The hidden costs of cheap foreign workers.

Singapore loves slave labour. By this, I mean cheap foreign workers who will work for money that Singaporeans wouldn't even call money at all. Most Singaporean employers seem to think this is a great idea, in fact, many Singaporeans have become rich on the back of this modern day slavery. However, is there a catch with this capitalist dream?

Yes. Sometimes "cheap" is not cheap, but may turn out to be more expensive than any employer could possibly have imagined.

I shall explain. I know of a private school, in Singapore, whose Chinese owner (from the People's Republic of China, but a PR, here) likes to employ foreign workers at the lowest of low wages. He thinks this is a great way to increase his margins, painlessly. Yet, as he has recently learned, sometimes anesthetics just don't work.

In his company, most administrators are earning around a 1,000 Singapore dollars per month. Some earn more...but I don't think any is on a salary of even as much as 2,000 dollars. Now, these wages are considered high for some classes of foreign workers (who may earn only 250 dollars per month, for instance)...but these wages are still low compared to what most Singaporeans would expect for the jobs he is asking them to do. (To put these figures into perspective, 1,000 Singaporean dollars is, as of today's exchange rates, only 690 US Dollars. For scaling purposes, the rent on a two bedroom government (HDB) flat is around 1,600 dollars per month. Thus, people being paid these wages can only afford a room in someone's apartment, at most.)

For many years, it has been like this, at this particular school. The Chinese boss has never given a Christmas bonus. He has never given a Chinese New Year bonus. Some people have worked there for many years, and never received a raise. He lost his best administrator because he wouldn't give her a 12% rise - she left for another position that paid her about 70 % more. Yet, he didn't seem to mind.

Recently, however, something has come to light. One of his recent appointees (the third girl in a row, in about nine months, to do the lost administrator's accounts job), disappeared one day, back to Malaysia. She was a very chirpy, smiley Malaysian Chinese girl working on a much smaller salary than any Singaporean would, in her job. However, sometimes a smile is not what it seems.

She had disappeared because a large cheque had bounced, made out to herself, from the company. As you might have guessed, the boss didn't sign such a cheque: she had. Rather resourcefully, she had forged the two signatures required on the cheque to make it out to herself, for a five figure sum. It was not the first cheque she had so made out. The previous one - for 10,000 dollars, went through to her account without any problems. The problem this time, was that she had made out a cheque so large that it was greater than the balance in the company account that month. It bounced...and her game was up.

On her sudden departure, an investigation began. The last time I heard, up to 70,000 dollars, perhaps more, was suspected to have been embezzled. This particular girl had only been in her job for about six weeks.

Investigations have revealed that others, too, are involved in embezzling from the school. At least one sales staff member (again very lowly paid, in terms of basic salary) has been doing something rather clever, if you approve of criminal intelligence. This staff member, as yet unidentified, though it might be the person who has taken a sudden one month leave of absence, has been selling school courses for cash, to foreign students - and pocketing the money. Apparently, fake copies of the contract have been given to students, to convince them that they have been officially registered. Yet, none of these students appear on the official school books. These students have been turning up for classes, yet they don't appear on the roster, at all.

Again, large sums of money appear to be involved.

Now, some of you might think that the boss of this company deserves what he gets for paying such unattractive wages to his staff, and employing foreign workers, just so that he can pay them less than any local would work for - and, to a degree, I suppose you would be right. He shouldn't be paying such low wages. Yet, the owner is not the only victim in this. The foreign students who have paid thousands of dollars in cash for their courses may not be allowed to attend the school, since the school has actually received no money at all. These are innocent victims of this situation. In many cases, they are not from wealthy families and their parents have struggled hard to raise the money to send them overseas to study and better their lives. It isn't fair that they should have to suffer.

It is, however, very easy to understand where the motive for these crimes has come from. The company boss is paying wages that are, actually, too low to survive on, in expensive Singapore. To make ends meet, workers in such a situation are often forced to take on a second job. Yet, even a second job, at those kinds of rates, would not provide enough money for them. So, they start to get imaginative - and work out ways to get ahold of the money they need, by illegal means.

