You should know about The Real Singapore.
Before POFMA became a thing, The Real Singapore was out there spreading untruths, causing divisions between cats and dogs in Singapore. Its editors had been living in Australia so the authorities here couldn’t do much then.
But once they arrived in Singapore, they were prompted arrested and the website was taken down immediately.
Ai Takagi was sentenced to 10 months in prison while her husband, Yang Kaiheng, was later sentenced to eight months of jail.
Just when you thought that the couple is going to create havoc again once they’re released, they showed us the power of the Yellow Ribbon Project: both of them started a chain of Japanese ramen restaurants, and they’re not shying away from their past criminal acts. In fact, the name of the restaurant is also called TRS, though it stands for Takagi Ramen Shop.
The Takagi Ramen Shop now has four outlets, and here’s the story of how it nearly became five.
Wanted have an Outlet in Clementi Mall Via Ministry of Food
And you should know about Ministry of Food.
Unrelated to a government ministry, the popular chain, established since 2006, didn’t just have numerous outlets—it has nine brands under its belt, comprising primarily Korea and Japanese food.
Their brands are practically everywhere lah.
So, what’s the correlation between Ministry of Food and Takagi Ramen Shop?
This post explains it all:
Written by Yang Kaiheng, one-half of The Real Singapore and Takagi Ramen Shop, it’s revealed that Takagi Ramen Shop actually had an intention to have an outlet in The Clementi Mall.
It’s a wall of text (he’s, after all, an editor of The Real Singapore), so here’s everything in point form, minus all the fluff:
- Takagi Ramen Shop (TRS) has wanted to rent a unit in The Clementi Mall and had given a $16,000 cheque to the master tenant, Ministry of Food (MOF)
- TRS intended to have a fresh lease with the mall
- It turns out that the sublease from MOF will only be for 1.5 years and will be void if MOF moved out
- So TRS requested for a refund of the deposit since their Letter of Intent was to have a fresh lease with the mall
- When MOF “delayed and dragged” the refund deadlines, Yang from TRS made a police report and emailed the CEO of MOF directly
- The CEO of MOF allegedly wrote this email, though not to Yang himself but to a third party (most likely her agent…or ex-agent):
Can’t read because it’s too small?
Thank you so much because now I can reproduce the entirety of this email here to hit my word count.
Here you go:
It is to my horror to discover the background of Takagi Ramen’s owners. No wonder they are so aggressive, unreasonable, threatening and even abusive.
I have no discrimination. But I do not want to have any dealings with this young couple. The man was jailed eight months and wife ten months. He confessed he lied also. Both are convicted of sedition, which is a very serious offence to the nation.
On top of this, both were sued by SPH for infringement of copy rights in 2016. They finally admitted to the infringement of not less than 244 articles of SPH. The high court case was eventually settled out of court, with the couple paying an undisclosed sum to SPH, and publicly publishing an apology to SPH, which you can see attached below.
What I can see clearly is that this is a dishonest couple, having no qualms of infringing what belongs to others, and lied in their defence. This was unfortunately exposed and they reaped their own fruits. Without learning from the mistakes they made previously, they did not disclose anything about the feud with SPH before committing in the LOI with you.
On top of that, being convicted of sedition has great impact to me, personally.
What I am today, I owed a lot to Singapore. I may not be fully agreeable to every policy of the Singapore Government though. However, I am proud to be a Singaporean still, and am grateful for this great nation.
Therefore what they have done in TRS is an affront to me personally.
SPH is also an iconic national pride which they did not respect. And I have personal and business dealings with SPH for a long time.
I cherish my current SPH lease very much and do not want the couple to jeopardise my renewal of units with SPH.
In light of the above, I cannot see myself having any dealings or relationship with this couple. Therefore I would like to severe all relationships with immediate effect with this ex-convict couple who are serial Liars.
I would appreciate if you could kindly do some due diligence on my behalf in the near future before getting anyone for me please.
I will be arranging for the sum of $16,000 to the escrow, managed by my lawyer.
To be repaid, they are required to sign a letter / doc for the full and final settlement without prejudice. To be prepared by my lawyer.
I will contact my lawyer tomorrow first thing and they shall liaise directly with my lawyer instead.
I may need them to apologise to Dr Ting for harassment too.
It seems to me that they have yet to repent from the last lesson learned from lying and also spreading false news. Sign!
In any case, I am reserving my rights on this matter. And so is Dr Ting.
She ended the email with a list of articles written about TRS couple, and interestingly, one of which is from All Singapore Stuff.
Now, if you’re a tad confused, here’s a little more context:
- The Clementi Mall is a SPH-owned shopping mall. SPH, other than publishing newspapers, does many other things too, and developing malls is one of those many things
- According to Yang himself, this is allegedly the “harassment”:
Yang has also replied after reading the email:
This is what he wrote:
I am shocked to read Ms Lena’s completely irrelevant and utterly discriminatory reply. She has brought up old history which is completely irrelevant to my request for my goodwill deposit back.
Yes, I have a past and while I don’t go around introducing myself with the line “Hi, My name is Kaiheng, I went to Prison in the past for sedition and I’d like to explore an opportunity to do business with you”, I certainly do not try to hide it. Everyone makes mistakes in the past and I have made amends with both a prison sentence and a private settlement with the parties involved. Ms Lena’s comments are offensive to the entire ex-con community in Singapore and it is very clear from her statements that she does not believe in giving ex-cons like myself 2nd chances in life. This only reflects very badly on herself and the company she represents.
I have not been aggressive, unreasonable, threatening nor abusive. I am well within my rights to request my money back given that the LOI deadline had expired over 2 weeks ago and I had made multiple requests for the refund as I have other, time-sensitive considerations with other units.
Before you take sides, do note that this entire account is related by Yang himself.
In this super long Facebook post, he spent a bulk of it talking about discrimination and whatnot.
His post has been shared about 1,000 times in less than 24 hours.
But I think at least we learn something here.
Bosses do indeed send emails that are more than two paragraphs. All my bosses have never sent an email that’s so wordy seh.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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