Finding a Job

I have been contacted by many NUS graduates for some time now for advice on career in Singapore, finding about how job market works and others. And more often than not, I feel that students today are lacking the key abilities to position themselves in front of recruiters. I, during my MBA, also committed same mistakes and had a tough time to find a job where I fit well. I did commit serious mistakes, such as - I had more or less same resume floating everywhere for different kinds of job roles, I gave just one read to understand the job requirement, and many others.

Having met few candidates earlier, I see same issues again this and, hence, this is my attempt to explain -

• how important it is to understand a job description
• how important it is to position and up sell yourself according to the job requirement
• how important it is to network with industry people and alumni

I believe I can explain all the above points through a small story, which is quite powerful. I had attempted this on few candidates earlier and found same answers from everybody.

Click on Read More link below.

New Zealand Tourist Visa in Singapore (for Indians)

Getting a New Zealand tourist visa in Singapore is pretty straightforward (compared to the Schengen visa). You should be careful of few things though which might be tough for people working in Singapore in a regional role.

1. Total Visa fees including the Visa Application Center fees is S$202 per application. An application can have multiple members. So, apply together to save money.
2. The time taken to process tourist visa is 15 working days. However, they returned my application in 7 working days.
3. There is no appointment system at the moment, but this can change in future; so advise to apply one and a half months in advance.
4. All related links can be found here.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

So finally got the time to write about the third leg of our Eurotrip - first being Switzerland and second Italy. Our last 4 days were spent in musical cities of Austria - Vienna and Salzburg. Here are my recommendations and tips -

Recommendation/Tips

1. Use Rick Steves audio guide to tour Vienna. They are good
2. Most of the things to see in Vienna is around St Stephens Cathedral, so you may want to look out hotel for rent closer to this area
3. There are lots of people (dressed properly) outside the Opera House selling tickets. Do not get tricked into their sweet talks as they sell for more and gives you seat which may not be good to view the stage
4. You should have legendary Sacher tart at Sacher Cafe near Opera House, Vienna
5. In Salzburg - go to Wolfgangsee lake (via bus) and hire an electric boat. You can then visit the entire lake on your own. Shop closes before 6pm
6. Ride a bicycle in Salzburg to visit places like Hellbrunn palace and the fort. You will enjoy the ride

Click on Read More link below

Good Mobile App to learn Spanish (and many others)

Last few weeks I have been teaching my cousin English over phone. He could speak Hindi but has problem converting sentences in English. I believe it is tough to learn another language. The main problem is that one first thinks in Hindi and then translate in English. But as a kid, we always think and speak in a particular language. That's why I realized it takes a bit of time to speak and, hence, lots of practice is needed to learn the second language.

To realize this change and challenge myself (perhaps recharge my brain power), I decided to learn a new language (along with continue my efforts to teach English to my cousin). I wanted to learn Spanish, so started looking for mobile apps as I can then learn it at my disposal. After trying lots of different apps, I found Duolingo application very useful. Starts from Basic level and then logically moves to advanced ones. After completing couple of levels, I immediately realized the pain that I first think of any sentence in English and then translate it to Spanish. Guess, lots of reading and practice is needed to come to a level where I think in Spanish. Speaking will naturally follow then.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 2)

Part 1
Part 3

This post covers 5 days trip itinerary to Italy that includes 2 days in Rome, 1 day in Florence and 2 days in Venice.

Recommendations/Tips

1. Follow Rick Steves Guide for monuments visit in Italy. They are good and free to download
2. Buy entry tickets online to avoid queuing in the lines
3. Stay close to Pantheon area in Rome to enjoy  wonderful street lane experience
4. While booking a hotel in Venice, see if you could get a room facing a canal. You will get a good experience of Gondolas passing by
5. When you (as a couple) take a Gondola, prefer sharing it with 2 more people; otherwise it is difficult to take pictures of yours as a couple
6. Have Gelato ice cream every day :-)

We had earlier planned to stay in Rome for 3 days and rest in Venice. But many of my friends told me later to not miss Florence, so I shortened Rome by one day and gave half day to Florence. We used AirBnB and chose a place close to Termini station. Owner of the house was an old Italian lady and she made sure that our stay was as comfortable as it could be. On the first day we visited a lot of places because of our shortened trip. We followed Colosseum > Palantine Hill > Roma Forum > Venezia Palace > Piazza Navona > Pantheon > Trevi Fountain > Spanish Steps > Colosseum (in Night).  You could avoid Palantine Hill and Spanish Steps if you are in a hurry. All others are just masterpieces which cannot be avoided at all.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 1)

