Showing posts with label singapore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label singapore. Show all posts

Thursday, January 2, 2014

The Top 25 Places People Checked In On Facebook In 2013 Shows The Most Popular Destination In The World

The Top 25 Places People Checked In On Facebook In 2013 Shows The Most Popular Destination In The World
Going on vacation seems to be less and less about having a good time and more for checking in somewhere on social media to improve clout to those who follow our lives online.
To prove this, Facebook has listed the 25 most checked-in places on the massive social network, from Disneyland in Anaheim, California, to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa.
From sporting arenas to popular city squares, the list shows some of the most famous places all over the world.
Of the top 25 places, the common theme seems to be Disney, as four Disney theme parks made the list, from California,ParisTokyo and Hong Kong, proving people want to see Mickey Mouse and friends all over the globe.
One thing that stands out about the list is there isn’t a check-in from New York City on the list, and this may be due to the fact that there isn’t one central location in which people would check in.
Here are the top 25 places people checked in during 2013, according to Facebook:
Argentina: Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires
Australia: Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), East Melbourne, Victoria
Brazil: Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo
Canada: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, British Columbia
Egypt: Sharm el-Sheikh, South Sinai Governorate
France: Disneyland Paris, Marne La Vallée
Germany: Reeperbahn, Hamburg
Hong Kong: Hong Kong Disneyland
Iceland: Blue Lagoon, Reykjavík
India: Harmandir Sahib (The Golden Temple)
Italy: Piazza San Marco, Venice
Japan: Disneyland, Tokyo
Mexico: Auditorio Nacional, Mexico City
Nigeria: Ikeja City Mall, Ikeja, Lagos
Poland: Temat Rzeka, Warsaw
Russia: Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure
Singapore: Marina Bay Sands
South Africa: Victoria & Alfred Waterfront
South Korea: Myungdong Street, Seoul
Spain: Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Catalonia
Sweden: Friends Arena, Solna
Taiwan: Tainan Flower Night Market, Tainan City
Turkey: Taksim Square, Istanbul
United Kingdom: The 02, London
United States: Disneyland, Anaheim, California
Via: CNN, Top Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Monday, December 16, 2013

When Kids In Third World Countries Read First World Problems, They Suddenly Don’t Feel Like Problems



Ah, First World Problems. If you live in a western country, for one reason or another, you’re probably guilty of uttering one of these phrases.
Sure, minor inconveniences can really make a day unpleasant, but when put into perspective, having cold leather seats when you get into your car during the winter isn’t the end of the world.
Not having clean water, however, is an entirely different story. In order to highlight what “problems” actually are, Water Is Life launched the “First World Problems Anthem” video last year.
The video consists of people in the Third World reading tweets that were labeled with the hashtag #FirstWorldProblems. The stark contrast is sure to make the line at Starbucks seem like much less of a big deal.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Singapore's Newest Billionaire Made $2.1B Fortune From Nothing

Liang Court Complex (Source: Wikipedia)
Goh Cheng Liang is one of Singapore’s best-known and least-celebrated tycoons. He has neither featured in any rich lists nor ever talked to the press,  save for a one-off interview in 1997.  Yet some of Singapore’s most prominent landmarks, like the high profile hospital Mt. Elizabeth and the Liang Court shopping mall at Clarke Quay, have been built by this reclusive businessman.
Business was booming when an opportunity to tie up with Nippon Paint of Japan surfaced. Goh took the plunge with a 60-40 holding in a joint venture called the Nipsea Management Group. From nothing rose a paints conglomerate whose Nippon brand is today a household name in Asia. The Nippon brand now sells in 15 countries outside of Japan with some 15,000 employees and factories in 30 locations. Its annual turnover stands at $2.6 billion. Son Goh Hup Jin oversees the company run by professional managers.Goh never went to school. He was born to a poor family in a one-room tenement in 1928, one of four siblings. As a boy, he sold fishing nets and worked in a hardware store, learning business skills that were to shape his destiny. In 1949, when the British were auctioning off surplus stocks from World War II, Goh bought all the barrels of rotten paint for a song. With a Chinese dictionary of chemicals in hand, he went about mixing solvents, pigments and chemicals to make his own brand of paints called Pigeon. The following year, the Korean war broke out and an import ban landed Goh a whopping profit windfall.
Goh’s career has been the gritty journey of an entrepreneur. He never missed an opportunity to create, build and sell businesses to unlock their value. Over the years, he invested some of his profits from the paint business into property by building shopping malls, hotels, serviced residences, as well as a retail distribution business with Japanese partners, a contract manufacturing electronics business, specialty packaging, logistics, a food manufacturing operation in America and even a mining company in China! When his U.S.-educated son, Hup Jin, set about professionalizing some of the group companies and taking them public, Goh carved a parallel private empire with his longtime partners and employees under Yenom Industries. It owns serviced residences, gold courses, marinas, hotels and housing developments in Gulf Habour and elsewhere.
Over the years, Goh has been selling his stake in the publicly listed companies. He sold his 59% holding in Liang Court for $175 million to Pidemco Land in 1999. The $1 billion electronics service maker Omni Industries was sold to Celestica CLS -2.95% of Canada in 2001. Mt. Elizabeth was sold off, too. More recently, along with Crown Holdings CCK -1.93% of the U.S., he is taking listed Superior Multi-Packaging private.
Goh has come full circle, retracing his steps to his core competency in paints. Early this year, he made a $751 million bid for an additional 30% stake in Tokyo-listed parent Nippon, but quickly retreated in favor of growing the Asian business. He still makes news, though more for his generous endowments to scholarship funds, cancer research and education through the Goh Foundation, rather than his business moves.