Category Archives: Singapore

Singapore Live

by in Photography, Singapore | 5 Comments

This is just a quick post to share a couple of links to two Live Cameras in Singapore.  [Note that Singapore is ahead of US “Pacific Time”, presently also on “Daylight Savings”, by fifteen-hours.  But messing around with the post this morning, the camera links apparently buffer about 12-hours of video.  So it’s possible to look back that far at the feeds if you’re seeing the middle of the night.]

Both of these cameras are located in the International Plaza building, which is at the south-western edge of Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD).  My trip to Singapore last December was, in part, to attend a meeting being held in the International Plaza building.  Consequently, the hotel I wrote about at the time is just a block away.

The first camera is facing toward the CBD skyscrapers, and looks directly down Cecil Street.  The Chinese Preservation District is the area to the left of the skyscrapers.  I posted a photo looking down the middle of the street to the right, Robinson Road, while heading back toward the hotel during a morning run.

The second camera is facing toward the coast and the AXA Tower.  This is a round skyscraper that’s presently being dismantled from the top down.  It’s interesting watching the process.  Since the person sent me the links to the cameras a couple of days back, I think an entire floor has been removed.  The port visible to the right of the tower is used for unloading ships carrying new cars.  The Marina District (the Marina Sands hotel and such) is behind the skyscrapers to the left.

At any rate, I just thought these were interesting.
Cheers!

 

The Oasia

by in Environment, Photography, Singapore, The Road | 3 Comments

Generally speaking, I’ve found that “boutique” hotels tend to offer more, and often at far better prices when traveling. In Singapore, I think this is especially the case. And this time around, I decided to stay at the “Oasia Downtown” adjacent to Singapore’s Central Business District, or “CBD”.I’d already stayed at the hotel for a couple of days about four years back. Its location, just a block away from another building where I had business simply made it convenient. However, the hotel building itself is rather interesting architecturally.

The hotel is owned and operated by Far East Hospitality, which seems to be a sort of Singaporean/Australian venture.  “Oasia” is their resort brand associated with Singapore and Malaysia.

I won’t spend much time on the experience; however, the hotel part of the building (some of the structure is office space) strikes me as an adult “resort” facility. There are several restaurants within the building, exercise facilities, various pools, and numerous activities. And I don’t think the hotel is really set up to accommodate children.

From the outside, the building is most notable for its red exterior which is shrouded in plants, and for the large openings into its structure.  The color is apparently functional, intended to control solar heating of the building’s surface, keeping it amenable to the plants growing on its outer walls.  Likewise, most of the building’s exterior is covered in a type of grid that supports something like thirty varieties of climbing plants.

Functionally, the building’s 27 floors are divided into five vertical sections.  The bottom five floors comprise the entry level, and managerial and business facilities, and offices.  Residential, hotel and resort facilities start on the 6th floor, and include three sections of rooms that open into large areas where two of the building’s outer walls have been removed.  A fifth area is created by the rooftop (photo on the left).

Each of the opened sections of the structure have a bottom “sky terrace” floor with various green spaces, swimming pools, and food and recreational facilities.  These are located on the 6th, 12th, and 21st floors. The floors between constitute the living spaces for visitors to the building, with the rooms occupying the enclosed side of the building.  Exterior rooms look out over the city, and interior rooms look inward toward the open terraces.

The lowest open section contains exclusive, larger “Soho” private offices accessed by their own elevators, with the hotel constituting the upper two sections.  Consequently, the actual hotel check-in is on the 12th-floor, where the terrace is sometimes used for weddings.  The 21st-floor terrace includes a restaurant and some limited access “club” facilities including a larger pool (photos on the right).  The roof has two smaller pools with a restaurant between them.  It’s surrounded by an extension of the building’s exterior plant-grid, so it doesn’t have the same horizontal views.

I really like the idea of opening a structure like this.  With the exception of the rooftop, which lacks some of the sense of horizontal openness, the terraces work very well to connect visitors to the Singaporean environment in an almost park-like way.  It also very effectively breaks up the rat-maze sensation often associated with wandering the passages of larger hotels.  Each open section of the building feels more like its own, smaller hotel with a common area on the first level.

The terraces also provide a way to more pleasantly experience Singapore’s climate.  Daytime temperatures hovered in the upper 80s with 80/90-percent humidity and occasional light rains for most of my stay.  But the open and shaded environments encouraged an alternative to air-conditioning.  In fact, if I stay at the hotel in the future, I think I’ll try arranging a room that faces in toward a sky terrace.

