National Geographic visits Singapore
The feature article on Singapore in the January edition of National Geographic is a 3,000 word sprint through just about every major theme in contemporary Singaporean life. This means that it is at once impressively thorough and yet unsatisfyingly superficial. Matters aren’t helped much by the cream-puff hook - that Singapore’s success was “all part of LKY’s plan”. Fawning hero worship being not all that edifying, as argued here.
Now, I imagine this is all fine and good for the Nat Geo readership, (i.e., people at the dentist office), who in any case are probably just looking at the pictures and the cool maps. As for the rest of us, who just care too much to leave it at that - well, that’s why they invented blogs I guess. Because beneath every one of Nat Geo’s neatly-noted Singapore 101 themes are hidden stories and deeper layers. . .
Theme 1: Singapore is a miracle of economic success and good governance. This is the premise of the article, not to mention pretty much any discussion of Singapore. And a compelling premise it is, backed by lots of nice numbers on poverty, health care, home ownership and crime rate. The deeper layer is that Singapore has a relatively inequitable income distribution, as measured by its high gini coefficient, noted here, and here, and many other places. If you’re counting, that’s inequality worse than nasty, rapacious countries like the United States. The main difference of course is that Singapore has put a roof over everyone’s head. But there are lots of people scraping by, and lots of billionaires sitting pretty. So Shangri-La it is not.
Theme 2: Singapore is LKY’s vision come to life. There is little doubt that LKY put his stamp on the nation like few others in history. And it was actually a pretty fine stamp, unlike most of the other “national fathers” with his tenure. As for the hidden story - well, the whole story is hidden actually, because history is written (or not written) by the winners, so most of LKY’s ruthless moves remain in the shadows. The other angle here is that the MM (Minister Mentor) is now pushing 85 and becoming something of a loose cannon on tour. In other words, an honored guest of presidents and pundits, who tends to say goofy things with the tape rolling. This angle is going to keep getting funnier until LKY is finally elected to the big one party state in the sky.
Theme 3: Singaporean social control is mostly about self-censorship. This is one of the article’s better moments, a very apt insight with a great quote to back it - “the cop is inside our heads”. I’m not sure there is a hidden story here as much as a theoretical lacunae. That is, the observation that Singapore maintains social order primarily through consent and not coercion begs the question of how this consent is manufactured. We know a lot about how this works in capitalist countries and totalitarian ones. But we know much less about how it works in an authoritarian capitalist state. Not to mention one with a defacto Confucian cultural surround. I can think of two places like this, and one of them we should all care about.
Theme 4: The Singaporean system may hamper creativity required for continued economic growth. The author actually misses this one a bit in his drive by, since it’s not just about producing “game changing” ideas, i.e., innovation and entrepreneurship. Rather its about everyday Singaporean workers not fitting well into the knowledge economy because they’re just too focused on following rules and regurgitating information. But to go even deeper, the question for me is whether Singapore will be able to solve this problem by tweaking its educational system, an approach they have embraced (though it will take a long time), or will it need to open up its political system as well. In other words, is participatory democracy connected to certain forms of economic ingenuity? And if so, what exactly is going on in China right now?
Theme 5: Singaporeans love food. This is an obvious crowd pleaser, though despite name dropping the best chicken rice at Maxwell, the author would have probably been better off just hyper linking to Calvin Trilling. If Trilling does need an update, however, the angle might be the relationship between food and technology. Because today its not just about going to a hawker center, or even opening a Makan Sutra guide and scouting for a good stall, now it’s about showing up somewhere new, doing a mobile Google search, and finding out which Hokkien Mee is recommended on ieatishootipost. A new era, and a damn fine one.
There’s plenty of other themes in the article - the enforcement of ethnic harmony, the population shortage, kiasu as the country’s defining ethos, etc. But I don’t have anything clever to say about them. There’s also the deeply vexing, elephant-in-the-room theme, regarding the struggle for Singapore to develop an organic and sophisticated cultural identity that matches its amazing strides in economic development and urban planning. But that’s a whole other can of worms, which I hope to open in this forum one day soon.
Singapore’s Old School Malls
As everyone knows, when they’re not busy fleeing canings or abstaining from gum chewing, Singaporeans spend their free time lurking in malls. As it turns out, this is actually sort of true, both in the sense that Singaporeans love to shop and in the sense that it’s too hot and sticky to be strolling down “main street” in search of new shoes. Understanding Singapore’s malls and mall denizens, however, requires looking beyond the North American critique of malls as lifeless, homogenized, culture-destroying boxes of commerce.
One could argue that most of Singapore’s malls have quite a bit of character, from Vivo City’s architecture, to Takashimaya’s food court, to Cathay’s boutique shopping. But if the newer malls occasionally show some of flair, it’s the older malls that steal the show. For one thing, they look amazing, with their neon lights, decorative signs, twisting staircases, and architecture that counts as historical in a city that knocks down buildings like it was trimming hedges. Where newer malls often feel aesthetically derivative, older malls exude a garish but undeniably genuine character.
