Tainan resident Chen Kuan-chin (陳冠瑾), 35, credits a loan program from the Ministry of Labor for allowing the creation of her spa for infants in the city’s Yongkang District (永康).
“Starting a business takes courage and preparation,” she said. “My advice is to make use of public resources to get through the initial start-up period of a business, which is the hardest part.”
The funds that she needed to establish her spa were furnished by the ministry’s Phoenix Small Business Start-Up Project, which issues loans to women, as well as people who are middle-aged or older.
Her former career as a social worker for the Hsinchu County Government was stable, but the punishing work schedule of being on call for 24 hours a day, seven days a week left her with no time for friends or family, Chen said.
By happenstance, she became aware of a training course for infant massage and decided to enroll in the class, quit her job and start a new career, she said.
Obtaining the government loans, she enrolled in the professional training course, paid the fees out-of-pocket and eventually obtained an international certificate permitting her to lecture on massaging infants, she said.
Massage is beneficial for infants and her spa offers 50-minute sessions of massage, swimming, bathing and skincare that help babies to exercise their limbs, improve cardiopulmonary health, sleep better and cry less, she said.
Infant spas are a rapidly expanding industry that offers opportunities as well as competition, she said, adding that the number of such spas in Yongkang has increased over the past two years from one to half a dozen.
“Growth has been stable and there is little sign that the low birth rate is having any effect,” she said.
Ko Cheng-fang (柯呈枋), head of the Work Force Development Agency’s Yulin, Chiayi and Tainan Office, said the program offers up to NT$1 million (US$34,308) in interest-free loans for two years.
Eligible people are welcome to apply, he said, adding that information is on the agency’s Web site (http://beboss.wda.gov.tw/cht/index.php?code=list&ids=75).
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,