For anyone interested in architecture, Singapore is a treasure.  From modern high-rise office buildings and extraordinary public housing projects to various cultural “conservation” districts, the city is filled with everything from the historical to the innovative.  It’s an environment and a culture that recognizes the importance of both utility and beauty in its human spaces, making it an even more pleasant destination for visitors.

This links to an excellent photo article of the building by Marco Rinaldi on “A As Architecture”.

 

When a System Works

by in Culture, Photography, Singapore, The Road | 14 Comments

Today was the meeting of the board for a non-profit that I’ve supported for the last two decades.  In all, around forty people attended, though about a third via live Internet connections.  This is the first time since the start of Covid that I’ve attended in person.

These annual board meetings take place in Singapore, since that’s where the organization’s financial-management and accounting firm is based.  Singapore is also close to the Southeast Asian locations where most of the non-profit’s work is centered.  And most notably, the financial resources here are secure and trustworthy.

Singapore likewise reflects this kind of social trust.  Because of the heat and humidity (mostly the humidity), I’ve been getting up to do my daily runs well before sunrise.  From the hotel lobby, I’ll usually head toward the “Marina” or into the “Chinese Preservation District”, plying the start of my routes through only marginally familiar territories in the dark.  I don’t know of too many urban locations where, as a lone and unarmed female, I’d feel comfortable doing this.

It was Christmas morning, just after sunrise as I made my way into the Central Business District skyscrapers.  It was the last mile back to the hotel, and the streets were utterly empty.  A foreign scofflaw, I ran down the center of the road.  I don’t know of too many urban locations where I’d feel comfortable doing that either.

My dad used to say that the health of a city can be judged by the number of people on the streets.  I don’t think he was picturing the homeless lining those of many US cities… or a lone runner at 7:00AM on a Sunday morning after a nationwide party. 

It’s the small things that most impress me about Singapore close up.  It’s the defibrillators outside the doors to public housing facilities, or the life rings on the railings next to drainage channels.  Where the measure of a city can be seen in its infrastructure, this is a place where citizens feel invested in everyone maintaining such things.

This is what it’s like when a system works, when people buy-in to what it offers, and when there’s no tolerance for either corruption or for looting.  Yeah… it’s a bit of a gated community.  And I realize that the naughty stuff tends to be kept out of sight.  But it’s certainly nice to be able to go out alone at night… unarmed.

 

 

Christmas Eve at the Marina and the Gardens by the Bay.

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Disneyland with the Death Penalty

by in Culture, Death, Environment, Humanity, Politics, Singapore | 8 Comments

“Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.”
— Voltaire, Le Mondain, (1736).

Since Japan has re-opened, and Singapore has been back in business for awhile, I’ve decided on some travel concurrent to a December meeting in the latter. The last time I attended one of these meetings was about four years back. But this time around, I’m thinking I may stay in Singapore for awhile and have more of a look around, away from the usual tourist spots.

I’ve written some about Singapore in the past, mostly of the country’s unlikely rise to being among the wealthiest nations on the planet.  Americans familiar with the island city-state at the tip of the Malay Peninsula usually associate it with images of the upscale “Marina Sands Hotel” and its rooftop poolside city-view (top photo), or the glowing “Supertree” forest at the nearby, Gardens by the Bay.

Superficially, Singapore might be described as impressively clean, convenient, safe, and ultra-modern. But few stray much from the Central Business District (“CBD”), or the adjacent “Marina”. A little travel around the city, however, reveals a more human theme in its massive “HDB” developments, and numerous parks and public spaces linked by extensive networks of pedestrian and bicycle paths.

I’ve described my own perception of Singapore as, “Hong Kong meets Okinawa.” It’s a truly modern and multi-ethnic country with a strong acceptance of cultural difference, but encompassed by something known as “kampong spirit”…
(Lifted from the “Singlish Dictionary”)
“...often used in Singapore’s urban concrete jungle (HDB) where neighbours help one another just like the good old days in the ‘kampong’. …also used to describe strangers/people coming together to help someone/others when they are in need of help.”

Singapore suffers from few of the major social troubles afflicting other developed nations. Serious crimes and drug addiction are rare. Extreme poverty and homelessness are virtually unknown, with eighty percent of its almost six-million residents living in various forms of either fully or partially subsidized public housing. And 92-percent of Singaporean citizens own their residences.