Part 2
Part 3

The Eurotrip has ended and, gosh, what a splendid trip it was. 14 days trip to the serene natural beauty, magnificent historical architectures, lakes and monuments that you attach with your childhood memories passed so quickly that two weeks of vacation felt less. We visited Switzerland, Italy and Austria on our debut Europe tour. Choosing countries/cities in Europe is always difficult and the foremost thought behind our planning was to have a mix of few things. So we started off with a visit to Switzerland to see the natural snow-capped mountains, followed by visiting architectural monuments in Italy and, finally, ending the trip with visiting the musical cities in Austria. In all, I was very happy with my planning as we found that just doing one thing, such as visiting monuments, churches, etc, would become utterly boring. After seeing so many beautiful churches in Italy, I doubt if I can go and see another beautiful church which is just across the street in Paris. So, in that way we never got bored and always looked forward to what the next city has to offer.

Planning was done entirely by us which took a bit of time, lot of reading, however, it was a great experience as I read a lot about what to visit and not visit and filter out unimportant things. We visited Interlaken, Jungfraujoch (Switzerland), Rome, Florence and Venice (Italy) and Vienna, Salzburg (Austria). Wonderful experience it was. I’m helping out with our itinerary (click Read More below) and places to visit, our experience, fares to visit monuments and few tips that may help you with your planning.

Places/Countries Visited in the World

One of my criteria to come to Singapore for my higher studies was travel. Travel across the world. And the below figure shows the current status. These are the countries where I have gone on holidays. There are more countries that I have visited like Vietnam, Malaysia etc but only for business. So, I have not marked those.

1. The best has been Capetown so far, but diving in Cairns is not behind at all.
2. South America, Europe and South Africa (other than South Africa) are largely untouched. Even US for that matter.
3. There are just so many countries/continents left :-(

Getting Schengen Visa In Singapore

Europe is our next destination in summers and since we are Indians, we have to apply visas for every other country in the world we want to visit. Damn Singaporeans who can visit so many awesome places without any visa.:-(

Anyways we have decided to go to following three countries in Europe - Switzerland, Austria and Italy. So the Schengen visa makes sense. Now the trouble is which embassy should you approach if you want to get a visa? So, I did my research and following is the result, which I feel is useful to share.

1. You need to apply to that embassy where you are staying the most number of nights. So, if it is Italy, you need to go and take appointment with Italian Embassy.

2. Visa is strictly by appointment and imagine this - I looked into Italian embassy for appointment on April 16th for my travel on 7th June and they dont have any dates available till 10th June. So, you need to keep track of this and take appointment early. And Italy and Switzerland being more famous tourist attractions than Austria, the dates are taken up fast.

What Places To Avoid In Singapore?

I'm writing this post to help tourists to avoid couple of destinations in Singapore during their visit on SUNDAY. This is my personal belief and I speak about them mostly because of congestion and traffic issues on Sundays.

1. Orchard Road on Sunday - I go to gym on Saturday at one of the joints at Orchard. Because of some reason, I could not visit on Saturday one week and instead decided to go on Sunday. And to my surprise, orchard's main area on Sunday is occupied by domestic workers (maids). As Singapore government has granted compulsory day off for maids, which is good for them, looks like most of them spend time in Orchard. So, our dear orchard appears more crowded than usual days (at least around Paragon, Lucky Plaza areas). Furthermore, construction has been going on for some time, that creates more traffic.

2. Mustafa and Race Course Road on Sunday - You will be surprised to believe that you are in Singapore if you happen to be there around Mustafa especially during evening on Sundays. It is very much crowded and it will be good if you would like to do your shopping in Mustafa on any other day than Sunday. Simply avoid.

LinkedIn Endorsement - Useful Feature? Not Really

I have been a great great fan of LinkedIn. LinkedIn has frankly taught me many things in my professional career (most notably adding networks with an improved success rate) and has been quite instrumental in securing internships couple of times and a job in a tough market during my MBA period. The power of connections it imparts is out of the world. I have been using LinkedIn for quite sometime now and can easily point out that their continuous new additions have helped to a large extent. For example - recommendations feature, adding new connections only when you know the email, follow companies feature, trying their full-fledged LinkedIn premium version for a month for free, etc have all been great features.

