Chinese New Year Public Holidays for 2019 in Singapore will begin on Tuesday, February 5 and ends on Wednesday, February 6. Chinese New Year Singapore is one of the biggest celebrations on the event calendar. Chinese New Year is one of the most significant holiday seasons in Singapore. Marking the first day of the year on the Chinese lunar calendar, the date fluctuates from year to year. The celebrations can last for two to three days, and they are colourful and abundant.

The Chingay Parade is one of the important events in Singapore with street floats, dancers, acrobats and other performers. Also the street lights in Chinatown are not to be missed. Gardens by the Bay's Flower Dome also welcomes the Lunar New Year with its first floral display of 2019.

Despite many places closed for holidays, there are still lots of restaurants that will be open during Chinese New Year 2019 including

Baristart Coffee Singapore - Hokkaido based concept cafe that focuses on Hokkaido dairy in all their food, beverage and desserts.

Famous Treasure - Located at Capitol Piazza (level 2), Famous Treasure offers guests a feast of local Chinese favourites and seafood signatures. Open daily till 10.30pm.

Fatburger 238 Thomson Road - An all-American, Hollywood favorite, Fatburger is a fast-casual restaurant serving big, juicy, tasty burgers, crafted specifically to each customer's liking. With a legacy spanning 70 years, Fatburger's extraordinary quality and taste inspire fierce loyalty amongst its fan base, which includes a number of A-list celebrities and athletes.

Jai Thai Restaurant - Delicious! Authentic! Affordable! Thai!

JiangHu Hotpot - Located within Bedok Point, Jiang Hu offers those craving steamy hotpot delights an experience of both gastronomy and ambience. Upon entry, one would be greeted with a Chinese autumn courtyard-themed interior embellished with traditional tableware and furnishing, as well as decor which includes overheading autumn trees. A galore of Szechuan-style, yum!

Morton's The Steakhouse (in photo)

Morton's The Steakhouse in Singapore is located on the 4th Storey of Mandarin Oriental, which is situated in the heart of the Commercial and Central Business District. The restaurant is also nestled at the Marina Bay waterfront and nearby to the newly opened Marina Bay Sands integrated resort, world-class Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay and Singapore Flyer. Every detail, from the succulent steaks and seafood and vast wine selections to the seamless service, makes Morton's the classic dining experience. The Bar at Morton's is also a popular destination with local bar-goers and travelers, becoming an institution on the local bar scene over the years.

Putien Restaurant - 2006 - Voted as one of Singapore's best 50 restaurants by The Sunday Times. 2009 - Won the "Press Ad Single/Campaign - Chinese" in the SPH Ink Award

After a 100 percent growth of paid customers in the region in from 2016 to 2017, Google Cloud Platform launched regional center in Singapore. Called “asia-southeast1”, this is the first Cloud Platform region in Southeast Asia.

According to the search giant, this initiative means improved latency speeds for developers in Southeast Asia. In fact, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers in Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok have seen 51 to 98 percent reductions in round-trip time latency, in comparison to its services delivered from Taiwan or Tokyo. The improved issuance speed across the region is thanks to the opening of Singapore's Google Cloud Platform, as previously the closes Google cloud center was in Taiwan.

Thanks to the Google Platform regional center in Singapore, customers in the region have access to Google's core services, such as Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, App Engine Standard Environment, Container Engine, Cloud Datastore, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud DNS, Cloud VPN, Cloud Router, and Cloud IAM products.

GCP customers are also able to combine any of these services deployed in Singapore with other GCP services around the world such as DLP, Spanner and BigQuery.

This initiative is also aimed at getting more startups in Southeast Asia on board. “With startups, we always find that the demand comes from their developers - there's no big procurement department or what have you,” said Tariq M. Shaukat, Google Cloud president for customers. This explains why the company offers such a strong tech support to its customers: to educated them about the service and help them tailor it to their needs.

Shaukat said the company aims at increasing the scale of such collaboration: “We find that startups value the ability to sit down with a solution architect and just map out what they want to do - they value it as much as, if not more than, more traditional companies because in many cases they're trying to do things that are harder, more innovative, different.”