Citizens, as well as the country’s 13% permanent resident population, also receive comprehensive universal health care as well as benefits from a nationally-funded retirement system.  Add in clean air and water, a food-culture, walkable neighborhoods with opportunities for exercise, and easy access to health care, and Singapore is unsurprisingly among the top three nations for life-spans.

But Singapore wasn’t always like this.

A reluctant new Republic of Singapore was born in August of 1965 when a combination of internal unrest and political disagreements resulted in its expulsion from Malaysia. At the time, the new country was little more than an outcast and impoverished backwater with few natural resources and an ethnically infighting populace, many of whom lived in almost third-world like conditions.

Much of Singapore’s rise can be attributed to the remarkable leadership of just a few people, chief among whom would be Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s Prime Minister from 1959 to 1990, and Secretary-General of the country’s governing People’s Action Party (PAP) from 1954 through 1992.

While ostensibly a “democracy”, Singapore’s parliamentarian government has always been controlled by the PAP, largely through implementation of controversial, if not severe restrictions on freedom of speech. In this way, the PAP has been able to keep a tight grip on political criticisms by using the country’s legal system to sue, and even to bankrupt opposition candidates it sees as threats to the status-quo.

At the same time, however, the PAP has demonstrated a zero-tolerance for corruption among its own members while maintaining a focus on bettering the lives of the country’s citizens. Early on, Lee Kuan Yew set the tone for credible governance when he insisted that the PAP’s goals needed to be pragmatic. “People want economic development first and foremost… They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.” And by weeding out corruption from the start, the PAP has been consistently able to deliver on its promises.

The trade-off is a population’s acceptance of a strict, almost paternalistic form of governance. Much of Singapore’s low crime rate can be attributed simply to the country being a land of many laws where law-breaking isn’t tolerated.  Even chewing-gum is illegal due to the difficulties in cleaning it from public spaces. But there are also fines for many other quality-of-life violations, such as not flushing toilets or for leaving standing water in planters due to its being a source for mosquitoes.

More serious crimes, however, can land a person in considerably more serious trouble. Acts of vandalism can be punished by “judicial caning” as well as significant fines or public works assignments.  And Singapore still enforces executions for certain crimes, leading to its sometimes being described as, “Disneyland with the death-penalty”.  Trafficking as little as fifteen-grams, or a half-ounce of heroin can result in a mandatory death sentence under Singapore’s “Misuse of Drugs Act”.  And the law is enforced.

In 2009, a 34-year-old Malaysian man was arrested for smuggling 42.7 grams of heroin into Singapore. A year later, he was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. And after more than a decade of appeals, he was hanged last April.  Since then, four more were executed in July, and two were hanged in early August for similar drug offenses.
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I’ve traveled through and lived in several Asian countries over the years, mostly when I was younger. But culturally, I’m an “American”. It’s the society in which I grew to adulthood and that with which I have the most familiarity. It’s the country that feels most like “home”.

Unlike Singapore, the United States is a big place… massive by comparison. We have more than 50-times Singapore’s population spread over more than 5,000-times the area.  So it perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that the US is also a comparative mess, both figuratively and literally.  American “civilization” is but a thin veneer pasted over an officially enshrined assertion of an expansive, if somewhat confused and inefficient sense of individuality.

In the US, only the city of New York has a higher population and population-density than that of Singapore. Regardless, no city in the US can claim anything near the overall quality-of-life that Singapore offers its residents. Yet about 6% of Singaporean citizens choose to live as expats. And the country reported (a probably underestimated) 550 suicides in 2020, a per-capita rate two-thirds that of Americans, and now the leading cause of deaths for Singaporeans between the ages of 10 and 29 years.  So while the beautiful city-state may be a meticulously manicured tropical paradise, it seems not all are content with the attractions.


Singapore, The Rise of the Lion (part 2)

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Hmmm..., Politics, Singapore | 18 Comments

Link to part 1: Birth of the Lion State

“People want economic development first and foremost… They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.“
— Lee Kuan Yew (1997), Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas.

Had Singapore been on the stock market when it became a nation in 1965, it would likely have been the target of short-sellers placing bets on a quick bankruptcy. But fifty-five years later, those same harbingers-of-doom would have lost $533 for every one they had gambled.  From a “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP) of $700-million in 1970, Singapore’s 2020 GDP was an astounding nearly $400-billion.  And this is for a country with a total population of fewer than 6-million people.