It seems obvious that had the company owner paid decent wages to his staff, that these crimes most likely would not have occurred. They would not have had a strong motive to steal, or embezzle, or cheat, because they would have enough money to live on. As it is, however, they may have felt they had no choice.

In a way, it is quite a darkly funny story. The owner has lost more money, in a short time, than he probably would have had to pay out, in decent wages, to have prevented this situation in the first place.

The lesson to be learnt from this story is that hiring foreign workers, on slave wages, may, actually, be a false economy. If a worker cannot meet their basic needs from the salary they are being "paid" they will do so by other means. A company that pays slave wages, is a company that will be stolen from, by its enslaved workers.

The investigation into how much has been embezzled from this particular school, has only just begun. So far, at least two thieves have been detected. There is, at this time, no telling how many are involved, nor how much may turn out to be missing. Yet, it is clear that this tale of misfortune, was unnecessary. All the owner had to do was pay a decent wage to his workers. It seems simple enough. To do otherwise, is to put the company at risk of huge and unexpected losses. If such crimes are big enough, they can bring a company down.

So: don't put your company at risk...pay a proper wage.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

GST sums wrong again.

Last year, in Singapore, the GST - an indirect tax on spending - rose by 2%. The rationale was that Singapore faced a budget deficit without it. In the event, there was a budget surplus (which is usual around here) of 6.4 billion dollars. Many, at the time, questioned the need for a tax rise, therefore.

Now, we are told that a 1.5% rise in GST would cover the 1.2 billion dollar cost of making public transport free in Singapore. It seems to be a scare tactic to ensure that no-one will seek such a situation. Yet, as I have pointed out, most people would save money were this change made.

I wasn't satisfied, however, with that 1.5% number for a good reason: it seemed to come out of thin air. I wondered, therefore, how much money a 1.5 % rise in GST would actually raise. For an answer I looked at the Budget 2008 speech: http://www.mof.gov.sg/budget_2008/speech_p1/p1.html

On the Ministry of Finance (of Singapore) website we learn that last year's implementation of a 2% rise in GST in July (halfway through the year) raised 1.4 billion dollars. Now, that is strange, isn't it? In six months, a 2% rise in GST yielded 1.4 billion dollars. So, by that scale a 1.5% rise in GST would raise 2.1 billion dollars per year ((1.5/2) * 2.8 billion dollars). That means that the Government spokeperson was OVERESTIMATING the GST needed to cover the cost of public transport. In effect, he was proposing a tax RISE, hidden, by free transport to "offset" it.

So, if free transport is given in Singapore the government has said it will need to extract an extra 900 million dollars of tax, per year, than is justified by the cost of running the free transport system.

What is the true GST raise necessary to cover the cost of free public transport? Well, that would be (1.2/2.1) *1.5 = 0.86%. Thus the true GST rise needed to cover the cost is, ACCORDING TO THE GOVERNMENT'S OWN FIGURES about HALF the declared rate.

So, what can we read into this. It seems that the government has factored in a 75% profit margin into the equation. That is the monies raised would exceed true costs by 75%. That seems pretty generous to me.

By all means raise GST to provide free public transport to Singapore - but why not do so by the 0.86% actually necessary to cover costs - and not hide yet another true tax rise into the bargain?

Just a thought.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Merry Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas, in recent years, has been quite surreal for me. When I grew up, in Europe, Christmases were times of chill weather and gloomy skies, but inner cheer and shared good humour. These days, however, Christmases are times of humid, hot weather (gloomy skies, still!) but with the same inner cheer and good humour, though this time shared not with my family of siblings, but with my new family, of children (and a wife). It is different. The feeling is different. In a way, now, I am looking back at my own childhood Christmases, as I see my own children enjoy theirs. I have become the outsider, looking at my own former Christmases, through the lens of how my children see theirs. It is a good perspective, actually - for now I can both enjoy it from the inside and the outside at the same time. Christmas has become more multi-layered for me.

