking tired of these people. Like fucking kids in an adult body.

Upfront: this is not a boycott post and not a "China food unsafe" post. I think that version of the argument is lazy, easy to dismiss, and usually built on recycled misinformation. I'll come back to that at the end.

1. The scale, and why it happened now
Chinese F&B outlets in Singapore more than doubled past 400 within the last year. Luckin opened 32 self operated stores in its first 12 months here.
The driver is not Singapore. Roughly 3 million food businesses shut in China in 2024. Beijing F&B companies saw combined profits fall almost 90% year on year in the first half. Executives have said this openly: Nong Geng Ji picked Singapore as stage one of its global push, ChaPanda's Singapore manager cited domestic price wars as the reason for expanding abroad.
They also arrive with operational advantages that are genuinely impressive. Chagee says its in house machines produce a customised iced milk tea in eight seconds. That is not a criticism. It is the point. A business with that cost structure and that much capital behind it can absorb losses to buy share in a way a local operator cannot, while everyone pays the same rent.

2. The disclosure gap, which is the actual thing I want to talk about
Here is what I find hard to get past.
After a caffeine backlash at home, HeyTea began publishing caffeine content for all its freshly made drinks in August 2024, with a traffic light grading system. Chagee, after its own caffeine controversy, acknowledged its product information and warnings were inadequate and launched a reduced caffeine line in March 2025 with roughly 50% less caffeine.
Both were responses to domestic scrutiny in China.
Now walk into either brand's outlet in a Singapore mall. No caffeine disclosure. No additive disclosure. Nutri-Grade covers sugar and saturated fat, and nothing else.
That is not the brands behaving badly. They are doing exactly what every rational company does, which is the minimum each jurisdiction requires. The gap is ours.
Same story on pre-preparation. The 预制菜 debate went national in China after a large dumpling chain was found marketing "wrapped fresh in store" while using centrally produced frozen fillings with long shelf lives. Here, a restaurant can run a 100% central kitchen operation and disclose nothing at all.

3. Why I don't think we can outsource the checking
In July 2024, Beijing News reported that fuel tankers had been used to transport cooking oil without cleaning in between, for a Sinograin subsidiary and for Hopefull Grain and Oil. Drivers called it an open secret. The State Council formed an interdepartmental probe and new mandatory transport standards followed in November 2024.
Then the reporter's social media account disappeared and the truck tracking tool that surfaced the story was pulled.
The lesson I take from that is not about food. It is that when the exposure mechanism in a source jurisdiction can be closed off, importing jurisdictions cannot treat the absence of bad news as evidence of good news. We have to generate our own signal.

4. Our own enforcement, honestly assessed
Take the 2024 ByteDance office outbreak. 169 people affected, 17 hospitalised. Two caterers were suspended: Yun Hai Yao, trading here as Yun Nans, a Beijing founded chain operating in Singapore since 2019, and Pu Tien Services, a Singapore homegrown group.
I'm naming both deliberately. The operator's origin is not my argument.
Yun Hai Yao was later charged, with live cockroaches found at its Northpoint City outlet the day after. SFA sought a total fine of S$5,000 for the two charges.
Five thousand dollars, for a mass outbreak, against a chain of that size. That is a cost of doing business, not a deterrent. And that ceiling was set for a very different F&B industry than the one we now have.

5. What I'd actually like asked
SFA replaced the A/B/C/D grading with the SAFE framework on 19 January 2026, moving from annual snapshots to track record based grading across around 45,000 licensed establishments. That is a better design and I want to say so clearly.
The open questions:
a. Does inspection cadence scale with growth rate? A chain opening 30 outlets in 12 months carries different risk from a stall that has run the same pitch for 20 years, but I can't tell from public information whether the framework treats them differently.
b. Caffeine disclosure on freshly prepared drinks. Brands already do this in China. Why not require it here?
c. Additive disclosure at point of sale for freshly prepared food and drink.
d. Central kitchen and pre-preparation disclosure.
e. Penalty ceilings under the Sale of Food Act. If S$5,000 is the statutory maximum, that is a legislative question, not an SFA one, and it should be on the table.
None of these require anyone to dislike anyone. All of them apply equally to a Chinese chain, an American chain, and a Singaporean group.