In 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rated Singapore #2 in the world for per-capita “Purchasing Power Parity” GDP, or the real value of national earnings per person, at almost $96,000; and the world Bank placed that same number at over $101,000.  In both cases, this represented half-again that of Americans.  Unsurprisingly, nearly four in every hundred Singaporean individuals is a millionaire, and one in six Singaporean households is worth more more than $1,000,000 US. And that’s not accounting for property, businesses, or other physical assets.

Today, Singapore is known as a peaceful, safe and ultra-modern country that suffers from few of the troubles afflicting so many other developed nations. Serious crimes, drug addiction and homelessness are rare exceptions. At its height in shut-downs during the 2020 pandemic, unemployment reached a mere 3.2-percent. And while eighty percent of the population live in various forms of either fully or partially subsidized public housing, 92-percent own their homes, most of which would be considered first-class accommodations by American standards.

Singapore’s citizens, as well as its 13% permanent resident population, also receive universal health care through a system of government subsidies, compulsory medical savings, and national healthcare insurance. With low traffic death rates, almost non-existent violent crime, clean air, the world’s safest drinking water, the world’s highest rate of births attended by skilled health personnel, and the world’s lowest mortality rates for cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, the country’s population is ranked 3rd in the world for life expectancy, and 2nd in the world for overall health.

So how did Singapore do it?

Lee Kuan Yew in 1955.

Singapore’s transition from Malaysia’s rejected stepchild to one of the world’s most successful nations wasn’t without roadblocks. When the Malaysian state of Singapore became the independent Republic of Singapore on 9 August 1965, it was far from a peaceful democracy. The elected People’s Action Party (PAP) Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and President, Yusof bin Ishak, inherited a nation divided by ethnic conflict, and threatened by both communist uprisings and a hostile neighboring Indonesia.

Both leaders promoted multiculturalism, attempting to restore peace in the aftermath of the 1964 race riots that had, in part, resulted in Singapore’s expulsion from Malaysia in 1965. However, riots again broke out in 1969, and President Yusof died suddenly in November of 1970. Prime Minister Lee’s response was to emphasize rapid economic growth and support for entrepreneurship, quelling economic drivers of discontent by sinking unemployment to 3% while increasing the country’s real GDP by 8% per year over the next decade.

From the start, Lee had an overarching vision based in developing Singapore’s economy through meritocratic systems that would be supported by a government and civil service intolerant of corruption or favoritism.  To this end, Lee was often justifiably criticized for promoting authoritarian restrictions to democratic governance in order to maintain the integrity of commitments to long-term social and economic plans.  But this also allowed for the rapid and efficient implementation of massive public housing and infrastructural projects that encouraged a high degree of public confidence in the government.

Lee also championed a multi-ethnic culture as fundamental to achieving his economic goals in a stable society.  He promoted English as a common, but neutral language that could help to integrate Singapore’s Chinese, Malay, Tamil and Indian sectors while also serving to facilitate international trade.  However, individual ethnic identities would also be validated and preserved through officially endorsed bilingualism in universally well-funded public schools with high academic standards.  In this way, Lee proposed to develop the small island country’s one available resource, human capital.

By the 1980s, the return on Singapore’s investment in its own population was undeniable. The country’s economy began a shift toward high-tech industries and international finance, leveraging its labor pool into more profitable forms of production and management. Meanwhile, the city-state took further advantage of its strategic location by opening the impressive Singapore Changi Airport in 1981 and forming Singapore Airlines, while the Port of Singapore was grown into one of the world’s busiest sea-trade and transit hubs.

Singapore emerged as an “Asian Tiger” economy during this time, providing financial resources for long-term investments toward developing itself into Lee’s dream of a “Garden City”. Land reclamation, environmental management, and infrastructural projects improved the quality of living conditions and environment. Urban planning and architecture emphasized creating public and residential spaces where people would want to live.  And districts that represented Singapore’s cultural centers, historical areas, and various natural green-spaces were intentionally preserved.

By the time Lee Kuan Yew stepped down from his seventh term of office as the world’s longest serving prime minister on 28 November 1990, Singapore was virtually unrecognizable as the same socially imploding economic backwater abandoned by both the British and Malaysia just a generation earlier.  Lee continued to remain politically active within the PAP, either officially or unofficially, but always insisted that authority was in the hands of Singapore’s elected government.  Regardless, the course that Lee had set for the island nation would continue with great momentum into the decades that followed.

Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership was undeniable in Singapore’s impressive rise.  But to say that his 31-year tenure as Prime Minister was without controversy would be a significant omission.  Some of his own expressed views plied the edges of social and political correctness, even for many of his supporters.

Lee was an unapologetic proponent of eugenics.  And in the mid 1980s as Singapore’s fertility rate was declining, he advocated for programs to reward the voluntary decisions of women from academically low-performing families who chose to undergo sterilization after the birth of a third child. The program was so controversial that it was ended within a year, and further programs intended to encourage women from academically high-performing families to have more children were shelved.

Lee has also been accused of having been an autocrat, and a heavy-handed, authoritarian leader, promoting strict laws utterly intolerant of challenges to social order.  He also employed Singapore’s courts to harass and to bankrupt political opponents and media that challenged him, effectively setting precedents restricting free political speech.  Political power has consequently remained within the People’s Action Party, and opposition parties such as the liberal-democratic Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), or center-left Workers’ Party of Singapore (WP) are generally viewed as having no realistic chance of gaining control over Singapore’s unicameral parliament.

Ironically, Lee was also sometimes controversial in ways that were viewed as too progressive.  In 2007, he urged Singaporeans to accept that homosexuality was not simply a lifestyle choice and should be decriminalized, and in 2011 went on to condemn religious intolerance of homosexuals.  Lee then quit Singapore’s Cabinet after a 2011 election, when a relatively poor performance by the PAP was in part blamed on his being out of touch with a current generation of voters.

Unknown to the public, Lee Kuan Yew had silently struggled with his grief at the passing of his wife of 63-years, Kwa Geok Choo, in 2010.  Where Lee had been Singapore’s guide and champion, she had been his.  Lee’s health declined in subsequent years, developing peripheral nerve disease and a severe heart arrhythmia.  He died on 23 March 2015 at the age of 91 due to pneumonia.  An estimated 1.5-million Singaporeans paid their respects throughout the country, and nearly a half-million filed by his coffin over the next several days as it lay in state in Parliament.

One-hundred seventy dignitaries and world leaders attended Lee Kuan Yew’s state funeral, including former US President Bill Clinton, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and UK House of Commons leader William Hague.  And tens-of-thousands of Singaporeans stood in a pouring rain, lining the route of the funeral procession to remember Singapore’s equivalent of America’s “George Washington”, the man who came to be known by his fellow citizens as simply, “LKY”.

Regardless of how Lee Kuan Yew might be perceived as having led Singapore, it would be difficult to overestimate the singular effect of that leadership.  Perhaps the lion that the Palembang prince, Sang Nila Utama, claimed to have seen on the island that came to be known as “Singapura” was in a vision of its future.  By inspiring the combined ambitions of an entire population, a wealthy and successful nation was built upon the sheer, unleashed power of its own human resource.  At his funeral service, Lee Kuan Yew’s son and then Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, summed up his father’s legacy in the words, “From the ashes of separation, he built a nation.”

Singapore, Birth of the Lion State (part 1)

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Politics, Singapore, War | 30 Comments

“Some of us, just a small group behaving like idiots will kill all of us… Every country can behave like idiots. Singaporeans must not behave like idiots.”
— Singaporean Trade and Industry Minister, Chan Chun Sing
(In a notoriously leaked 2020 audio recording from a closed-door meeting with the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.)

The tiny island nation of Singapore was birthed in 1965 as Malaysia’s rejected, poor and unwanted child. Suddenly finding itself on the streets of the world in an undesired independence, it could have been considered a “Third World” country.  With a per-capita income averaging around $500 per year, living conditions in much of the new state were squalid, and malnutrition and clean water were issues. And with virtually no natural resources of its own, the tiny island nation had no obvious way to improve itself.

First colonized by the British in 1819 as a seaport at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the island was known as “Singapura”, meaning “lion city” in Sanskrit, after the Palembang prince, Sang Nila Utama, claimed to have encountered a lion on the island.  There were no lions, but the name stuck.  And the island of Singapore was declared a British possession under the jurisdiction of British-India in 1824.

