The famous Japanese sponge cake is now available in Singapore
Can’t travel to Japan? No problem.
Isetan Singapore has announced in a Facebook post that they will be bringing us our all-time favourite Tokyo Banana sponge cake and they will be available for purchase at $9.90 per box of 4’s at Isetan Scotts B1 and Online.
If you are craving for it, then you don’t want to miss this.
You can now enjoy Tokyo Banana in Singapore without flying to Japan.
Way before the pandemic started, people have been trying to overcome insomnia. But coupled with the stress, changes, and uncertainty of COVID-19, more people are facing sleep deprivation. Simply put, the world has termed it as “coronasomnia”.
Chronically bad sleep is not just a condition that disrupts your rest pattern. It’s capable of attacking the immune system and affect memory and attention span. Furthermore, it could increase your chances of getting depression, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
Studies have even shown that your sleep corresponds with your life span. This means that the shorter your rest is, the shorter your time in life would be. In fact, folks over 50 years of age have a higher risk of getting dementia if they sleep less than 6 hours per night.
When we say to chuck your worries into the bin, you can take our word literally for it.
You can do so by sitting down an hour or two before bed with a blank piece of paper. Then, pen down all your worries or the tasks that are creeping into your mind. It could be the urgent emails you have to reply to in the morning or the presentation at noon.
“If most of what you’ve written down is stuff that you’re worried about, then crumple up the paper and throw it in the trash – that’s called discharging your thoughts,” said Dr Ilene M Rosen, a sleep medicine doctor and associate professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
#2: 25 minutes’ the limit
The above symbolic dumping act should help you clear your mind and prepare your body for rest. However, don’t stay in bed forever just to try to fall asleep if you can’t.
“If you stay in bed awake for long periods of time, your brain thinks, ‘Every time I get into bed, this is the place where I should be awake.’ And you need to break that association,” said Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr Walker is also the author of the best-selling book Why We Sleep. He advises us to get up if we can’t fall asleep within 25 minutes or get back into slumber after waking in the night.
Once you’re up, find a relaxing activity to do. It could be reading a book, engaging in a short meditation session, or simply listening to a calming podcast. Once you feel a little sleepy, slowly ease yourself back into bed and rest.
#3: Away with those screens
It has almost become a standardised habit for many to use their phones while lying in bed. But we all know it harms our bodies thanks to the blue light it emits. So instead of signalling your brain that it’s time to rest, your brain is mistaken that it should be awake.
Therefore, set rules to be away from those bright screens when you hit the sack. Or a good guideline could be to use it while standing up if you have to use your phone past bedtime.
“You’ll find after about 10 minutes of standing up at your normal bedtime that you’re going to say, ‘I need to lie down,’ – and that’s your body telling you that you need to put the phone away and get to sleep,” said Dr Walker.
Final thoughts
Image Credits: eossleep.com
Be mindful that the above CBT-inspired methods are just ways to cope with occasional bouts of insomnia. But for peeps suffering from long-term sleep issues and can’t function normally, do seek professional opinions.
“Don’t suffer in silence. Ask for help if you need it. There are sleep physicians everywhere, and that’s what we’re here for,” noted Dr Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, a sleep medicine specialist and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Do you know that according to a study of Singaporeans’ financial wellness state by OCBC last year, only 60% of women have investments? Faring better on the flip side, 75% of male respondents aged between 21 and 65 noted that they are investing.
Are you a novice when it comes to investing? If you have a low-risk appetite and not so investment savvy at the moment, fret not. All you need to take is baby steps.
“You don’t need a lot of money to start investing,” highlighted Vasu Menon, executive director of investment strategy at OCBC Bank. “A regular investment plan where you squirrel away small amounts each month into pre-selected investments is one fuss-free way to start building a portfolio.”
The OCBC Blue Chip Investment Plan allows you to invest in ETFs from just $100 a month. Just in case you’re clueless, ETFs are funds that are listed and traded on the stock exchange.
Even if you do not know much, that’s okay. The great thing about ETFs is that you don’t need a lot of market monitoring, thanks to the dollar-cost averaging. By regularly investing a specific sum of money over time, you can potentially lower your average price per counter.
“Diversify over time by phasing your investments into the markets through a regular investment plan, so that if the markets see a drawdown or sharp volatility, you will have dry powder to buy at lower levels, which reduces your average cost. A regular investment plan allows you to benefit from dollar-cost averaging,” Menon shares.
#2: Unit Trusts
Image Credits: scripbox.com
For folks who want to know that their money is in good hands, unit trusts would be a good investment strategy. To put it simply, an experienced fund manager oversees a pool of funds from a group of investors and uses it to invest in a range of financial assets.
The good news is that you don’t need significant capital to access a diversified portfolio. You can choose between making consistent investments from $100/month or opt for the minimum $1000/month lump sum route.
Purchase methods include cash, Central Provident Fund (CPF) Investment Scheme, and the Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) for selected funds.
“For myself, I started my investment journey by investing my own CPF monies since the funds were just sitting idle in my account, out of sight and out of mind. I took the first step by setting up a CPF investment account and began exploring opportunities to invest,” said Tan Siew Lee, Singapore’s head of wealth management at OCBC Bank.
#3: Robo-Investing
As we come to a close, robo-investing is our last option. Through this investment strategy, novice investors who want to invest actively via algorithms will be able to construct, monitor, and review portfolios.
Menon shares that OCBC RoboInvest could be one way to begin. Selected portfolios just require a small initial investment of US$100, making a fantastic way for almost anyone to kickstart their investment journey.
While we can’t say the same for other robo-investing platforms, Menon assures us that OCBC RoboInvest automates investments with guidance and validation from wealth experts to give you peace of mind.
However, that doesn’t mean a hands-off kind of financial venture. While your portfolio is monitored and periodically re-balanced based on economic and market movements, you hold the final say to approve any changes made to your portfolio.
