Sunday, October 18, 2026
Why you should always say ‘no’ to friends asking for loans
You should always be on guard when a friend asks for a loan, unless you are prepared to lose both the friend and your money.
This is because tales of people taking advantage of their friends when it comes to borrowing money are all too familiar, with a fair number of loan disputes ending up in court in recent years.
You should know that truly good friends will never ask you for money because they would rather suffer in silence than let their financial woes become your burden as well.
The proper way to help friends who are saddled with, say, credit card debts, is not to help pay part of it, but to accompany them to non-profit social service agency Credit Counselling Singapore, which can help debtors confront and deal with the problem systematically.
Similarly, it is unwise to help someone pay the bills of a company in trouble because business debt can be a bottomless pit and this means you will never get your money back if the company folds.
Here are two lenders who had to resort to lawsuits to recover their loans.
Friend borrowed $500,000
It started with a frantic call from a friend to help solve her company’s cash flow problems. The lender did not think twice and wrote a cheque for $15,000 to help her friend.
She did not even hesitate four days later when the same friend asked for another $60,000. Her generosity was soon abused by the friend, who continued asking for more interest-free loans until the debt ballooned to $500,000.
Whenever the lender pressed for repayment, the friend cycled through various excuses – ranging from her funds being tied up due to a delay in her divorce to seemingly absurd claims, such as her four brothers and a nephew dying one after another.
The loans took a heavy toll on the lender, who took on more part-time jobs and even borrowed from her father instead of telling her husband.
Not surprisingly, her husband blew his top when he found out that his wife had been conned by someone she hardly knew. He confronted the friend and forced her to sign an IOU to state that she had borrowed $525,200 in all.
Despite this, she still refused to return the money and was sued in the High Court.
Thankfully, the lender kept fairly good records of the loans and could prove that she had made 43 payments totalling $487,700. The friend had returned only $21,000, and the court ordered her to settle her remaining debt of $466,700.
This meant that the lender still could not recover over $35,000 of her original loan.
Loan shark or investor
A man tried to get his borrower to honour a $2 million IOU, but he ended up being accused of illegal moneylending.
The borrower had said he wanted the money for investment and even promised the lender some returns.
But the borrower claimed that he borrowed only about $66,000 and that “the discrepancy” was due to the high interest rate and penalties for late payment. He admitted to writing the IOU, but said he did so under duress because he had “no choice”, as the lender came to his home with a group of men.
The lender argued that the funds were meant to be placed in the borrower’s investment scheme, which could reap high monthly returns. However, he failed to provide any details of the investment agreement, which was supposedly made orally.
Not surprisingly, the borrower denied there was any such agreement.
The High Court found it incredulous that the lender could not provide details of his alleged investment or loan when such a big sum was involved.
It was also strange that the lender had no idea how the money was being used by the borrower.
The case was dismissed not because the borrower did not take any money, but because the lender’s suit was a “non-existent cause of action backed by no evidence”.
These two cases should make you think twice before lending money to others because it is all too easy for you to lose everything if the borrower just denies the existence of the loan.
Even if you successfully sue and recover your money, you still lose because you would need to spend a substantial sum on legal costs to recover the money that rightfully belongs to you in the first place.
Tan Ooi Boon
https://str.sg/Ayvn
How to remove the filtering feature of the Google Message app ? I just found out that all the incoming SMS messages sent by SingHeath in 2025 were marked automatically as Spam and Blocked.
To remove or turn off the automated spam filtering feature in the Google Messages app so you don't miss future texts from SingHealth, follow these steps directly on your phone:
How to Turn Off Spam Protection
- Open the Google Messages app.
- Tap your profile icon or initials in the top right corner of the search bar.
- Select Messages settings.
- Scroll down and tap Spam protection.
- Toggle the switch for Enable spam protection to Off.
How to Recover Your Missed SingHealth Messages
Since your previous 2025 messages were automatically flagged, you can find and restore them to your main inbox:
- Tap your profile icon in the top right of the Google Messages main screen.
- Select Spam & blocked.
- Find and tap the conversation from SingHealth.
- Tap Not spam (or unblock) at the top of the chat to restore the messages to your main inbox and prevent future texts from this sender from being blocked.
If you want to make sure your settings are perfectly configured, let me know:
- What brand of phone you are using (e.g., Samsung, Google Pixel, Xiaomi), as some brands have an extra layer of built-in system filters.
- Whether you are using a Singapore telco-specific spam app (like ScamShield).
I can give you exact steps to ensure no other important medical alerts get blocked!
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Maggots found in unwashed opened curry chicken can
Yes, this occurrence is completely normal given the circumstances.
While it can be gross to look at, finding maggots in this situation is a standard biological process and does not mean there was anything wrong with your food when you ate it.
How the Maggots Got There
Maggots cannot spontaneously generate out of nothing; they are fly larvae. For them to appear inside a tied plastic bag, one of two things happened:
- The "Micro-Gap" Entry: Plastic bags tied by hand are rarely completely airtight. Houseflies or blowflies are highly attracted to the strong scent of leftover chicken curry. A fly likely found a microscopic opening where the bag was knotted, crawled inside, laid eggs on the can, and squeezed back out.
- Prior Exposure: In the brief time the can was sitting open on your counter or table while you were eating, a fly may have landed on the inner rim or leftover residue and laid microscopic eggs unnoticed. Once sealed in the bag, those eggs hatched.
Why You Are Safe
Since you ate the food immediately upon opening the can, you are perfectly safe. Canned foods are sterilized at extremely high temperatures during the manufacturing process, making it impossible for live fly eggs or larvae to exist inside a freshly opened, undamaged can. The flies only targeted the can after it was opened and exposed to the open air.
To help you prevent this from happening again, let me know:
- Do you have a trash can with a tight-sealing lid?
- Would you like tips on how to properly rinse or dispose of smelly food cans?
China's underwater data center off the coast of Shanghai combines deep-sea cooling with offshore wind power to eliminate freshwater use
Key Details of the Project
- Location: About 10 kilometers off the coast of Shanghai in the Lingang area, sitting approximately 10 to 35 meters beneath the surface. [1, 2, 3]
- Power Source: Over 95% of the electricity is supplied directly by nearby offshore wind turbines via subsea cables. [1, 2]
- Cooling Method: It uses surrounding seawater and a copper-pipe heat exchange system, dropping traditional mechanical air conditioning and using zero fresh water. [1, 2, 3]
- Capacity and Cost: The project is scaled for a total capacity of 24 megawatts (with initial operational phases active) and cost roughly $226 million. [1, 2, 3]
- Efficiency Gains: It reduces overall electricity consumption by about 22.8% compared to land-based facilities and cuts land use by over 90%. [1, 2]
- Broader Context: While commercialized here in Shanghai (and earlier tested in Hainan and by Microsoft's experimental Project Natick), critics and marine experts also raise potential environmental questions regarding local heat discharge into the ocean ecosystem and the difficulty of underwater maintenance. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
If you'd like, I can provide details on how marine heat discharge is monitored or compare its energy efficiency against traditional land-based AI data centers.
Friday, October 16, 2026
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