Author: FIRECracker

I went to the mall the other day to pick up some family Christmas presents, and boy was it packed! What happened to all the doom and gloom in the media, complaining about inflation and recession fears? Apparently, according to research conducted by Ipsos, who surveyed participants from Asia, North America, South America, and Europe: “85% feel excited about celebrations and one-third on average feel more excited than last year. For many the party must go on, with Germany, the US, and the UK leading the way in saying rising costs will have no impact on their celebrations.” So, I […]

Back in 2015, I struggled with the idea of early retirement. I thought after escaping my cubical prison I’d be gleefully cartwheeling out of my office, but things didn’t quite go according to plan. The evening after I officially gave my notice, I started feeling this weird tightness in my chest and it was getting hard to breathe. I waited and tried to ignore it, thinking it would just go away but it didn’t. Before long, negative thoughts started ricocheting in my brain, and no matter how many times I looked at my spreadsheets (yes, they are my soothing security […]

You’ve all heard of the Great Resignation, but recently, there’s a more fashionable, inconspicuous quitting style called “quiet quitting”. What is “Quiet Quitting”? Instead of quitting your job and losing out on a severance package, why not just do the bare minimum? Welcome to Quiet Quitting. Inspired by the Chinese Lying Flat (躺平) movement, this idea came about after employee burn-out during the pandemic. Employees grew sick and tired of not getting paid to do extra work outside their responsibilities or taking on the double load from their ex-colleagues after the Great Resignation. This was their way of fighting back. […]

“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer”. –anonymous “But travelling is so expensive, I can’t afford to travel all the time.” “I don’t know what I would do with myself if I travelled to one place and stayed there for a whole month!” These are just some of the complaints I got from people I met while attending the Travel Summit. Having been out of the workforce for nearly 8 years now, it’s easy to forget what it was like to cherish those precious 3-4 weeks of vacation, then spend all year saving up for that […]