The Ts

June 19, 2008: 05:41

Had the distinct pleasure of waking up at 3AM to catch a 6:40 flight this morning to Hong Kong. I thought while I was killing time at the airport, I’d summarize my thoughts on Singapore.

Singapore is really a wonderful place; tropical, prosperous, cosmopolitan, clean and orderly, safe. Everyone is friendly, and English is the language of choice, it’s almost a perfect place to do business, unless you are trying to buy a car or consumer goods (I looked up some car prices in the classifieds yesterday. An ’06 Camry was listed at 66k, an ’07 Mercedes at 89k, and even a ’92 Corolla was just under 10k….. wow). Almost a little too perfect actually…

Singapore is kind of like one of those science fiction movies where the protagonist (in this case, me) travels to another planet, or into the future, and when he arrives he finds a utopian society. Unfortunately for our protagonist, there is always a seamy underbelly of the “utopia” that ends up pulling him into an action packed adventure fraught with peril and romance. Thankfully I haven’t had any peril or romance during my stay here, but I can’t shake the feeling that this place has to have a seamy underbelly of some kind all the same. I suspect the gigantic jail complex that I mentioned earlier might have something to do with that. Also, the customs notice that “drug smuggling is punishable by death” on the back of the customs form is another subtle clue as to the nature of the ruling persons here.

See you in Hong Kong, my flight is boarding!

Pete