LinkedIn introduced Endorsements some time back and I initially thought of it as a great feature to know quickly about a person's skill. But using it for sometime, I now feel that it increasingly will become a redundant feature. And LinkedIn to some extent is responsible for it. How? By simply providing a single click to endorse few skills that LinkedIn populates automatically when one person visits another person's profile. So easy and convenient to endorse.

But after experiencing this feature for sometime, I can convincingly "endorse" that this feature does not add any value as it is being use incorrectly. Sample this

1. My skills have been endorsed by people who I know personally but have never worked professionally. Why would they do that? well, probably they "believe" that I'm good in something.
2. My skills have been endorsed by people who I dont know personally as well, but at some point in time added into my circle and spoken to them over email. Why would they do that? well, probably they are looking for a job change, or some information or want to do business with me or my company. So they "believe" that this could be a good starting point to interact.
3. My skills have been endorsed by completely random people. Why would they do that? well, again for the same reason as 2 above.

South Africa - Cape Town and Kruger Safari

Continuing our travel journey, I went to South Africa this christmas and new year. I must say that I'm really impressed by Cape Town and Kruger National Park. So far, this experience has to be the most amazing; surpassing the Great Barrier Reef - Cairns that I did six months back.

The Safari
We took a flight from Singapore to Johannesburg (via Dubai) and booked our safari at Naledi Enkoveni in Balule Private Nature Reserve. We chose Balule as it has Olifants river passing by and Naledi is ranked 1 in that area. And Naledi did a fantastic job as well. We planned for 4 safaris (2 each day) which we regret because we both just loved the safaris and believed that we should have spend an extra day. We were able to view Lions, Hippos, Rhinos, Elephants, Impalas, Giraffes, Buffaloes, Zebras, Kudus, Dears, Wildebeest, warthogs and many others. The joy of finding them in a humongous jungle and then spending one hour watching them and listening to ranger's amazing stories about animals is unbelievable. We went pretty close to these animals and trust me there is no need for Binoculars. Yeah, of course you see animals pretty close in zoos, but then the animal has been trained to sit in the cage or the limited open area. In jungle, the excitement is there all the time. You need to find the animal, chase them and finally spent time watching them. We spent at least 45 mins watching each of the big four and trust me never felt that 45 mins were so long. The safari has left both of us with special memories and believe that we will be doing another later in our life. Some of the pictures below.

Cape Town
We then returned from  Kruger to Johannesburg and took a flight to Cape Town. Cape Town is a very beautiful city and offered lots of areas/places to go. We had 6-7 days and we spent every day doing only one activity. I guess we are changing as in our previous travels, we were focusing on our checklist - that is how many things have we seen. In this process, you get see many things, but surely one does not spend too much time about extracting pleasure out of seeing that unique place or thing.
We rented a car, which was a good thing because we came to know later that during the christmas and new year time, there were just no cars to be rented in any of the well known car rental companies. So, book your car well in advance.

We visited following places and all of them are beautiful.

1. Table Mountain - Gosh, what a beautiful place it is. Pleateau on the top of a mountain. We spent 5 hours on the top and experienced amazing weather change from clear to windy to cloudy to clear. Amazing views. Watched one of the best sunset ever.

2. Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens - Again a fantastic place. Amazing weather, beautiful scenery all around.

3. Stellenbosch and Franschoek - Lots of wine yards in these two areas. Was so much impressed by the overall scenery that decided to go twice to this place. You should do wine tasting (at least couple of times). Wines are very cheap as well. So make sure you get couple of them when you return back.

4.  Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope - Place where Atlantic meets Indian Ocean. The entire drive to Cape Point is absolutely amazing. One should drive from the Indian Ocean side and return back from the Atlantic. This way you can see amazing sunset while coming back as well as take a sundown drink at Camps Bay (Happening place). While going to the Cape Point, you should definitely stop at Boulders Beach to say hello to Penguins. Yes, Penguins .. can you believe it? Also, we were lucky to see a group of Ostriches while going from Cape point to Cape of Good Hope. You turn your car and you see Ostriches on the road. This is amazing and thats why South Africa made me surprised so much.

We missed Robben Island because tickets were all sold out due to so much tourist traffic. But I have been to Alcatraz before so it was ok for me.

Overall, this was a well spent christmas and new year. Hope to visit safari soon. But now next summer I believe is a time for some architectural visit. Lets see where journey takes me in June.