Long denied what most consider a basic workplace right, domestic workers in Singapore will at last be guaranteed one day of rest each week.
It was guaranteed one-day and Twenty20 cricket and then four-day cricket if I did well.
Unverified rumors are salivated over, and blogs such as this one have as good a shot at getting Dugg (a feat that comes with a guaranteed one-day readership of at least 50,000, conservatively) as The New York Times.
Such a guarantee could one day prove very costly to taxpayers, especially because both companies have about $50 in debt for every $1 in equity, giving them very little cushion against unexpected problems, the critics say.
The legal process was stressful but the magistrate ruled in our favour and we now have a court order guaranteeing us one day each half term and a weekend in each of the school holidays.
The specific incident isn't important; the point is that I could guarantee that the one day I decided to skip school would be the day that something extraordinary would happen.
In the old days, I had a friend who was so addicted to e-mail and the burgeoning Internet that he would, from time to time, yank the Ethernet cord from his wall (this was before Wi-Fi) and FedEx it to himself, guaranteeing at least one day without temptation.
And on the basis of that guarantee, hatred, too, may one day vanish.
In 2013, Spirit, the owner of chains including Chef & Brewer and Wacky Warehouse, said that most of its 16,000 employees were on the contracts, which give no guarantee of work from one day to the next.
India did provide them with a short-term solution – a temporary reprieve from imminent danger – but it gave them no status, no future and no guarantee they wouldn't one day be returned to harm.