“Google is dead serious about the cloud,” said Diane Greene, the Chief of Google Cloud, at the launch event. Therefore, the company is setting up new regions quite swiftly.

Singapore is not the only new Google Cloud Platform center. GCP, which connects more than 1 billion individuals users on a global scale, has also expanded to other APAC regions, including Sydney and Mumbai.

Google is expanding its products across the world as a response to the tough competition amongst tech giants. According to Google representatives, some of the tactics for keeping up with competition include grabbing market share and the ability to leverage G Suite - Drive, Docs, Gmail, etc.

“The things we care about are the number of customers working on our platform, and how many of their workloads are with us versus with one of our competitors,” Shaukat said. “We're probably the most public in talking about how much of the world will end up being multi-cloud. So we don't see this as a zero-sum game by any stretch, we see it as something where there will be multiple winners.”

Addressing one of the key concerns large customers have about the cloud concerning how sensitive data is handled, Google presented a new data loss prevention API for GCP. API identifies personally information such as email addresses and allows customers to choose to have the information classified or redacted.

Customers are also able to grant access to applications based on certain risk factors thanks to new feature the search giant introduced for GCP, which is the Identity-Aware Proxy.

Some of the large clients Google Cloud Platform has include HSBC, Deloitte, Netflix, Avaya, Adidas, Verizon and the New York Times, among others.

Its customers, which include BBM Messenger, Carousell and Go-Jek, have expressed their excitement with the launch of GCP in the region. In a statement, Ajey, CTO, Go-Jek, said: “We are extremely pleased with the performance of GCP, and we are excited about the opportunities opening in Indonesia and other markets, and making use of the Singapore Cloud Region. The outcomes we've achieved in scaling, stability and other areas have proven how fantastic it is to have Google and GCP among our key service partners.”

Recently Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made a working visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the 13th G20 Leaders' Summit (photo).

Singapore and Hong Kong are the eternal competitors to be Asia's ‘Best Place to Do Business'. Rivalry comes naturally to these two places which are both thriving former British colonies in Asia that heavily depend on foreign investment for economic development. That is why it is so important for both of them to be seen among foreign companies as the best place to start or expand a business in Asia.

In the past decades, Singapore and Hong Kong have gone head-to-head when it comes to being the best places in Asia to do business in.

Looking few years back in time The World Bank's 2014 Doing Business report, which measures each country's regulations on 11 business life-cycle events such as starting a business, permits, contracts, credit and taxes, Singapore and Hong Kong top the Asian countries to do business in. Meanwhile powerhouse China ranked lower than several African nations.

According to the report, “around the world, starting a business takes seven procedures, 25 days and costs 32 percent of income per capita in fees.”

Singapore ranks so high because of its early adoption not only of electronic filing for public administration but also of a “trade single window” aimed at easing trade by allowing cross-border traders to submit customs data through a single gateway. According to the report, “trading across borders has been easiest in Singapore since 2007.”

The latest trend is that Singapore is beating Hong Kong as the best place in Asia to do business. According to economists, the island-state leads in innovative thinking, length of the welcome mat for foreign businesses, and proactive management of potential economic issues, like aging populations. There are other governmental reasons. While Singapore runs itself, China runs Hong Kong. Despite Hong Kong's autonomous status, China is known for its legal inconsistency.

Singapore's economy is also more capable of containing shocks, according to Marie Diron, associate managing director in sovereign ratings with Moody's Investors Service. In that category, Moody's gives Singapore a “very high” mark, while it gives Hong Kong a “very high minus.” According to Diron, Singapore earned that distinction through “proactive economic management” such as planning ahead how to accommodate an aging population and on introducing measures to help core sectors such as finance and asset management. As countries with few industries are more prone to succumb to shocks, Singapore is more capable to absorb shocks thanks to their diverse industries.

