France seems to be the best place to live in…

I was watching this show called Sicko by Michael Moore. So basically this movie is about how screwed up America’s health-care system is like e.g. health insurance company finding all sorts of medical loopholes to deny payment and hospital dump (literally) patients on the streets when they can’t afford to pay.

Anyhow, they also did a short review on health-care system (and life in general) in France as a comparison. So this is what they reported in the movie:

1. Free universal health care for everyone – medicine, medical diagnostic scans, lab tests, and drugs.

2. When you get MC for illness (in the movie for 3 weeks), you are fully paid (65% by government and 35% by employer).

3. They do free house call at any time.

4. Government employed nanny (twice to thrice a week, 4 hrs each time) to help “new” mothers. These nannies do anything like clean the house, do laundry, and cook meals as long as it is within the 4 hrs.

5. Having 2 children in day-care while you work cost only 1 euro an hour.

6. Free education up to college (university).

7. 35 working hrs a week only and if you work longer than that, you get paid off days. 

8. Minimum 5 weeks (sometimes 8 to 10 weeks) of paid vacation – even for part-time employees. Other additional miscellaneous paid holidays includes moving house (1-2 days) and newly wed honeymoon (1 week). 

9. A combined income of 8000 euros allows you to – have 2 kids, own 2 cars, have a 4 bedroom apartment (monthly mortgage of 1.5k), go for holidays frequently, and live very very happily (who won’t?!?).

Seriously everyone should check out this show, at least for the section of how French live their lives. After watching, I AM VERY VERY DETERMINED to migrate to France!!!! Hopefully, I can be a quitter (in PM’s Goh words) in a few years time? Time to start learning French, haha…

October is a great month!!!

New seasons of…

1. House MD

2. Heros

3. Prison Break

4. Grey’s Anatomy

…have all started!!!

Do you know the Italians have “wantons” too?

So what the difference you might ask.

1. We called it wanton while the Italians called it tortellini.

2. We eat wantons in soup while the Italians eat it dry (with some olive oil and parmesan) like in pasta.

3. For us, we have about 3-5 wantons each serving as a side dish. But the Italians have dozens of tortellini as their first course (its like their main meal).

Now grapes are cheap…

So previously it was cheap melons and now its the season for grapes!

All these grapes (4kg) for just 2 euros!

The only thing is that these grapes have seeds, which sucks. I dun understand why the Italians are not using transgenic or other biotech methods to make their grapes seedless!

Italian names are unisex

It is interesting how Italians can use the same name for both male and female by just changing the last letter.

Francesco and Francesca

Roberto and Roberta

Alessandro and Alessandra

Donatello and Donatella

Daniele and Daniela

Angelo and Angela

Etc, etc…

So if my name is transformed into an Italian one, then it will be Jarono (male) and Jarona (female).

Pretty cool huh?

What is the Singapore Identity?

When I was in US, people thought I am from China.

Now in Italy, people thought I am from Japan.

When I say I am from Singapore, they all got confused and give me the look that why do I have the skin color of Chinese and/or Japanese!

By the way, no one here really knows where Singapore is – makes me wonder if Singapore is truly globally recognized or not.

Chain Translation

You have heard of chain reaction, chain smoking, etc etc. How about chain translation?

So today, while I was at the police station to collect my residency permit (after 3 months wait!),  I was involved in a chain translation incident.

Chinese Gals: Speak only Mandarin

Me: Speaks both Mandarin and English 

Italian Guy: Speaks both English and Italiano

Police Officer: Speaks only Italiano

Therefore by chain translation, the group of chinese gals who speak only Mandarin were able to explain something to the police officer who speaks only Italiano.

Interesting huh?

Anyhow, I STILL did not get my residency permit. They told me to come back another day (like 2 months later!) DESPITE the fact that today’s visit was actually a scheduled appointment! Italian red tape is realllllly jialat…

My visit to San Siro Stadium

The San Siro Stadium is reallllly huge!  

Anyhow, the match was Inter Milan vs. Catania and FT score was 2-0!

Don’t you love these songs?

In business, the middleman always win…

The most obvious example is Ebay.

I was watching an old CNA series called “Change Makers” and in one episode, they shared 2 very interesting business.

1. Easy Being Green from Australia – So what happens was that they provide free power-saving bulbs to families and these families get to save electricity bills. In return, all the energy saved are converted into something called carbon credits which Easy Being Green gets to keep. Easy Being Green then sell these carbon credits to the Industries who will need them to prevent fines from the Government (since these industries are demanded to reduce their power intake by the govt).

2. RSVP Pro Consultancy or something – This founder looks for professionals (engineers, teachers, etc etc) who are retired and hire them as low cost consultants. He then “resell” them to the industry who are looking for people (with experience but cheaper) to help them with their growing business.

Then again, I have to justify by saying that these 2 founders are doing the business because of their passion – one for greener environment and the other for helping retirees finding a meaningful life. This once again shows how important passion is in entrepreneurship!

I am still look for a middleman business in the food industry.