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One weekend in Singapore

By ⋅ April 25, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

After a hec­tic week at home, it was time for a fly­ing visit to Singapore.

I’d had a stop over at the island years and years ago, so I didn’t have too many ideas about the place. All I knew was that it was a small­ish island very close to Malaysia and Indone­sia. And some pic­tures I’ve seen in mag­a­zines and television.

Firstly, I must say, what par­tic­u­larly sur­prised (and dis­tressed me at the same time) is that the women in Sin­ga­pore are extreme­ly… thin!

And I must say that I did notice that sev­eral of these thin young women tuck­ing in many del­i­ca­cies. And yet, they were as thin as a nee­dle. How do you do this, I asked a nice Sin­ga­porean girl, who sur­prised me by admit­ting that she had had 3 kids already and still looked like she was still in her twen­ties. Of course she wouldn’t divulge the real rea­son — she was hardly about to make it easy for me!

Any­way, apart from this alarm­ing trend, what really sur­prised me about Sin­ga­pore are the fol­low­ing points (com­ments are exag­ger­ated, so please take them with a pinch of salt. They are by no means the last word on the state of things but just first impres­sions!).

On the roads, peo­ple sig­nal and main­tain lanes. I’d com­pletely for­got­ten that this is actu­ally how peo­ple are sup­posed to drive. After liv­ing in Ban­ga­lore, you can imag­ine my shock at this kind of dri­ving decorum.

Peo­ple queue and wait for you. Is that even pos­si­ble any more? But even a small boy politely made way for me in a nar­row shop­ping aisle, indi­cat­ing that I could go first. I was stunned for a moment and stood speech­less as I grap­pled with remem­ber­ing the last time it hap­pened. And then I remem­bered: never!

There’s no plas­tic. Any­where. I actu­ally minutely inspected build­ing cor­ners, drains, alley­ways, side­walks to catch sight of just one garbage bag strewn around when some­one wasn’t look­ing. Zilch.

Can these peo­ple get any per­fect? Then I caught it.

I was pass­ing by a res­i­dence com­plex when I sud­denly looked up and saw a strange thing. All the drapes were of beige and pas­tel pat­tern and all the flats seemed to have iden­ti­cal pat­terns. I was… sur­prised. In India, on the other hand, every win­dow will have a dif­fer­ent drape : to the loud and the colour­ful to the som­bre and the pastel.

And I knew imme­di­ately then what Sin­ga­pore­ans are miss­ing. Fab India! Yes. Finally I found a flaw in Singapore’s unbe­liev­ably per­fect life.

Apart from that, I must admit that I tried hard but came back empty handed. Peo­ple queue, they don’t spit, pee on the roads, don’t rush into the local trains, don’t lit­ter, the cabs folks don’t over­charge, there are no touts, they have a low crime rate and there are hardly any cops (because you’re caught on cam­era every­where) : this is almost like par­adise : it’s too good to be true actu­ally. (All this of course does not apply in Chi­na­town and Lit­tle India pointed out my host where true to our nature we regress to our very rep­utable habits that we have proudly upheld for donkey’s years.)

And then in the local news­pa­per I noticed a small arti­cle that Sin­ga­pore­ans still com­plain a lot. Within them­selves most of the time. Not to the gov­ern­ment or any­thing. They might get fined for that. Appar­ently, Sin­ga­pore is jok­ingly called a very ‘fine’ city. They are fined for everything.

But jokes apart, I have a per­fect solu­tion for this. Trans­port all of these whin­ers to Ban­ga­lore for a week. We can eas­ily accom­mo­date them some­where as we already have so many hous­ing com­plexes com­ing up.

I doubt they will ever com­plain ever again.

Discussion

32 Responses to “One weekend in Singapore”

  1. Nice…I think i’ll start look­ing for a job there.

    Posted by Mukta | April 25, 2008, 10:25 am

  2. @ mukta: hehe. let’s run away! i can eas­ily drive a cab there!

    Posted by Anita | April 25, 2008, 10:45 am

  3. “I grap­pled with remem­ber­ing the last time it hap­pened. And then I remem­bered: never!”

    LOL. Laughed out loud at that. And i join you in being supremely jeal­ous of them thin sin­ga­pur girls. grrr!

    Posted by Aqua | April 25, 2008, 11:38 am

  4. Love your share here! U’ve seen the city of Sin­ga­pore — the part where Tourism wants u to see — which is nice. But Singpaore is much more colour­ful actu­ally (if that is what you are look­ing for) haha

    Posted by QuaChee | April 25, 2008, 1:49 pm

  5. Loved this post. Totally imag­ined how a worry-free world can be :-) atleast as far as roads are con­cerned. Infact even here, in the US, these are the first things I noticed. Dis­ci­pline, cour­tesy and aware­ness of laws. You over­take one school bus and a cop will chase you down like he spot­ted you from a chop­per and fine you heav­ily. You pay up and learn your les­son. The lack of all this and more (though they exist) has caused havoc in our country.