When I was a child, I don't think I saw my parents' perspective on Christmas. I don't think I saw what they saw. I only saw what I saw. Now, however, I see my own Christmas and that of my children, at the same time. I see what my parents saw, having become a parent myself. It is a much more complex perspective and one that, I think, is informative. It is what comes of becoming a parent in the first place. Life's meaning becomes clearer - but ever more complex. Things that were once seen and enjoyed, as a child, are seen and enjoyed, again, as an adult, seeing the children from the outside. It is the same scene - but it has gathered new meanings, new depths and a new sweetness, that it did not have before.

In a way, Christmas is much more meaningful when you are a parent, than when you are a child. As a parent, Christmas truly becomes about giving, as a child it was largely about receiving. As a parent, Christmas is about the pleasure of others (one's children), as a child it was largely about the pleasure of oneself. As I have grown, so has Christmas. It is now a much larger thing than when I was a child. Of course, I don't feel it with the excited intensity of a young child anticipating the opening of their presents - but I do feel something else: the profundity of the moment, its special character for my children. I am ever aware that, for them, these moments become memories that will accompany them through life. They will refer to these times, later, as they grow up. They will become, for them, a time of nostalgia, a time for remembrance and wistfulness. That, in its way, is a greater pleasure, for a parent, than any Christmas was for me, as a child. You see, we are giving our children a memorable childhood, even as we give them an enjoyable Christmas. So, I think the best gift of all, is not any particular present, but the gift of the childhood, itself, of which this Christmas time is part.

One day, my children, now so focussed on their own experience of the moment, will grow and become parents themselves. Then they will see us, as now I see my own parents. They will come to understand what we did, what we were, how we felt and what it all meant. So, one day, it will all have come full circle, and my children shall be parents and their children shall be enjoying the Christmas they provide. There is a definite poetry and profundity in that. The endless (hopefully) cycle of life has a beauty in it that, at times, people forget - or perhaps never knew. We all become each other, in time. Parents were once children. Children shall one day be parents. In time, all perspectives are seen and life is finally understood. The pity of it, of course, is that, once we have lived long enough to truly understand life, that there is little of it left - we shall be old and the time for remaining reflection and reverie shall be short. Then we shall understand something else: how it feels to say goodbye.

I hope that human lives can become longer so that there is more time to enjoy the insight that comes with age. It is such a treasure to have such wisdom, it seems a great pity that its possession should signal the shortness of time to come. So, if I have one Christmas wish it shall be this: that people should learn how to live longer, so as to enjoy the depth of understanding of life, that comes with age. Such a treasure should be enduring and not fleeting. Perhaps if those that understood life, well, lived longer, all might benefit from their perspective and life would become more meaningful for all. The old are to be valued and not scorned, as some societies seem to do. For only the old have truly had time to see life from all perspectives and come to know what it all means. Though they may be physically weak, they can be strong in understanding - and it is for this that they should be valued.

Merry Xmas to everyone, the world over, who happens to stumble on this Christmas post. In particular, Merry Xmas to any of my family members, anywhere, who happens to read this.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Free Public Transport in Singapore.

Public transport should be free in Singapore, to all, without limit. Quite simply, this one simple measure would do much more to help the poor than many another initiative. This would mean a gift of freedom of movement, when and where one pleased, irrespective of ability to pay - and that would be liberating for many.

A government spokesman has said that if the public want free buses and MRTs that it would cost a 1.5% raise in GST. I presume this was said to convince people NOT to ask for such a thing...yet, pause for awhile. What does a 1.5% tax on spending mean for Singaporeans? Well, that depends if you are a big spender or not.

If you are relatively poor and your family spends 1000 dollars a month on GST liable items, your GST payment is 15 dollars. Yet, if one family member takes two journeys at 1.50 dollars each, that would amount to 3 dollars a day - or 90 dollars a month. Thus, this person of modest means would save 75 dollars a month, from this initiative. What if this consists of a typical Singaporean family (two parents, one child)...well, that would be a saving of 7.10 dollars a day or 213 dollars a month - minus 15 dollars, which would equal 198 dollars not spent. That is a HUGE increase in the effective income of this poor family.