6. One last thing, because it matters
There is a graphic circulating claiming HeyTea and Nayuki were caught illegally using artificial colouring, with a bullet point about children's IQ dropping. Check it before you share it.
It comes from an August 2021 Guangzhou spot check. The samples actually tested came back with none of the five synthetic colourings detected. The separate city wide sampling that did find four non compliant batches never named brands. Aggregators merged the two stories, both companies issued corrections, and the graphic has been circulating for five years anyway. The IQ claim has no serious basis.
I bring it up because that graphic is why this conversation keeps going nowhere. If the case has to be made with a five year old misreport, there is no case. But there is a real one, and it is about what we require companies to tell us. That one we can actually act on.

The uncle assault incident has been reported in Aussie mainstream media now.

I want to keep this short ngl, just a small rant because i just think it's so frustrating constantly working hard and "upskilling" because we are so replaceable in this competitive, crab + herd mentality country

But, I'm in jc rn and I see the outlook of Singapore and several events happening (people rushing to board the mrt, rowdy + uncivilised kids and parents justifying them, stressful education (GOD SAVE ME from elite jcs im in one), people constantly putting others down, jealousy, etc) and other stuff that makes me lose faith in society (TFR discussions, rising costs of living, growing division between people, more grumpy people, deforestation for the sake of building manmade infrastructure, BTO prices (resale or not) rising + married people prioritised, jobmarket threatened by AI and older gens (what j see) actively advocating FOR AI, telling us to have "lower standards and be more hungry" when we barely have the bare minimum wage for a comfortable life these days (TLDR its just telling you ppl are willing to hire cheap foreign source who grew up with low wages in their countries and are willing to take cheap labour here because our money converts to a lot of money in their HOME COUNTRY but for us our home country is SINGAPORE), lower empathy, "sinkie pwn sinkie" mindset etc

I'll be fr rn I'd much rather move out to live with a slower pace of life after earning money in Singapore during a bunch of my adulthood years, even if I have to sacrifice some stuff like efficiency.

I just think singapore is good for worklife and not life-life iykwim, taken from someone who once posted that singaoore is good for earning money before leaving.

Hi all,

Looks like a post of mine caused a little stir here so thought I'd address some points from OP's response.

On colonialism: to claim that Singapore’s dating scene is a direct product of “racial hierarchies established during the colonial period” as you put it would be a bit misleading as it's too black and white. I said there may be "residual effects" from that history, an intentionally more tentative way of putting it, and one of several possible factors I raised.

It was poor wording in my original post tbf as I heavily implied it, but I never actually said I was a 6. I'd probably rate myself a 7.5/8, I take care of myself and my presentation. Just wanted that on record.

As many of the commentors on my original post did, I reckon you might've misinterpreted my theories on money and status. What I claimed was essentially "white people are often expats > expats are often wealthier > that makes them attractive". But you seem to have misconstrued that as "European countries have a lower GDP > they should not be as attractive". Pretty specious reasoning iyam. I never even mentioned what country I was from (I did imply US tbf) because it's irrelevant to the point.

With all that said, I do understand why my colonialism point can feel humiliating. British imperialism was fucked. China still feels the effects of a whole "century of humiliation" as they call it. Acknowledging possible historical residues is not the same as endorsing them and these effects aren't felt equally among Singaporeans.

Feel free to dispute any of my theories as they're only that, theories. I love a good debate in the comments.

Seeing my fellow Gen Zs talk about the incident saying "he shouldn't even have touched the kid in the first place" is pure victim blaming. The comments from Western foreigners on the coverage on BBC news instagram also reiterates the same sentiments and how the uncle deserved it. Even worse, a Gen Z mom told me "i don't feel sorry for the uncle at all cos it's 2026 everybody knows you shouldn't be touching kids'.

My take on it is that times have changed. It was more socially acceptable to pat kids on the head as a friendly gesture but it is frowned upon now with newer generations. Should uncle have patted the kid on the head? Probably not given the current social climate, he will have to adapt to it. But to be vilified and compared to a sexual predator blows the whole thing out of proportion.