    Its really sad that we dont learn the most obvi­ous of things in life from other coun­tries :( How­ever, speak of fashion-statement bags, dresses, lan­guage, slangs and way of life, we are the first ones to ape!

    And yeah, you are damn right about their appear­ance. They are thin as a nee­dle is the right way to put it :-)) I hope you enjoyed your stay in the per­fect world for some­time atleast :)

    Posted by Mridula | April 25, 2008, 8:59 pm

  6. Trans­port the whin­ers in Ban­ga­lore to Darfur.

    I doubt they will ever com­plain again.

    Posted by Agagooga | April 25, 2008, 11:10 pm

  7. On the roads, peo­ple sig­nal and main­tain lanes. I’d com­pletely for­got­ten that this is actu­ally how peo­ple are sup­posed to drive.

    Sin­ga­pore­ans can drive? That’s news to me. IMHO (and expe­ri­ence), even drunk ille­gal Mex­i­cans in Cal­i­for­nia drive bet­ter than 99% of Sin­ga­pore­ans. Pathetic lane dis­ci­pline, pas­sive aggres­sive dri­ving habits (e.g. dri­vers speed up when you sig­nal to change lanes), and almost zero sig­nal­ing before chang­ing lanes. And, oh, the lat­est trend, dri­ving around with head­lights turned off at night in an effort to reduce petrol con­sump­tion. Maybe this is why the morons crash, burn, and die dri­ving over­seas every year.

    Posted by -ben | April 26, 2008, 2:29 am

  8. now you know india ia like shit

    Posted by nike | April 26, 2008, 4:01 am

  9. now you know the place you grow up in is like shit

    Posted by nike | April 26, 2008, 4:01 am

  10. I am afraid that your eyes (and per­cep­tions) were fil­tered due to your bad expe­ri­ences in your home residence(s). Being many times bet­ter than the places you may have lived or vis­ited, you nat­u­rally feel as though Sin­ga­pore is paradise.

    This is exactly the response that has been care­fully engi­neered to be felt by tourists. How­ever, unless you expe­ri­ence a pro­tracted stay on this island, your opin­ions are just the super­fi­cial descrip­tion of the larger (true) story.

    Sin­ga­pore­ans ‘whine’ due to the cul­mi­na­tion of a whole host of fac­tors such as a lack of respect for the cit­i­zens by the gov­ern­ment, and over-regulation of almost every aspect of the said cit­i­zens’ lives.

    To put it in per­spec­tive, imag­ine a Utopian zoo where the ani­mals are given wide areas to roam, seem­ingly ‘cage­less’ envi­ron­ments, ample food and proper vet­eri­nary care. Wouldn’t it be a sim­ply bril­liant place to visit?

    Now the ques­tion is, would the ani­mals in the said Utopian zoo be nec­es­sar­ily happy and con­tented? Or would they rather be liv­ing in the wild — and free — albeit with all the dan­gers and dif­fi­cul­ties that come with it?

    Per­haps there are those who would pre­fer the safety and sanc­tu­ary of the ‘per­fect’ zoo that is Sin­ga­pore, but I for one, hav­ing lived here all my life, would pre­fer the freedom…

    Posted by Thought Provoker | April 26, 2008, 9:23 am

  11. To each his/her own. But I totally agree with the author. I’m happy for you that you’ve found your par­adise, and even hap­pier for myself that I’ve been liv­ing in a par­adise my whole life.=)

    Posted by KH | April 26, 2008, 10:40 am

  12. If you say a coun­try is good, just com­pare it to any other coun­tries with lousier stan­dard of living/management.

    How­ever, in Sin­ga­pore, we sin­ga­pore­ans live in it and we know what stan­dard to expect from our gov­ern­ment and soci­ety. That stan­dard is, unfor­tu­nately, not present, and hence we complain.

    There is no point using the expec­ta­tional stan­dard of a per­son from one coun­try, on another country.

    For exam­ple, the Swiss com­plains inter­nally about their own coun­try too, but if I were to go there and make com­par­i­son to sin­ga­pore, i will not under­stand why they should com­plain too.. Switzer­land is just paradise!

    Gone­fark strikes again.

    Posted by GoneFark | April 26, 2008, 12:29 pm

  13. this is over-complimenting singapore.

    Posted by bishbash | April 26, 2008, 8:41 pm

  14. After being born there many had to leave “this” par­adise in their 40s and 50s.

    Although more have done so in their 30s.

    Espe­cialy after 2000.

    If not their fam­i­lies would have become another case file in the coroner’s department.

    Sin­ga­pore is a fine coun­try to visit but not to live.