Indeed, is notable that GST liable spending must reach 6,000 dollars per month before the extra GST paid equals the transport costs of one typical person making two 1.50 dollar journeys per day for the month. Clearly, most families in Singapore are BETTER off with a 1.5% increase in GST and free public transport in return. (Especially since this is the income per person who travels on public transport required before this measure becomes more expensive than actually paying for public transport.)

Only the very rich (ie. Government ministers and their equivalents) would be inconvenienced by this tax rise. So, only the rich need complain about it. If transport is free, those who are of low income and middle income, will benefit immensely. In other words, the VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN SINGAPORE ARE BETTER OFF with free transport and 1.5% extra GST.

Then again, those with working memories will recall that last year's tax surplus was 6.4 Billion dollars with 7 % GST. Given that situation, is there any real need for an increase of GST, at all? Singapore's coffers are more than full enough to pay for free public transport for all, without any difficulty. This is the kind of initiative that would actually make a difference to people's lives. The poor, the elderly and those with large families (for whom travel can add up quite quickly) would all find the increased mobility a great boon. This is a quality of life issue. If the Singaporean government is really concerned about the quality of life of its citizens then public transport should soon be free for all.

There would be another benefit of free public transport: the famously over-crowded Singaporean roads would become clearer, for fewer would see so much value in driving expensive cars on expensive ERP penalized roads. Indeed, free public transport would do a lot more to free up the roads than all the ERP in the world is capable of achieving. In fact, the government's response to this will tell us what their true values are: is it to make money (such as from ERP) or is it to make life better for its citizens?

Free public transport will free the roads - something ERP has singularly failed to do.

So, let all who value the quality of life in Singapore put their voice forward to support the proposition that public transport in Singapore should be free for all, without limit, as soon as possible.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

A Christmas Shopping Experience, Singaporean style.

Singapore is a land of great shops...but is it a land of great shopping experiences?

Not necessarily.

Last week, I wanted to buy a book. This should be a simple matter since bookshops exist for that purpose. However, in Singapore, bookshops don't seem to know what they exist for.

I found the book on the very helpful Kinokuniya website and called them to reserve a copy. This didn't go as planned. The girl who answered the phone asked me to hold on while she tried to put me through to the right person...and so I held and held and held. Finally, she came back to me and said that the person was engaged...could she get them to call back?

"No. It is OK. No-one will ever call back anyway." I declined, quite rightly, since in Singapore I have never managed to get a call back from any shop I have dealt with. They don't provide that level of service or courtesy. They do, however, sometimes take your phone number, then let you wait for the call which never comes.

Instead, I went to the shop the following day, to get the book which I knew they had in stock.

My luck was not in. The only copy had sold that very morning. A quiet word with the information desk informed me that there was not another copy in any Kinokuniya store - but that they could order one for me in "six to eight weeks".

I did think it strange that an important book by a well known American thinker should only have one copy in stock in all Kinokuniya's bookstores.

She suggested I tried Borders.

I did. They didn't have it either but could get it in "four to six weeks".

I called Times Bookshop - but none of their stores stocked it, either. They didn't offer to order it.

I tried to call Popular bookstore's flagship shop in Bras Brasah - and here is where it gets interesting. The phone was engaged for about half-an-hour, before I could get it to ring. When it did ring, it was answered after a very long time, and immediately put on hold. No-one spoke to me. Then after about thirty seconds, they picked the phone up and immediately put the phone down, disconnecting the call.

I called again. They answered again, put me on hold, picked the phone up and disconnected me again.

Just for a laugh, I tried again, twice more in the next hour. The same thing was done to me on both occasions.

I tried calling the following day. No-one answered at all.

This is what I call "The Singapore Standard of Customer Service"...it is a Standard, because it is very common here. Many people in service jobs don't know that their job is to help people. They see it more as a means to a social life and pose around their shops and have vacuous conversations with each other (while keeping the customers waiting). When asked a direct question by a customer most customer service staff in Singapore will not know the answer. Many of them will not even speak any English. It is just ludicrous, at times, how difficult it is to get basic service, here.