ALLEGEDLY the couple is former WP member Nicole Seah and her husband. As a WP supporter, I'm glad Nicole is out of WP because she's a bad egg that proved to everyone through this incident she is not for the people as she claims to be. A Gen Z mom told me "But at least she is for the kids, and kids are the future" which to me doesnt fkin make sense because is being violent to a vulnerable group something you want to teach your child as an appropriate response if you do not feel comfortable? Of course, the situation will be wildly differently if it was sexually predatory, but this situation could have been easily defused with a simple "Hi uncle I would appreciate if you do not touch my child" since it was nothing but a HARMLESS ACT!

the parents have a right to not feel comfortable and confront the uncle, but most of us can agree whatever happened was excessive. He pulled the man's wrist with deliberate attempts to shove him to the ground ffs!

Like why the fuck are so many people lacking the ability to have civil discourse and need to resort to disproportionate reactions as if we are uncivilised, uneducated folk? People who are saying yes the reaction was too much but still say "oh but uncle shouldn't have done that in the first place" are part of the problem because those sentiments lessen the culpability of the perp and that the old man is at fault for what occurred.

(P.S Off topic but if it is true that the father is Bryan Seah who is a Singaporean based in Australia, and still told the uncle he is from Australia, it is reeking of trying to use Western privilege to assert superiority over our local folk. Not to forget it is pretentious considering he is not ACTUALLY australian but simply holds residency there.)

EDIT (bumping from a response I made): The reason I added the point about uncle being from a different era is that this entire discourse has shown that we as a society are increasingly lacking more understanding and empathy towards the older generation when they are trying/or unaware about adapting to changing times. If the dad had practiced that understanding while being able to firmly confront the man about his discomfort, I believe things would not have gotten this violent.

There's no need for escalation of the entire incident, and there's also no need to victim blame.

Don't import US (retarded) woke mind virus, snowflake culture into SG expecting it to be the norm. We live in a inherited collective society, not a individualistic society where we can call men women.

Those people claiming the 'pat' as an assault need to really learn what assault is, if not I dont mind volunteering ah. I do community service for you, teach you what is real assault.

Too much antisocial fuckers out there trying to normalize their antisocial behaviour on others, I can show you what real antisocial behaviour is.

As someone who lived in the US for quite a while, this whole uncle patting head and getting assaulted incident would not have happened there. Why? Because firstly, no one dare to approach a small kid and touch them in any way, cause maybe the parents have gun and will shoot you. Next, no one will dare to throw an old man to the ground like that, because maybe his family will have gun and come shoot you. Everyone will mind their own business, because any small thing can end up with someone pull gun and shoot you. One of my friends once got punched by homeless, when the dad found out, he flash his gun and said if he were there, he'd have shot the motherfucker in the head.

The fact that we got so many idiots debating, trying to argue that it's okay to shove someone like that, just shows how pampered they are to live in a relatively safe environment. A good father who is trying keep family safe overseas, will never try to escalate, cause who knows if they will react back and shoot your family. What these idiots haven't consider is -- what if the elderly man is actually a siao lang? Maybe you shove him, he pull knife and slash your daughter? This is why, even if we assume the pat was malicious (which it clearly wasn't but wtv), the appropriate response should always be deescalate and escape or leave the situation, not escalate. This is why we can say the australian guy is a bully. He knows the poor elderly man won't fight back, especially in a "safe" country like Singapore. If same thing took place in Texas or Mexico or India or whatever, let's see if this father still dare to start a fight in front of the daughter.

Hi Guys, I’m currently 26 diploma holder with 3.3k take home salary

I’m looking for some ideas/insights for some after work side hustle preferably remotely. I’m willing to learn new skills need to side hustles.

Singapore quite expensive to live in so my plan is to hustle till I’m 30+ then migrate to who knows whether and live a slow life.

I don’t go out much and only treat myself to good meals 1-3 times a month. So my expenses per month is < $500.
But I got a CC loan to pay off for the next 10-12 months.

Big thanks to commenters in advance 🙏

Hi guys,I (20,M) am currently on a gap year to recover and get better from some mental health issues before going back for my last year in poly.

I want to earn money and obviously there are part time jobs but I have worked a lot of them and it seem like the supervisors/full timers love to target me tbh. Idk is it because I am short and obese so I look "easy". I work work but still get picked on the most so it is what is it.

Before going for another part time job which I would hate,I would love to ask are there anything else I can do on my own that can bring in lets say $2000/month ish?

I had friends told me about tiktok selling one piece/pokemon and it worked well for them (one of them earned $10,000 in a month/another earned $3000 in a week). Sadly,they didnt really to me any details but I feel like trying but also is very uncertain.

Thanks for reading!