Of course malls are ultimately for shopping, but here again the older ones score big. In some cases, that’s because they have the best shit, like Bras Basah Complex, the heart of the used book trade in Singapore, and the site of my favorite knick knack shop, Cat Socrates, or Queensway Shopping Center, the place for deals on running shoes, and home to a killer laksa stall to boot. When the shit at old malls isn’t the best, it’s often the weirdest, with extra credit for thematic unity. For example, Fu Lou Shou Complex is not only chock full of religious stores, but also has its own Buddhist temple!
In terms of people watching, newer malls are great for checking out the quaint hipsterism of the younger set, but for a bit more originality, it’s all about the old. Lucky Plaza on Sunday pulses with Filipina maids on their day off; hectic for sure, but also a vibrant slice of Singapore life. In Beauty World Plaza in Upper Bukit Timah, your neighbor at the foot massage will be an old lady who remembers Singapore before the economic miracle. And then there is Mustafa, the largest department store cum mall that I’ve ever scene, and the heart of Singapore’s cleaned up but unrepentant version of South Indian culture.
The saddest thing about the older malls in Singapore: like everything else in this constantly evolving city, they probably won’t be around too much longer. So before CapitaLand breaks out the wrecking ball, take a moment to get your old school shop on. Or if you’re not in S’pore, check out this flickr set with more old school mall pics, or this wikipedia directory on Singapore’s malls.
Lego Singapore
What happens when you combine corporate social responsibility, nation building, and one of the world’s great toy brands? The answer, apparently, is the We Are One campaign, a bizarre yet kind of cool project sponsored by Media Corp, Singapore’s state-owned media behemoth, and Capital Land Trust, the country’s major mall developer. The concept of the campaign is that individuals will donate money to charity by purchasing Lego bricks (at $2 a pop). The bricks in turn will be used to build a model of Singapore island, thus reinforcing national pride. The actual model is situated in a mall, naturally, and if you care to, you can check in on a live webcast that shows the progress of the project in real time. For the Media Corp “we report on ourselves” take, click here. There’s also a user generated content angle.
The really cool part, though, is that in order to pull this off, the sponsors needed to work with one of the world’s nine Lego Certified Professionals, Nicholas Foo, who just happens to be based in Singapore. Besides designing the map, Foo has also designed six Lego statues depicting Singapore icons, such as they are. Foo’s S’pore statues are pretty excellent, as are his many other projects. But how about the fact that there is such a thing as a Lego Certified Professional?! I mean, who knew?
Singapore’s Country Brand - Dissecting a Meme
First, let’s start with the undissected news, which is that Singapore has been ranked 13th in the annual Futurebrand Country Branding Index (CBI), an impressive leap from last year’s ranking of 24th. The ingredients of the country’s brand come as no surprise: Singapore ranks high as a shopping destination, a business friendly environment and a place for conferences. (Singapore actually sort of sucks for shopping because it is so pricey, but I guess that’s why they call it branding). In Asia, Singapore ranks #2, behind only Japan.
How did Singapore make the jump? According to FutureBrand’s CEO, “the results show the impact of Singapore’s long term and relatively well integrated efforts in building the country brand from a strong business base, adding on key components of a compelling lifestyle image” (quote sourced here). This sounds about right to me, at least in the sense that long term planning and tight execution are the country’s hallmarks. Apparently, what works for export manufacturing and urban planning ain’t bad for marketing either.
Now for a bit of meme dissection. After all, what is the CBI, and what exactly does it measure? As it turns out, FutureBrand creates its rankings based on a survey of 3000 tourists and 750 business travelers. In keeping with this sample population, the ranking actually reflects each country’s perceived attractiveness as a tourist destination. In other words, if a country is a brand in the CBI metaphor, the product is basically a vacation. By adding business travelers, the survey can fudge in categories like “good place for doing business”, which regular tourists don’t care much about.
This mini-dissection brings two points to light. The first point is that Singapore’s CBI performance is actually even more remarkable than it seems. Because for all of S’pore’s stunning successes, it’s not exactly a honeymoon spot. Moreover, the country has quite a few high “branding negatives” in the tourism space, e.g., caning, drug executions, the gum chewing thing. This over-performance of Singapore’s tourism industry is borne out by the stats. More than 10 million people visited in 2008 (way more stats here); that’s twice as many as visited India, where there is, um, quite a bit more to see and do.