By 1860, the island’s population had swelled from an original 1,000 or so mostly indigenous Malay occupants to well over 80,000 people. More than half of the island’s new residents were Chinese immigrants who had come for work on British plantations  Others arrived from Malaya and India, with each group bringing their own cultural traditions and values. Ethnic tensions were always a simmering issue.

For the next eighty years, Singapore grew as a British trading hub and port, and became central to the British military and naval presence in Southeast Asia.  After WWI, the Singapore Naval Base was constructed, ultimately including the world’s largest dry dock.  As a part of the British “Singapore strategy”, it was central to the defense of shipping lanes at the intersections of the South China Sea and the Indian ocean.
“Singapore could only be taken after a siege by an army of at least 50,000 men. It is not considered possible that the Japanese would embark on such a mad enterprise.“
— Winston Churchill (1940).

The WWII Japanese invasion of Malaya, the loose collection of British colonies and protectorates of the Malay States, ended in the Battle of Singapore. By its conclusion, eighty-five thousand British soldiers had either surrendered or were captured in what Winston Churchill called, “…the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.” After the Japanese occupied the island, between 5,000 and 25,000 ethnic Chinese were killed in the Sook Ching massacre. Singapore would remain under the control of the Japanese until their surrender to the Allies in 1945.

The Japanese occupation of Singapore had been brutal, destroying much of the island’s infrastructure, and leaving the population short of food. As their forces retreated, the island fell into a surge of anarchy and violence, looting and revenge-killings.  When Lord Louis Mountbatten returned to restore order with a contingent of British, Australian, and Indian troops in September of 1945, however, they didn’t find themselves necessarily welcomed.

The value of British “protection” had been greatly lessened in the eyes of most Singaporeans. And in a concession to demands for local control, British military administration was officially handed over to an appointed domestic legislative council in April of 1946, whereupon Singapore was declared an independent Crown Colony. By the 1950s, however, Chinese communist factions backed by various trade unions and schools began a guerrilla war against the British-appointed government, and several public and Chinese school riots ensued.

To counter rising communist sympathies, the British allowed Singapore to have its first general election in 1955, in which the pro-independence Labour Front claimed a sweeping victory. Negotiations between Singapore’s own elected representatives and the British Crown eventually resulted in granting Singapore internal self-governance for all but defense and international relations in 1956. But this still wasn’t enough.  And in May of 1959, the People’s Action Party (PAP) won elections in another landslide victory.

The PAP wanted Singapore to join in a united Malaya, also called “Maphilindo” or Malaya Irredenta. The proposed united super-state would have brought together the territories of the present day Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, creating a regional superpower. However, political objectives within the PAP weren’t universally shared. Moreover, the British didn’t want to see the emergence of such consolidated power in so strategic a part of the world.  And  behind-the-scenes, the Philippines and Indonesia were also motivated by an underlying desire to secure contested British colonial portions of the Island of Borneo for themselves.

When the pro-communist faction within the PAP split to form their own party, the firmly anti-communist ruling party of Malaya, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), came to support the idea of a united Malaya fearing both a communist takeover and that the Chinese population in Singapore might tip the balance of political power. But suddenly sensing the probability of losing its grip on territories in Borneo, Malaya’s prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, made a sudden proposal for a new Federation called “Malaysia” in late May of 1961.

The proposal would unite British territories in the region into a new state which would combine the Malay peninsula with Singapore, Brunei, Sabah (North Borneo), and Sarawak Borneo. Both UMNO leaders and the British government thought that combining Singapore with the Malay population in the Borneo territories would help to dilute ethnic Chinese influences in the region, and prevent Singapore from becoming a communist stronghold.

In September of 1963, Singapore was joined with Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak to form the new Federation of Malaysia. Only Brunei kept its independence under the agreement, although Singapore maintained a higher degree of autonomy than the other states.

Regardless, there was constant disagreement between the Singaporean and central Malaysian governments. Protesting trade restrictions with other Malaysian states, the Singaporean government withheld loans that it had promised to the central government intended to help in the development of Sabah and Sarawak. When negotiations failed, accusations of improprieties were made by both sides, eventually leading to race-riots in Singapore in 1964.

Conditions on the island continued to deteriorate. With a population that included ethnic Chinese, Malay, Indian, Tamil, and British, Confucians, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Christians, from the conspicuously rich to the desperately poor, capitalists and communists, Singapore was primed to explode into a melee of racial, ethnic, sectarian and political self destruction. So on 9 August 1965, the Malaysian Parliament considered the island’s costs to its benefits, weighed its options… and voted 126 to 0 to expel the tiny island enclave from Malaysia.

