Singer Michael Wong pays staff out of his own pocket

Compiled by ALLISON LAI, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN

MALAYSIAN singer Michael Wong was dubbed the “best boss ever” for retaining all his staff for more than a year despite having nearly zero income during the pandemic, Sin Chew Daily reported.

The 50-year-old, who is from Ipoh, was reported to have kept paying all his staff in China, Malaysia and Taiwan since the start of the pandemic on his podcast recently.

“If the pandemic continues, the company won’t be able to stay afloat much longer,” Wong’s manager jokingly said during the podcast.

Wong is currently hunkered down in Taiwan and has declined job offers in China due to the lengthy quarantine period.

> The daily also reported that Taiwanese-American singer-songwriter Wang Leehom has finally received his vaccination in the United States.

The 45-year-old posted a photo of him receiving a jab along with the lyrics, “the vaccine will help your body to build up its antibodies” from his 2017 song A.I. Love.

“The quicker we get vaccinated, the faster the pandemic will end,” he wrote.

Fans praised the singer for having the hindsight for writing a song with lyrics about vaccines four years ago.

When contacted, Wang’s manager revealed that he was getting the vaccine so that he could attend the Sun Valley Conference in July, which will also be attended by big names such as Bill Gates, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg.

This will be Wang’s eighth year being invited to the conference.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.