category archive: Singapore, February 2007

Please note that the articles are in chronological order. For all other categories, the latest article is at the top of the list. But due to the 'trip reporting' nature, the sort order has been reversed for the travel categories.

Singapore, here I come

Thursday, 15 Feb 2007 | Journal

With all this excitement about the ‘do good for my birthday’ thing, one would almost forget that I’m also in this region to get a job or at least get some money coming in. I was in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, I will be flying to Singapore in 10 days.

I did my research thing and came up with week 9, as there are a few interesting social events organized in this week by different Chambers of Commerce. I also noticed an interesting seminar worth visiting. More importantly perhaps, is the ‘Career 2007’ event that starts on the Thursday of that week and I think that would certainly be worth visiting. From my first gathering of event data earlier this week, this seemed like the most interesting week in the near future. I will continue to look for events to visit in this week, I just sent out a whole batch of emails to organizations to see if there is anything else that might be interesting for me.

I also have a few meetings set up with people I have been introduced to but have not yet met. As always, the goal is to meet new people of which hopefully a few will be interesting contacts to keep in touch with. Perhaps not only for direct employment, maybe only because they are nice people. Because thats important too.

Singapore schedule ready

Saturday, 24 Feb 2007 | Journal

Next week I will fly to Singapore. I had already decided on that week a while back, but have just finished putting an exact schedule together. That was a fun exercise in tight planning: first figuring out the cheapest flights, then trying to make everything fit in between and finally deciding on the final flight times. The hotel is picked based upon the location of each first destination of the day. Check out the updated version of the article in which I explain scouting trips, I added all these details to it.

Anyway, I’m flying out to Singapore on Wednesday in the EARLY morning. I hope the Air Asia flight (cheapest, but mostly picked because it fit my schedule the best) leaves on time, because they seem to have a bad reputation in that sense. A few hours after my scheduled arrival, I’ve got my first appointment for lunch set up. The rest of that day I hope to have a look around town. After that, two days of running around to visit some events and see some people will follow. And I fly back late Friday night. It will be a flash visit, but I’m pretty sure I will be back there.

I’ll be staying at the Gallery Hotel, booked through the highly trustworthy and competitively priced Planet Holiday.com. No, I don’t own stock. But do book your hotels using this site when you travel Asia, I can vouch for them.

The ride over

Wednesday, 28 Feb 2007 | Journal

It was such a great night, not being able to sleep and thus without any sleep making my way to the airport at 5:30 in the morning. I got there at 6, checked in and departed right on time aboard Air Asia flight FD3501. Air Asia itself is really not that bad. Old planes, non-assigned seating and you have to pay for food and drinks, but a cute stewardess and on-time arrival makes up for all that.

Less so was I happy with the people I was flying with. I arrived at the gate and settled near the doors to the plane. I smiled and said goodmorning to Miss Air Asia. The waiting area was filled with a large Chinese tour group, loud and obnoxious and incredibly rude as it turned out. While waiting to board the plane, we were all asked to form a neat line and while doing that those Chinese squeezed me out of the line. By the time I got to the place where they take your boarding pass, I just took my trolley and stuck it in between two of them and rudely moved back in. I’m a nice guy, but I ain’t having none of that. The lady taking the boarding cards, Miss Air Asia, noticed what had happened. And I guess because I said good morning to her, she said ‘sir, when you get to the bus I advise you move to the front’. I didn’t think anything of it, until we got to the plane … where the driver opened only the front door … allowing me to pick the best seat on the plane! Thank you Miss Air Asia! Of course, the Chinese group who had (in Chinese, but you can tell when someone is talking about you) been making jokes about me was non too happy with this. But I was! har har …

I got to the Singapore Changi Airport (due for a revamp by the way) on time and had to pick a taxi. There are 3 classes of taxi’s in Singapore; the normal Toyota Crown that looks similar to the ones in Hong Kong, middle class grey cars and expensive white Mercedes cars. Typical Asia, deriving status from everything including what taxi to take. I wanted to take a normal taxi, but was forced into a middle class car by the valet on duty. I later learned that was not allowed and I should report the guy. I won’t. Anyway, here is a tip I got from someone who lives here: if you arrive during peak hours or need to go anywhere on the west side of Queenstown … the set rate of 35 Singaporean dollars for the expensive Mercedes will be a better deal than going by meter in the lower or middle class taxi.

Arrived at the hotel, the Amara in Singapore (the Gallery turned out to be full) early morning. Nice hotel, good rooms, expensive internet service, impersonal service… you know, the reason why I really wanted to get a room at a different sort of hotel.

First impressions of Singapore

Thursday, 1 Mar 2007 | Life in Asia

This trip to Singapore is one where my schedule is so tightly packed, that I hardly have time to see the sights. An hour here and there to just aimlessly walk around (or write articles for my weblog), but mostly just going from here to there to see the people and attend the events I had planned.

Now, for those of you who don’t know: Singapore is a city-state, meaning it is just one city that makes up the entire country. About 4.5 million people live here, the country has a booming economy and income levels are about the same as most western countries. So here are my first impressions of Singapore.

• This is a very organized place, VERY organized and VERY efficient in every way possible
• Public announcements are in 4 different languages, English, Chinese, Malay and another language I haven’t figured out what it is yet. The national language is English, but the Chinese here speak with a very heavy accent even if they were born here. Expats refer to it as Singlish, we’ve got Tinglish in Thailand so that makes sense!
• It looks really pretty.
• This is a car city, wide roads everywhere and no congestion anywhere.
• This place is all about business.
• It’s boring here!