And the Lion State was born.

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Routines

by in Existentialism, Hmmm..., Luminous Aether, Philosophy, Singapore | 21 Comments

“…you are not journeying; you are drifting and being driven, only exchanging one place for another, although that which you seek, – to live well, – is found everywhere. “
——————–– Seneca, from the, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), XXVIII, 5th passage.

The XP server had been approaching the end of the line for a long time, grinding along on an “esr” version of the officially retired operating system for the last couple of years.  I was trying to keep it going just a little longer while working up the enthusiasm to replace the old machine. Running more-or-less continuously for thirteen years, it was the backbone of my home office during most of the decade I worked in Vancouver.

The shopworn workhorse had hosted my virtual private network, as well as work-related technical software, and all of my on-line hardware and storage.  But increasingly frequent software malfunctions and crashes were probably trying to tell me that main hard drive was finally dying. It could be replaced, as the graphics card had been about seven or eight years back, and the power supply about five years ago. But it hardly seemed worth the trouble.  It was time to move on.

After a 24-hour long OS update on the new computer, and then an another whole day spent re-installing hardware drivers and resolving unsupported technical issues, I found myself oddly longing for the days of UNIX on a DOS machine.   Current technology may be arguably “better”, but it’s certainly more complicated… and mostly with the intent of selling me something else I don’t really want to buy.

I added the experience to my list of “times wasted”, along with that invested in replacing my new washing machine… twice, hours spent navigating the local building-permit bureaucracy over 4-square feet of “ground coverage”, car and house maintenance, shoveling snow, long drives…  life consumed in chores, the duties of a slow passage on the way to… somewhere?

It occurs to me that most of a life is the routines.  I read somewhere that an average human spends a third of his or her life sitting.  It didn’t mention what percentage might be somehow productive as opposed to things like watching TV, idling in traffic, or using the toilet.  I wonder how much is spent in front of a computer, waiting for something to happen?  And consider then that another third is spent sleeping.

Thinking about not sitting, not sleeping… I spend about an hour-a-day exercising, usually running someplace familiar.  And I  like long showers.  There’s the usual winter stuff… shoveling snow, and hosing the road grime off the truck after topping off the oil and washer fluid.  There was about an hour standing at a Customer Service counter, arranging for another washing machine.  And I clean my own house.  Seems like that doesn’t leave much time for the fun stuff… really just a few ski days over the last month.

Awhile back, I stood in an audience and watched the guitarist for a Japanese band on tour in the US.  She has to be about my age, traveling the world as an artist, moving skillfully along the neck of her old Les Paul. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel just a little envy for a life lived in such passion.  I tried to imagine…

Waking late in a hotel room, rushing to make check-out, another set-up, another stoned crowd… tearing it all down, a late dinner, driving all night in a van… doing it all again, and again.

Sidling up to the stage, I notice a digital emulator where there should be a piece of traditionally analogue equipment in the signal chain… a replacement for some dead gear.  I suddenly remembered the lyrics from one of their songs, alluding to how everything wears thin in the end… “Now disconnected, we’re just repeated by the echo.”

Seneca was talking about travel as an escape from the mundane in his twenty-eighth letter to Lucilius.  He was warning that the novelty of the new always wears off at some point, and that even the travel itself can become tedious.  I was thinking about this last December, while on a personal business trip in Singapore.

The city-state is among the most modern, beautiful and peaceful places on Earth — something like Hong Kong meets Okinawa.  Much has changed since the last time I was there.  There are more tall buildings, magnificent hotels, shopping areas, and new parks on reclaimed land — all competing for attention.  Still, I found myself spending free moments simply walking neighborhoods, down side streets where local vendors sold food, or just sitting at the waterside in one of the parks.

When I was still in my early twenties, a less cautious friend ended up with an unplanned baby girl.  I don’t recall how old her little girl was when I held her.  For at least an hour, I carried her around the house, watching her eyes as she fixed them upon anything interesting… draperies, furniture, a reflection in some glass.  Then I would bring her close to what had caught her attention so that she could reach out and touch it.

Everything, it seemed, was new and interesting.  And everything we needed to be amazed was right there, simply, and within a tiny arm’s reach.  It was just in the way we chose to look at things in that moment.

