By Miral Fahmy
SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) – It pays to work in Switzerland: employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world, a study by banking group UBS shows, while those in India's Mumbai take home the lowest.
The Swiss cities were also ranked among the top five most expensive in the world in the bank's 2009 "Price and Earnings" international study."With its extremely high gross wages and comparatively low tax rates, Switzerland is a very employee-friendly country," the Swiss bank said in a statement. “No other cities allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva."
The study, published every three years, compares the income and purchasing power of employees in 73 cities across the globe, highlighting wide discrepancies in wages between different regions, and even within the same country.
The biggest gaps were found in Asia, the study said, with Tokyo ranking as one of the world's five costliest cities while the capitals of developing countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and India were all at the bottom of the price range. Oslo was this year's most expensive city, based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services, followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York. When rents are factored in, however, New York rises to the top spot, the study said.
This year, the bank said currency fluctuations caused by the global economic crisis affected the rankings of several cities, most notably London, which was the second most expensive city in 2006, but which fell nearly20 places following the pound's drop earlier this year.
The analysis involved more than 30,000 data points, collected by several independent observers in each city, in March and April, the bank said. All amounts were converted into a single currency before being compared.
The world's cheapest places to live were Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, Manila in the Philippines, and India's Delhi and Mumbai. But the average employee in many of these cities, as well as Jakarta and Nairobi,gets paid some of the world's lowest salaries which have between 11percent and 15 percent of the purchasing power of a salary in Zurich.
"An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy an iPod nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai need to work 20 nine-hour days, roughly the equivalent of one month's salary," the study said.
Working hours also varied in the cities surveyed, with the study finding that on average, people in Asian and Middle Eastern cities work much more than the global average of 1,902 hours per year. Overall, the most hours are worked in Cairo, followed by Seoul, while the least hours worked were in Lyon and Paris.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
CONTENTMENT
From fwd email...
Have you ever, at any one time, had the feeling that life is bad, real bad, and you wish you were in another situation? You find life make things difficult for you, work sucks, life sucks, everything seems to go wrong....
Read the following story... it may change your views about life:
After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite taking 2 jobs, he brings back barely above 1K per month, he is happy as he is. I wonder how he can be as happy as he is considering he has to skimp his life with the low pay to support a pair of old parents, in-laws, a wife, 2 daughters and the many bills of a household.
He explained that it was through one incident that he saw in India that happened a few years ago when he was really feeling low and touring India after a major setback.
He said that right in front of his very eyes he saw an Indian mother chop off her child's right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old child haunted him until today.
You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child's hand been infected?? No, it was done for two simple words- - -TO BEG!
The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg.
Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, a flock 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another. The natural reaction of hunger.
Stricken by the happenings, he instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery. He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in the bakeries. The owner was dumbfounded but willingly sold everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than $0.25 per loaf) and spent another $100 to get daily necessities.
Off he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the bread and necessities to the children (mostly handicapped) and a few adults, he received cheers and bows from these unfortunate. For the first time in his life he wondered how people can give up their dignity for a loaf of bread which cost less than $0.25.
He began to tell himself how fortunate he is. How fortunate he is to be able to have a complete body, have a job! , have a family, have the chance to complain what food is nice and what isn't nice, have the chance to be clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived of...
Now I begin to think and feel it, too! Was my life really that bad? Perhaps... no, I should not feel bad at all... What about you? Maybe the next time you think you are, think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.
"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have."
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.
It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that! we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past,you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
Have you ever, at any one time, had the feeling that life is bad, real bad, and you wish you were in another situation? You find life make things difficult for you, work sucks, life sucks, everything seems to go wrong....
Read the following story... it may change your views about life:
After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite taking 2 jobs, he brings back barely above 1K per month, he is happy as he is. I wonder how he can be as happy as he is considering he has to skimp his life with the low pay to support a pair of old parents, in-laws, a wife, 2 daughters and the many bills of a household.
He explained that it was through one incident that he saw in India that happened a few years ago when he was really feeling low and touring India after a major setback.
He said that right in front of his very eyes he saw an Indian mother chop off her child's right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old child haunted him until today.
You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child's hand been infected?? No, it was done for two simple words- - -TO BEG!
The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg.
Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, a flock 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another. The natural reaction of hunger.
Stricken by the happenings, he instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery. He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in the bakeries. The owner was dumbfounded but willingly sold everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than $0.25 per loaf) and spent another $100 to get daily necessities.
Off he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the bread and necessities to the children (mostly handicapped) and a few adults, he received cheers and bows from these unfortunate. For the first time in his life he wondered how people can give up their dignity for a loaf of bread which cost less than $0.25.
He began to tell himself how fortunate he is. How fortunate he is to be able to have a complete body, have a job! , have a family, have the chance to complain what food is nice and what isn't nice, have the chance to be clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived of...
Now I begin to think and feel it, too! Was my life really that bad? Perhaps... no, I should not feel bad at all... What about you? Maybe the next time you think you are, think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.
"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have."
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.
It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that! we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past,you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Moving on with your life..
I received this from my friend...
"I’ve made mistakes in my life. I’ve let people take advantage of me, and I accepted way less than I deserve. but, I’ve learned from my bad choices and even though there are some things I can never get back and people who will never be sorry, I’ll know better next time and i won't settle for anything less than I deserve."
"There comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it, and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard you forget the bad, and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy."
"I hope that one day, years from now, we'll meet up again and I hope when you see me you will think: 'wow, I can't believe I let someone so amazing out of my life.'"
"I’ve built a wall not to block anyone out, but to see who loves me enough to climb over it."
"It breaks your heart when people you know become people you knew; when you can walk right past someone as if they were never a huge part of your life. You used to be able to talk for hours on the phone and now you can't even look each other in the damn eye. It completely breaks your heart to know good things change and there's nothing you can do about it."
"I Know god will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
"Have you ever heard a song from so long ago, with so many memories tied to it that it made you cry and didn't you wish you could go back in time to when everything was simple and carefree? Those are the soundtracks of our lives the ones that bring back our past, best friends, first loves, broken hearts and memories - good and bad."
"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."
"When life knocks you down to your knees, just remember that you are in the perfect position to pray."
"There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore, and who always will. So don't worry about people from your past. There’s a reason why they didn't make it to your future."
"The only people you need in your life are the ones that need you in theirs."
"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance,
"I’ve made mistakes in my life. I’ve let people take advantage of me, and I accepted way less than I deserve. but, I’ve learned from my bad choices and even though there are some things I can never get back and people who will never be sorry, I’ll know better next time and i won't settle for anything less than I deserve."
"There comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it, and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard you forget the bad, and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy."
"I hope that one day, years from now, we'll meet up again and I hope when you see me you will think: 'wow, I can't believe I let someone so amazing out of my life.'"
"I’ve built a wall not to block anyone out, but to see who loves me enough to climb over it."
"It breaks your heart when people you know become people you knew; when you can walk right past someone as if they were never a huge part of your life. You used to be able to talk for hours on the phone and now you can't even look each other in the damn eye. It completely breaks your heart to know good things change and there's nothing you can do about it."
"I Know god will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
"Have you ever heard a song from so long ago, with so many memories tied to it that it made you cry and didn't you wish you could go back in time to when everything was simple and carefree? Those are the soundtracks of our lives the ones that bring back our past, best friends, first loves, broken hearts and memories - good and bad."
"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."
"When life knocks you down to your knees, just remember that you are in the perfect position to pray."
"There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore, and who always will. So don't worry about people from your past. There’s a reason why they didn't make it to your future."
"The only people you need in your life are the ones that need you in theirs."
"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance,
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