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A bit of backpacking…

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

Just doing a bit of backpacking, and somehow I find myself at the Fullerton Hotel, a 5 Star hotel in the heart of Singapore. One of the top 3 hotels in the country. At an Investment meeting for British Expats put on by a British Investment Banking firm with ties to private Swiss banks.

Some drinks and conversation before the meeting. Fine wines and some beers, juice, water, everything. “Have you been with the firm long?”  hahaah -‘No, I’m new to the group.’ hahaha.

The meeting put on by a friend of a friend who wanted to show us what he did. Graham was the speaker talking about market trends and investments and such, and how there was some 24 billion dollar privatly run Swiss bank involved. I, of course, was there for the food.

After the talk there was a 5 star buffet of steak, fish, crab, lamb, all types of vegetables and salad, appetizers, and desserts and coffee. Met a few people and chatted them up a bit in the process of eating as much as I could.

A few days before I was invited to the #2 hotel in Singapore called Shangri-La. We went after dinner for some tea. haha. It was a really nice place, huge chandeliers and a piano player with a lady singing – the whole deal. This guy Shawn who was about my age took us there, him and his wife Wei Ling. He worked in some accounting firm or something, and owned a small business selling Japanese goldfish.

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Singapore

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

Singapore is the cleanest, most effecient place I’ve ever been. Everything is clean. You could probably eat off the floor in the malls. Sparkling clean. Imagine a continous Ipod commercial all day long. Just clean and white and easy.

Their light rail system is one of the best in the world. They call it the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and stops are everywhere. Trains are automated and come exactly every 6 minutes.

The streets and housing complexes feel as though they are all planned out with covered walkways all the way to train stops. It feels really safe even at night. Everywhere is lighted easy to get around.

The flip side of the coin is that Singapore is controlled pretty heavily. There are alot of rules and punishments. People just walk around pretty orderly. Even when there are streams of people coming down escalators, they are filed in straight lines and nobody is really making alot of noise.

There are automatic voices over the trains reminding people not to litter or eat on the train as well as annoucing the next stops….Big Brother if u will.

I even saw a sign on the wall of the MRT station that read “NO Leaning”. haha.

You can tell people are under the thumb a bit just by how they act in public. I don’t even think you’re allowed chewing gun, and if you fight, you get 18 months in prison, so people are pretty careful. You also get fined for crossing the street if you’re not within 50 meters of the traffic light.

I saw a bunch of people about to cross the road, but the ‘red’ light was on, not the little green man. There were absolutely no cars coming at all, and yet nobody crossed the street. Once couple looked around nervously as they put their toes out to the road and then after a few quick glances around, crossed the street. It was pretty funny.

Overall Singapore is a great place. Alot more expensive than the other SEA countries, but still cool.

 

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