The only reason I think that Singaporeans tolerate this, is that they are used to it. They cannot see that it is unusual because they do not have enough experience of the customer service standards in many other countries, to know that service is usually much better elsewhere.

So far, in my book hunt, I have learnt that there was only ONE copy of the book in the whole of Singapore, when my quest began. I missed that one copy by an hour or two. I have been unable to locate another copy. The only possibility is Popular bookstore, which, for all I know might have a hundred copies...but no-one there wants to let me know, because I have been unable to speak to any of their staff on the phone, despite repeated calls.

Eventually, I had to give up on buying the book, just now.

I am left with the feeling that a lot of recorded knowledge (that is, in the form of books) is not so readily available in Singapore. The bookshops here, are not very well stocked (too few copies of too few books, except for a few heavily promoted "leaders") - and there is no Amazon alternative (I have never been allowed, by Amazon, to ship to Singapore). I wonder, therefore, at how much Singaporeans never get to know, because they don't get the chance to read about it.

Of course, there is a natural limitation on the size and number of bookshops that Singapore can support. It is a small city, which probably precludes the presence of truly comprehensive bookstores (have you seen how small Borders is, for instance?). If Singaporeans don't buy books in sufficient numbers, it means that bookstores can't grow big enough to stock the widest range (in more than one copy, so there aren't two month ordering waits for one). So, I suppose, in a sense, the book situation is self-inflicted: there can't be enough people buying enough books, to support a truly comprehensive range of bookstores.

That being said, Kinokuniya comes closest to stocking a wide range of books. I just wish they had more than one copy of many of them.

On the book front, Singapore has one saving grace, of course: the library system (which is much better than the bookstore situation...perhaps one has ruined the other.)

Back to the main point of my post. Shopping should not be a difficult experience. Customer service staff, should, actually, provide good customer service. The answering of phones politely, promptly and helpfully is part of offering that service. No-one should have to make dozens of calls with no result. That one person has experienced this, indicates that most are likely to (for my calls were at random times). If that is so, then Singapore's retailers have a problem that they really must make an effort to solve. Customer service as bad as what I experienced with Popular is a public relations disaster: it breeds ill-feeling in customers and leads to a reduction in turnover. When it is as difficult to get information, as it was with Popular, customers will simply go elsewhere...perhaps permanently. After all, should retailers really be putting the phone down on customers, without speaking? Perhaps, unlike most industries, there is no recession for the book market and they don't need another sale...from the way they behave, one would think their business was to hoard books, not sell them. What a bizarre country this can be, at times.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Fintan's emotional perception.

Sometimes the questions children ask alter the way a parent sees the world. They are questions which bring home a truth that, perhaps, had been overlooked.

A few days ago, Fintan, five, asked one such question.

He was sitting quietly with his mother, when he turned to her with query in his eyes.

"Why do people look so happy when they are going to the circus, but the animals look so sad?"

The question quite startled his mother, for there was a deep truth in his implicit observation. It is no fun being a caged animal, no matter how much the crowd might enjoy it.

Fintan is a close observer of the world. Sometimes, he sees things which are easy to overlook. Often, he surprises with his questions because they are of a moral, or philosophical or ethical nature. These are not the questions one expects of a five year old. They are questions that show he sees the world through moral eyes, emotional eyes, ethical eyes. He is not only seeing the world for what it is, but asking what it should be. He is questioning the way things are, from a moral perspective and judging it, for emotional value.

It is interesting to see his preoccupation with such questions. Part of him is showing a social maturity that is welcome to see. It is what allows him to get on with everyone he meets. Often, people extend to him an open invitation to visit. What is he doing right, that makes him so popular? Well, that kind of question says it all. Fintan is a young boy who is thinking about feelings, emotions, moral values, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is not. He is thinking about human conduct - and, beneath it all, seems to hold the value that all should be happy.

Obviously, the character that he has now is but the rudiment of what he is to be. However, I can see that this root promises to be a tree of solid character and human insight. I look forward to knowing, one day, the man he promises to be.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)