 

 

Sandbags and Ammunition

by in Culture, Fear, Hmmm..., Singapore | 5 Comments

This morning, I received a long email from a friend who is in Singapore. Below is an excerpt:
“I have been here long enough now to be able to say to anyone who thinks America is way ahead of other countries, they should come to Singapore and see what a proper city looks like. No American city even comes close to Singapore in any respect. It is very modern, very clean, extremely attractive, exciting, almost no crime, no homeless, and it has very likable and happy people. Toronto is a great city also, but even it’s no Singapore. It makes me think that old American arrogance about us being better than anywhere else was maybe true years ago, but it sure isn’t true today.”

A little later, I read in the morning news that the state where I reside is expanding the places into which residents may carry firearms. You’ll have to excuse my lack of enthusiasm.

It’s been a few years since my last visit to Singapore.  But the city-state also leaves me with the impression of both a high standard of living, and a high quality of life for its residents. And the two are very different things. Of the places I’ve called “home,” some had a standard of living far below that to which I have become accustomed in the US and elsewhere. And yet, the quality of life was surprisingly good. Once you get past the basics, standard of living probably has more to do with aesthetics.

For two years, I lived in a one-room house with an outdoor, communal kitchen in the city of ChiangMai in northern Thailand. It wasn’t a big or luxurious place by American standards. But it was safe, clean, comfortable, and friendly. It too was a good quality of life. In the US, I choose not to live in a city at all. It’s no less convenient, no more expensive, far safer, much friendlier, and more aesthetically appealing to live in a small town. The quality of life is good.  But I’ve also lived at the edge of Tokyo, the most populous city in the world.

Tokyo is also one of those cities that has a much higher standard of living than any US cities — at least the ones I’ve visited. It too is ultra-modern, convenient, exciting, safe, friendly and clean — at least by American standards. But like Singapore, it’s expensive… at least for visitors. The cost of a month in Tokyo might equate to a year in ChiangMai. Though just as with a pricey restaurant, a lot of what you’re paying for is the aesthetic. That’s not to say that a person can’t also experience a high quality of life in Tokyo. But just as with Singapore, it’s because there’s a commitment to investment in the kinds of infrastructure necessary to minimize poverty as well as to integrate an emerging population into the culture.

This seems to be a common theme in places where the quality of life is good, that something causes the population to embrace the culture. It grounds the identity of a people in an idea that gives the social structure personal meaning. It provides the people of a city, or of a nation, a sense of investment in the place where they live. It’s the difference between a “house” and a “home,” or a place where one merely survives and a place where one thrives and feels as a part of the culture. But in North America, only Canada seems to reflect this approach to any degree, as reflected in the cities of Vancouver and Toronto.

I’ve heard it said that this can’t be done in the US because we’re such a collection of disparate cultures. And I’ve also heard it argued that it’s why we should adopt a single, national language or religious identity, or that capitalism alone provides means to participate. But I don’t believe that any of this is true. Singapore is testimony that both standard of living and quality of life are not dependent upon any single language, religion, or ethnicity. And gritty ChiangMai defies appeal to any arbitrary economic construct with regard to quality of life. Rather, the common thread in the fabric of these societies is a mutual respect of others as something which carries a benefit to everyone. In effect, what goes around, comes around.

Contrast this to the thinking of some in the US that it’s every man for himself, and suddenly it becomes apparent why we can’t, or simply choose not to build a Singapore, or effective mass-transportation, or decent health-care or education systems, or low-cost housing, or infrastructure, or… A critical mass of social self-destruction doesn’t require a significant part of a population. The fear spread by just a few can rapidly destroy the works of many, and then the followers pile on in a frenzy of self-preservation by association. The social contract is broken, traded for a bunker mentality where quality of life gets exchanged for a paranoid accumulation of sandbags and ammunition.

It was already dark, and walking the route back from a night market in a small town in the mountains of far northern Thailand, a rough-looking bunch of teen-aged boys came toward us alongside the road. Hearing our English, one of them called out loudly, “Hello!” in a thick accent. They all laughed at the cocky demonstration of what was probably a skill taught at the local middle school. “Hello!” I called back, to even more laughter as they passed, flashing peace signs in the moonlight. Then the same boy called out, “Goodbye!” and I returned the call to the sound of more laughter fading into the distance.

It was a good moment, and I turned to my husband and said, “You know, this is a pretty safe place.”

He laughed. “Clearly, you’re an American.”