    Yhe whole wotld does not know this sim­ple fact.

    It is not as easy as com­par­ing Ban­ga­lore or Dafur to it.

    Posted by Laniaz1 | April 27, 2008, 1:48 am

  15. @ Aqua: hehe, you’d be able to eat unlim­ited french fries with­out any guilt :)

    @ QuaChee: yes, i’m sure there’s a colour­ful side too!

    @ Mridula: I think our basic wiring is dif­fer­ent. Dis­ci­pline is just not us! :)

    I did enjoy the stay and hope­fully will get around to post­ing some more stuff from there.

    @ Aga­googa: :)

    @ –ben: gosh! i must have gone to sin­ga­pore on a good day or something!

    @ nike: what a hor­ri­ble thing to say! i def­i­nitely wouldn’t agree withat!

    @ Thought Pro­voker: actu­ally, you’re right. i have no idea what life is really like there. mine is just a humourous take on a week­end there. so it’s sup­posed to be taken with a pinch of salt!

    @ KH: it’s not really my par­adise. it seems to be like one, is what i said. how­ever, i never said i’d like to live in par­adise :) but i’m glad you like it there!

    @ Gone­Fark: true! but it’s just human nature to com­pare. and any­way, this was hardly meant as a seri­ous inter­pre­ta­tion of what’s hap­pen­ing in sin­ga­pore soci­ety. i really would need to study it longer. so please do take this with a sense of humour! it just feels good to know (after you’ve lived in a city like ban­ga­lore) to know that there are places where peo­ple actu­ally have more dri­ving sense!

    @ bish­bash: true! please bear with me. i am sure i’ll have some seri­ous com­plaints if i really have to live there!

    @ Laniaz1: i am not sure about these facts. but i am sure there’s more to it than meets the eye. and was really com­ment­ing on the state of things in my city, but i don’t think too many peo­ple really got it :)

    Posted by Anita | April 27, 2008, 10:41 am

  16. Why com­pare Sin­ga­pore to Ban­ga­lore? Are we sup­posed to have the same stan­dard as them? Why not com­pare Sin­ga­pore to Lon­don or New York?

    Posted by corrine | April 27, 2008, 10:51 am

  17. Ouch! Looks like your post has sparked off quite a controversy.

    Posted by Mridula | April 27, 2008, 10:58 am

  18. @ cor­rine: i think you missed the point some­where. we have our own stan­dards of course. they’re way beyond comparison :)

    @ mridula :-)

    Posted by Anita | April 27, 2008, 11:05 am

  19. well the grass is always greener at the other side. it’s all about relativity.

    Posted by chwo | April 27, 2008, 3:27 pm

  20. Hi
    Glad you finally went home and hope you will return soon to KitKit.
    The Sin­ga­pore expe­ri­ence, what I would be most grouchy about is the lack of a free press.
    But yes, it is good enough for a visit or a short work stint.
    India is colour­ful, per­haps no other coun­try can be like that.
    CHeers
    Lubna

    Posted by Lubna | April 27, 2008, 7:28 pm

  21. Don’t be jeal­ous of the Sin­ga­porean waist­lines — i believe its more genetic than life style cen­tric. hav­ing said that, they ‘are’ a very health con­scious peo­ple and the basic food is less fatty, but that does not explain why almost all girls, women, grand­mas, boys, men, grand­pas (of chi­nese ori­gins) are skinny.

    Posted by rajeev | April 28, 2008, 9:49 am

  22. Undoubt­edly Sin­ga­pore is a beau­ti­ful coun­try but I got sur­prise to hear that there is no use of plas­tic in Singapore.

    Posted by devi | April 28, 2008, 12:14 pm

  23. Came through Joseph’s blog where he rec­om­mended the pho­tos and I should say I like them. I would though want more of them. :) And hey, I would also like to learn to remain thin — did you finally get the real rea­son? read some blogs on blogadda.com on tips to be slim, but I guess now am inter­ested to hear from that sin­ga­pore girl!!

    Posted by Sheetal | April 29, 2008, 10:41 am

  24. HMmm U came and u didnt inform me — Bad U !! I know for the first timers — SINGAPORE will always be a Par­adise !! It is one of the safest city to live but I LOVE OUR INDIA the most than any other coun­try. You know when we went to Indone­sia and returned we felt the DIFF b/w two coun­tries, not when I come to INDIA and return you C !! I’m com­ing to BLR on May 11 — Any Chance to get an Appoint­ment with U ?? Please mail me, Thanks

    Posted by Invisible China | April 30, 2008, 8:24 am

  25. I had the same reac­tion about the traf­fic when i first vis­ited Singapore…it all seemed too per­fect for some­one who has lived in Ban­ga­lore all her life!!… and is every­one really thin?? i didn’t notice that part!