The second point is that, like similar ranking memes, the CBI actually tells us something different (and probably less) than it seems to. The information in the CBI is really about the 3 trillion dollar global travel economy, which is pretty important in its own right. But as the meme circulates, it just turns into “country brand”, which is cooler and somehow easier to grasp for the very fact that it is so vague. The Futurebrand folks contribute to this slippage by throwing in non-tourism categories, and in the end they get the best of both worlds, because the world press picks up the general story and the tourism industry pays $250 for the full report.
Ode to Ban Mian
If it’s not my outright favorite Singaporean dish, Ban Mian is definitely my weekly standby, which is maybe a little bit surprising since its definitely not one of those Singaporean foods like laksa or char kway teow or chicken rice that everyone talks about, and I don’t think I even knew it existed for the first year I lived here. The dish is apparently associated with Hakka cuisine, which I take it used to be Northern Chinese and then became Southern Chinese.
The most brilliant thing about Ban Mian is that it is made with homemade noodles that you can actually see crafted in front of you, and that make it feel like the dish is some strange hybrid invented by a local food entrepreneur and an Italian trader back in the time when Singapore was a pirate hangout and the city was run by Chinese gangs. The second most brilliant thing is how they put the minced raw chicken and pork in to the soup and then let it cook right there on the spot. The pork is more brilliant than the chicken, obviously. The third most brilliant thing is the egg, which must be mixed around in the broth at just the right moment, not too soon so it just becomes eggy broth but not too late so that the egg gets boiled and doesn’t interact with the rest of the soup. The fourth most brilliant thing are the crunchy dried anchovies and fried onion put on top at the end, and how the server always ask you if she should put them on, while you are thinking “these two delicious items provide crucial textural balance to this dish, such that I’m not sure it would be Ban Mian without them, so how are you even asking me if I want them?” The fifth most brilliant thing is the super spicy soy sauce with red chillies, which must be added ever so delicately so that there is enough to give kick to the soup but not so much that it becomes inedibly spicy. Eating the chillies is nowhere near brilliant. And though I am a mushroom lover, the mushrooms that are sometimes added are not brilliant either - the dish is perfectly balanced on its own, and the assertiveness of the mushrooms simply detracts from the experience.
Here are some pics of the process (from a down home local hawker center) and the finished product (from an upscale foodcourt downtown).
A well used pasta maker
This sheet of dough will soon be delicious Ban Mian noodles
Mmmm. . .onions and anchovies
Ban Mian, ready to eat (but first need to let it cool down)
Gombak Stadium
Bukit Gombak is a neighborhood that even most Singaporeans don’t know well. Some might even argue that it’s not a neighborhood at all, but just a section of Bukit Batok, though I believe the existence of the Bukit Gombak MRT station closes that discussion definitively. Anyway, despite being rather sleepy and bereft of the first class hawker food that redeems other quasi-suburban Singaporean agglomerations, Bukit Gombak does have its charms. One such bright spot is the Stadium. Located almost directly opposite our condo, Gombak Stadium is dedicated by day to training for the national track and field team, an affiliation that leads to overzealous protection of a central grassy area that would otherwise be ideally suited for tossing the disc. At night, however, the stadium is a classically Singaporean community space, i.e., a multi-cultural and gender neutral environment for pursuing a staid but socially redeeming activity, in this case jogging and various calisthenics.
I’ve been missing my Stadium workouts since school started, so as a poor substitute I have posted a few pictures that Andrea took there last year on flickr.
Innovation City
I spent the last couple of days hanging around the Innovation and Enterprise Week, a conference where Singapore’s government research arm, A*Star, promotes the technologies that it’s fourteen different research groups have developed, and more generally continues the all hands on deck government effort to kickstart a Singaporean knowledge and innovation economy, a la Silicon Valley.
The core question that the conference raised for me is whether the world’s most efficient and forward thinking government will actually succeed in pushing its economy up the global value chain through massive top-down government investment and incentives to foreign firms. As I see it, this is the defining question of Singapore’s economic and social future, or at least a great window on to where the country is and where it wants to head, especially since it touches such an array of important issues, from government spending and FDI to the education system and even the degree of political freedom and censorship. And just like in the past, Singapore is at a deep disadvantage versus a city like Shanghai due to its size and particular approach to maintaining social order, and yet, do you want to bet against them?
The conference also got me thinking more broadly about government involvement in entrepreneurship promotion. For example, there was a presentation by the New Zealand governement’s incubation project, called Ice House, (which definitely sounds like it should be a bar). One of their key problems was that there is not a good pipeline of entrepreneurial ideas in their country. Now, I get that incubation can make it easier for ideas to go from little to big. But if there are no ideas to start with, it’s hard to see how incubation is going to create a pull effect that makes them materialize out of thin air. The same goes for any other aspect of the upstream ecology, such as angel and VC money, etc. (all of which Singapore is pouring money into). So, the question becomes, if that organic entreprenurial community doesn’t already exist, how does it get developed, especially in a rule-following, test-taking country like Singapore? Some people talk about the need for a Singaporean company to hit it big. But my gut is that entreprenurship is tied to more fundamental social patterns such as style of education and mode of public life. Which are not easy things to change in the short term.
