When Yap Mei Mei, or Jules as she is better known online, said she was thinking about becoming a full-time blogger, no one really took her seriously.Little did her family and friends know that Yap’s blog, Ikea Hackers, had drawn up to 458,000 visitors a day at one time.The site struck gold, so to speak, when it made headlines in March this year for being the Malaysian blog threatened with a lawsuit by Ikea, the same Swedish furniture giant that sparked off the concept for the site in the first p

World News Dec. 31, 2014

It is easier than ever to buy overseas items, but that’s not the real reason behind the booming ranks of China’s “haitao” consumers.Liu Xin, 32, a Beijing local, has been buying products for her child from overseas websites since 2011. She has bought everything from milk powder, a stroller and a car baby seat to feeding bottles and body lotions, all of which have been delivered to her doorstep through international shipping.“Every mom around me knows how to shop from overseas websites for their

World News Dec. 31, 2014

It used to be fashionable for restaurant waiters to finish a dish tableside, usually by dousing it with alcohol and setting it alight, before portioning and serving it.This sort of thing went out of fashion in the 1980s but it looks to be coming back in style, with restaurants putting more effort into tableside preparation despite the manpower crunch.In a recent interview with SundayLife!, French celebrity chef Joel Robuchon, who has two restaurants at Resorts World Sentosa, said he is looking t

World News Dec. 31, 2014

In her grievance form submitted to then-Nanjing mayor Ma Chaojun during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), the 80-year-old widow recalled how Japanese soldiers cleaved her granddaughter’s skull with a bayonet and killed four other family members.“After the Japanese soldiers broke into our house in the name of searching for Chinese soldiers, they accused my son Guodong of being a soldier and asked for money and property,” the widow wrote.“My daughter-in-law’s crying irri

World News Dec. 16, 2014

This guy has put a new spin on cotton candy.Arnold Castro, who didn’t get the chance to enjoy the sweet confection as a child, now spends his days spinning sugar into the melt-in-the-mouth cotton candy ― and from the simple formless delight to animal art.But before he hit the sweet spot, Castro, who grew up in Pangasinan, was a simple printing press employee after graduating from high school. In 1999, he moved to Manila and landed a job as a security guard, first at the Technical Education and S

World News Dec. 16, 2014

Bollywood likes what are known in the industry as “in character” appearances.When Indian superstar Aamir Khan walks into the conference room at the plush Taj Lands End hotel in Mumbai to promote his upcoming film “PK,” his clothes give some indication of his character.He arrives in a frayed superhero T-shirt, shorts and slippers. It is hard not to break it to him that this is the first time a Bollywood superstar is looking less dressed than the least-dressed journalist.The 49-year-old punctuates

World News Dec. 16, 2014

The two traffickers were detected and stopped by police as they were boarding a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. They had three women with them, bought from their families for around $470 each, reports said of the October incident.The women were to have been transported by road from Hanoi deep into southern China to marry the men who had bought them.Trafficking of poor Vietnamese women to China is a thriving industry which China and Vietnam are struggling to contain.Both countries hand dow

World News Dec. 9, 2014

With Christmas approaching, many children are filled with joyful expectations for this year’s presents. But today’s toys have become increasingly high-tech, attracting not only kids but adults as well.One popular item is “Kinetic Sand,” a toy that makes it possible to play with sand indoors.The sand is made by mixing Swedish sand and a silicon-based polymer, which then undergo special processing techniques. Unlike natural sand, which is dry to the touch, Kinetic Sand has a tackiness to it and fe

World News Dec. 9, 2014

Every Sunday, from the living room of his third-floor Housing Board flat in Little India’s Buffalo Road, Singaporean Jumani Hori can see foreign workers playing cricket on a grass patch along Tekka Lane, and hear the hubbub of conversation.Jumani, 52, has learnt to tune this out, as well as the booming music that stallholders play to draw the crowds, and the general bustle that electrifies the ethnic enclave.But a year ago on Dec. 8, the noise turned into a commotion that erupted into Singapore’

World News Dec. 9, 2014

Doi Tung in Chiang Rai province will be ablaze with color next weekend and for once it won’t just be the flowers in Mae Fah Luang Garden providing the stunning hues. Visitors will also be able to enjoy a colorful bazaar as the six ethnic groups living in the mountains demonstrate their sustainable lifestyles and explain how they were weaned from their traditional opium poppy cultivation to become the proud farmers of coffee, fruits and vegetables.Scheduled for two periods ― Friday through next S

World News Dec. 2, 2014

Barbara McMurrey, a 73-year-old from Texas, believes that her father, Maj. William McMurrey, still has a guiding hand on her, 70 years after his death.“I was 3 when he was killed in 1944, during a fierce battle with the Japanese on the southwestern border of China,” she said.“Keeping the grief and memory to herself, my mother had very seldom discussed the man with her two children. For me, Father was just a name, a black-and-white picture, a distant figure forever shrouded in the misty, gauzy sh

World News Dec. 2, 2014

On my fourth day as a taxi driver, I drove for six hours at night with just one five-minute toilet break.It was past midnight when I headed home and absent-mindedly got into the wrong lane at the junction of Bishan Road and Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1. The traffic lights turned green and I took off, almost hitting another taxi.When I got home, my wife greeted me with a hug and said: “You have the taxi driver smell.”“It is the smell of hard work,” I said. It was the odor of being cooped up for hours in s

World News Dec. 2, 2014

K-pop boy band B.A.P. (TS Entertainment)TS Entertainment on Friday refuted accusations by the K-pop boy band B.A.P that they were working under a “slave contract.” “The artists have not been mistreated, and there are no unfair clauses in the contract,” the label said in a press release, countering the boy band’s allegations. The response comes two days after the rookie K-pop singers filed a lawsuit against their agency, demanding the termination of their exclusive contracts. All six members of B

Nov. 28, 2014

Liu Jinming had a tough time handling the high-tech equipment and coping with the complex information on the computer screens in front of him.Liu, 50, has been working at the coal-fired heating plant in Beijing for 27 years. After facing the basic buttons and instrument panels of the plant‘s former operations room in the past few decades, he found himself having to study and retrain with younger colleagues to get up to speed with the latest technology.“It took me more than a year to learn how to

World News Nov. 18, 2014