To be honest, I expected a city much like Hong Kong. But Singapore is nothing like Hong Kong. Sure, it’s a former British colony, there are a lot of Chinese here, it’s a financial and logistics hub, etc. But one of the main differences is that Singapore has nothing ‘Asian’ about it. It really is Asian only by location, the rest is western. The way things are set up, the incredible organization of it all, the way people deal with each other. It’s not Asian, it’s what we do in the west.

While that may all seem like a good thing, it is all so meticulously planned and flawlessly executed that it turns the city into a boring and bland place. Singapore has always had the image of being boring, so the government went ahead and tried to change that. But they did it in a Singaporean style … designating a few areas for ‘recreation’ and filling them with nice, clean nightlife venues. Speaking to some expats at the British Chamber of Commerce networking event tonight, they confirmed just that. The place gets utterly boring after having lived here for a year. It is the blandness of Holland that made me want to leave it, so perhaps Singapore is not the best of places for me to live. So I haven’t been turned into a big fan of Singapore on this trip just yet.

Now, that may all sound really negative. But that is not entirely true. It is like a breath of fresh air being in a city that ticks as flawlessly as a Swiss watch. It’s great to go shopping and not feel like an outlander with an ATM sign on the forehead. And it is cool to go out in an area (Clarke Quay) and see nothing but nicely designed, hip places that play good music and have a nice crowd. So there are some things I like about Singapore!

A bad trip, err tour

Friday, 2 Mar 2007 | Journal

Today I had the opportunity to have a look around Singapore for a bit after a lunch meeting got cancelled. So what does one do with an afternoon to spare? Go down to the hotel concierge and tell him you’re bored, he will know something to do. He suggested a city tour. How novel!

I’m sure the guy meant well, but the tour was horrible. I did get to take a picture¹ with the mother Merlion, which is the original at the mouth of the Singapore river. The big daddy one is on Sentosa island (lit. ‘tranquility’) and perhaps I will visit that some other times. Now, the merlion is the trademark symbol of Singapore and is a creature with the body of a fish and the head of a lion. The fish part relates to the ‘humble beginnings’ as a fishing village called Temasek² , the lion part comes from an Indonesian prince who upon arrival was greeted by a lion. He actually named the city Singa (lion) Pura (city) because of this. Thats it for todays history class!

I got to see some other mildly interesting places too, but didn’t learn a whole lot about Singapore. The stories on the bus were of anecdotal nature and didn’t teach me about the history or culture in any way. The absolute lowpoint of the tour was a visit to a jewelry factory, where the group was welcomed by a hostess, pointed to a few aging photos of celebrities visiting the factory, “and then here on your right you will see some work being done” … and then we were lead into the showroom. What the …! A far cry from the tour of a diamond factory I enjoyed in Brussels with Natalie a few years ago. The next and last stop for the tour was the botanical garden. I know some of you would be ecstatic with that prospect, but I couldn’t be bothered and so I hopped in a taxi to go downtown for some wandering around. Big disappointment and I would rather have spent my time and money doing something else, but these things happen.

One thing many of you might already know about Singapore is that this is a very strict country. Rules are rules and one has to live by them. DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS, it says on your immigration card. Subtle. I don’t want to get into political talks on caning of people that appearantly still really does happen here to people who break the rules. But I’ll relay ONE anecdote that made me laugh. The tourguide told us the story as we were passing the Raffles hotel. Littering will get you a SG$500 (250 euro) fine in Singapore, but the Raffles hotel (also home to the Singapore Sling) has a special bar where you can eat peanuts and throw the shells (or any other garbage) on the floor. If you leave it on the table, service staff will actually come and ‘clean your table for you’ by sweeping the stuff onto the floor. I didn’t get a chance, but I think a visit to that bar would be rather amusing.

Material girls

One of the little stories I was told this afternoon, was about how men appearantly have difficulty finding girlfriends here in Singapore. The girls here are too materialistic (Hong Kong, anyone?) and only look for the “The 5 C’s” …

• Cash
  
• Car¹
  
• Condominium²
  
• Credit Card
  
• Country Club membership or Career

So what do single men do who are not on a US$600.000 a year bonus package? They go to places like Malaysia, Thailand (!) and Vietnam to find a girlfriend and move them over to Singapore. Seeing that these countries economically speaking don’t nearly do as well as Singapore, one has to wonder if these girls aren’t just as materialistic as their Singaporean friends.

I could live here

On the first night I was here, I received a message on my phone from Air Asia that my departing flight tonight would be an hour late. Fine, no problem. But since the tour was a disappointment, I had nothing else to do, it has been pouring again the entire afternoon, I decided to make a run for the airport rather early only to discover the flight got delayed another hour. And so here I am, waiting to go home and looking back on a few days in Singapore that flew by in a flash.

In my ‘first impressions’ article, I mentioned that this is a boring place and might not be the best for me to live. I do want to correct that slightly, as it is too negative a statement. I really enjoyed my stay in Singapore, even though I didn’t get to see a whole lot of it and it was raining all but the last morning. Even though I had previously read about this, it was very surprising to find a city so different from all others in Asia. Still, it is a very unique place that has many things to offer. I think it is an ideal starting point for any westerner moving to Asia.

I could definitely also see myself living in Singapore for a few years. The city offers a unique mixture of Asian background and location, go-getter business culture and some of the nurturing aspects of European life. Some things are too ‘Main Street, Disneyland’-like for my taste, but I think living in Singapore does make for a worry free environment. I am looking forward to being back here and hope the weather will be better next time.