According to the World Bank's ranking of the easiest places to do business, “Singapore continues to be the economy with the most business-friendly regulation.” Additionally, “efficient dispute resolution is paired with good institutions (such as specialized courts), effective case management and sophisticated court automation tools. And litigants can submit their claim online, pay court fees online and serve the initial summons electronically.”

According to the report, “economies that rank well on the ease of doing business also score well on such measures as the Global Competitiveness Index and Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.”

While Singapore offers world class transport infrastructure, language skills and overall economic freedom, it also comes in with lower “unit labor costs” making more cheaper and efficient for a foreign company to do business there.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's salaries are higher, but this also translates into more productivity and cooperation in employee-employer relations. There are other reasons why Hong Kong is the right place for an investor to start a business. According to Healy Consultants, Hong Kong has a lower corporate income tax and is “strengthening its stronghold within the region. Despite its relative lower placing across the various categories of rankings, Hong Long could well still be the most ideal location for a certain investor to set up a company.”

What makes people nervous about Hong Kong is its dependence on China. Under a weaker Beijing system set of rules, patent protection, fair arbitration and other legal backing investors might rely could become harder to obtain. According to the Asian Century Institute, Singapore ranks world number 9 in rule of law and Hong Kong holds the 17th position.

“Singapore has been climbing up positions and is now generally considered a better offshore financial center than Hong Kong,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia economist with Natixis. “I would tend to agree and it can only get worse as Hong Kong rule of law is under threat.”

Behind the wheel's motorists have a strong believe that night time the percentage of been caught as a result of high speed is very low. They say that to be seen is not easy because the lights are as clear as during the day. Others also think that when they are approaching the cameras they will just lower the lights so that they will not be caught by the camera due to' malseeing'. Nevertheless, the drivers are shocked to hear their names with letters as a result of over speeding of which they are not aware what and when it happened. Thepolice are now dealing with them in accordance to the law. The new laser cameras are on to work. They were given to traffic police last Thursday May 19th. They have features which are more powerful and they are the places which are at risk of accidents at all time, be it night or day, they are constantly monitoring all the activities on the road.

The cameras are capable of detecting the vehicle's number plates even in the places where there is no enough light. They have flash which is infrared and no one can even see the flash using the eyes. They are also in a position to captures some videos and images without any limitation as far as light is concerned. These new cameras are very strong in the way they function, for instance their battery is seven times more compared to the cameras which were used before these new ones. On 19th Thursday briefing the media, Sam Tee who is the traffic police commander said that they have reviewed the areas which are prone to accident so as to enforce strategies which are to be developed. He also said that new cameras which are digital are the ones which are now used instead of the old cameras. He farther said that where the cameras are operating varies as per the locations.

On this same note on the new cameras. They can also be located in different areas especially the areas which are at a high risk of accident like Changi Airport, East Coast and Adam Road. The traffic police goal is to eliminate the road accidents. He said that the cameras are not fixed hence they can be carried anywhere. According to the reports there is a decline in accidents which are as a result of over speeding. In February last year the traffic police recorded a decrease in number of accidents from one thousand three hundred and sixty-three to one thousand one hundred and ninety-seven. This is a difference of twelve point two percent. This means that there are more lives which have been saved as a result on new cameras which are constantly monitoring the careless driver and those who are over speeding as well. The deaths which were recorded as a result of over speeding vehicles went up to forty-eight this year forty-three from the previous year.

There are also motorcycles which are black in color. They are also used to track and catch the motorists who are using mobile phones as they drive. These black motorcycles were introduced so that they may ensure maximum safety and obedience to the road signs. These was said by the police spokesman. However, he did not talk more about these new motorbikes to avoid the great concern of the operation. The commander of police said that the operation in which they ensure monitoring and safety differs in that the traffic police can use cars and motorcycle which have radar guns and laser altogether, but to enforce is all the same way during the night as well as day time.

The comparison of the new and old cameras is that: Old cameras have flash which is visible and captures the images which are near and the battery of the old cameras can last only for a duration of four hours while the new cameras have flash which is modular and infrared which is invisible to the eyes and can capture clear images even during the nigh their batteries can function at a duration of seven hours.