    Posted by vri | May 1, 2008, 9:49 am

  26. Maam;

    the next time You visit Sin­ga­pore, take me along to your Coun­try, I would like to expe­ri­ence how ‘unfine’, dis­or­gan­ise and topsy tur­vey Ban­ga­lore is.

    At 57 year old, me think I will enjoy more liv­ing with cows, dogs, birds and plants than in the Fine City State. And I thank You in advance.

    Yours truly: patriot.

    Posted by patriot | May 1, 2008, 9:43 pm

  27. Anita your per­cep­tion is com­mon and Indi­ans vis­it­ing a westernized/modern coun­try for the first time are surely daz­zled by SG but no coun­try is per­fect. What they have done with the lim­ited resources is praise­wor­thy but it is still a coun­try with other trou­bles.
    We loved their pub­lic trans­port and it was neat and clean which can be expected for such a small coun­try . At night we saw a huge rat near the food stalls that would put desi cats to shame ;-) There was graf­fiti spray painted in some areas. We saw a street fight between some desi and Chi­nese look­ing teen boys show­ing racial ten­sions exist. All this is expected in any coun­try. The most trou­bling was the lack of nat­ural beauty. It is a great coun­try if one wants air con malls and fake/manmade amuse­ment parks. The spec­tac­u­lar nat­ural resources and his­tor­i­cal build­ings all over India are more impres­sive to me.
    I agree that it is a nice place to visit and the humid­ity made my hair go crazy while the girls around me had super shiny and straight hair, made me jeal­ous! We should strive to improve our nation to be more like them. But it will take time since India is so large and diverse while Sg is tiny .

    Posted by SM | May 2, 2008, 2:07 am

  28. Loved the post :) Eagerly await­ing to see the pics

    I totally agree with your obser­va­tions:
    1. women in Sin­ga­pore are extreme­ly… thin!-Had read an arti­cle in TOI by Sudha Pil­lai that S’pore airhost­ess were very thin and she was jeal­ous :)
    2. what Sin­ga­pore­ans are miss­ing. Fab India — There are all sim­i­lar and we are dif­fer­ent :)
    3. Sin­ga­pore­ans still com­plain a lot. — There’s a say­ing: Peo­ple who pos­sess every­thing want more and are never sat­is­fied.
    4. I doubt they will ever com­plain ever again. — lol… Shouldn’t we make them com­mute on Hosur Road or MG Road dur­ing the peak hours? :)

    Posted by Manasa | May 4, 2008, 1:40 am

  29. I think Sin­ga­pore, Japan and all those coastal areas have ppl who are thin, have the best skin and the best hair! Must be the diet, less pol­lu­tion — a whole lot of fac­tors, not to for­get less stress keep­ing in mind their lifestyle! :)

    Posted by Twilight Fairy | May 17, 2008, 4:26 pm

  30. I love going to sin­ga­pore for week­ends and used to do that often , but now what­ever i want in sin­ga­pore I can get them in Kuala Lumpur , … hey when will you be com­ing down here?
    xo

    Posted by Az Azura | May 18, 2008, 7:03 am

  31. Sin­ga­pore is not as safe as it looks.…my wal­let was flicked in one of the upmar­ket malls in the mid­dle of the day.…so to all tourists vis­it­ing please be alert…after all we are all human…:-)

    Posted by Sushma | April 6, 2009, 8:30 am

  32. Hav­ing lived in Sin­ga­pore for over two years, i can say that there are some very good pos­i­tives just as in any West­ern country.

    1.Valuing life.
    2.Showing cour­tesy.
    3.Civic sense.

    And what makes Sin­ga­pore stand apart is
    –Its multi-ethnic vibrant cul­ture which most West­ern cities lack.
    –Its archi­tec­tural beauty in the form of its mod­ern buildings.

    I dis­agree to a large extent that Sin­ga­pore is artificial.One has to visit the Nature Reserves(Bukit Timah/McRitchie) to know the truth.Secondly, amuse­ment parks are not nat­ural anyway.If India’s roads and build­ings are well-maintained, does it make our cities fake? Why is Chandi­garh con­sid­ered a beau­ti­ful city if city-planning is arti­fi­cial? Our national parks are ill-maintained and lack basic facil­i­ties of drink­ing water, toi­lets etc, not to speak of the roads that lead to the parks.Not sure if a dusty road is more appeal­ing just because it is natural.

    Since the island city-state does not have enough land, it is only nat­ural to reclaim land from the sea for sus­tain­ing growth.

    I do agree about lack of free press.
    But it is bet­ter to do away with their free­dom than allow them to write non­sense like what our print media did dur­ing CWG.To expose crime is dif­fer­ent from blem­ish­ing the image of one’s coun­try through bad-press par­tic­u­larly when India’s pride was at stake.

    Posted by Rajesh | December 21, 2010, 11:59 am

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