Otherwise, the highlight of the conference was definitely the signing of technology commercialization MOUs between A*Star and a number of Singapore SME’s, during which the organizers saw fit to play the Chariots of Fire theme. One of those classic moments when you realize Singapore has it’s shit totally together and yet not at all.
The Interweb in SE Asia
As part of an application for Yahoo!, I did a bit of research on top websites (according to Alexa) in the main SE Asian countries. A few interesting trends that I noticed:
- The web is global - In a considerable majority of cases, top sites in SE Asia are the same as top sites in developed markets. Category leaders that dominate SE Asian markets include:
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- Blogger and Wordpress for blogging
- Google and Yahoo! for search
- Youtube for video
- Facebook and Myspace for social networking
- Zynga for gaming
- Rapidshare for filehosting
- Twitter for twittering
- Wikipedia for wikipedia-ing
- Content is local - the main exception to the rule above is content, which is to say portals. Yahoo! is definitely a dominant player for global portal content, i.e., sports news, finance etc. But for local entertainment and news, it’s all about local sites, both large daily newspapers and internet-only portals. This is especially true in countries like Vietnam, which I suppose are a bit more culturally distant from the globalized internet metropoles.
- Commerce comes later - the one developed market category that doesn’t bubble to the top in SE Asia is commerce, e.g. Ebay and Amazon. No doubt this is tied to low credit card penetration. Craig’s List is another developed market favorite that doesn’t saw much wood out here.
- Local stars are possible - Take multiply, a content sharing site. Huge in SE Asia, much less so in the rest of the world. Or mediafire for file hosting, top 20 in some SE Asian countries (also Latin America), but below 100 in the US.
- Local preferences can be shortlived - Last year everyone was talking about how Friendster was (bizarrely) the most popular social network in SE Asia. IDG Ventures, one of the few Valley-style VCs based in S’pore, was certainly impressed. Along with a bunch of sunk-cost blue chippers who had plunked down on previous rounds, they gave Friendster $20 million to kick ass in Asia. Fast forward a year and now its Facebook looking pretty hot in Malaysia (#1), Indonesia (#1), Thailand (#6), Vietnam (#6). Friendster is still killing it in the Philippines though
City of drainage
I’ve always been fascinated by drainage. It was one of my Dad’s small obsessions, so I suppose this is the reason. One of the nice thing about drainage is that at some level the topic is culturally neutral. Water is always water, no matter the city, town or country in which it flows. The same goes for gravity and soil, which is to say that sand always drains better than clay and so on.
At the same time, drainage does take on different significance depending on geography. Witness Singapore, which, like other equatorial SE Asian countries (i.e., Malaysia and Indonesia), experiences about 2300 mm of rainfall per year, (or twice as much as New York). Rain is consistent year round; monsoon patterns of South Asia do not apply here. Typical storms are short and fierce. In the context of the Northeastern US, only late summer thunderstorms approximate the intensity, and then only poorly. Some storms maintain the ferocity for longer periods. Given the prodigious and forceful precipitation, controlling rainwater once it hits the ground is of paramount importance. Since Singapore is nothing if not a city of planners, it should come as no surprise that the drainage systems are comprehensive and incredibly effective. The country prides itself on almost never experiencing the damaging floods that beset its neighbors.
Drainage is truly a ubiquitous feature of the built environment here, running alongside and between roads, pathways and buildings of all stripe. Below are a few snaps of drainage canals that have caught my eye. For more pics, please see this flickr stream.
Street side drainage near the Chinese garden, west side of Singapore.
Drainage canal in a park, Bukit Batok, west side of Singapore.
S’pore still knows architecture
One of my favorite Singapore events is back for another year. Archifest is Singapore’s annual architecture celebration. One of the highlights of the event is a series of Architours, architecture tours guided by students from NUS. Today I went with my mother-in-law June on one of the tours. We saw two buildings - the nineteenth century home of plantation magnate Tan Yeok Nee, which has been turned into one of the campuses of the Chicago School of Business Executive MBA program (INSEAD, done by the same firm, is way nicer), and the Paya Lebar air base, which was the main passenger airport for Singapore in the 1960s and is now military property. I would have taken a great picture of an amazing mural at the air base that has survived the military years, but they wouldn’t let us use our cameras. (We didn’t get to see the Singapore F16s either - that’s because they are in Arizona). The pictures below were taken on last year’s tour at the Marina Barrage, a dam built at the mouth of the Singapore river.
View from Marina Barrage back to the skyline. The Singapore flyer - a really big ferris wheel - is in the foreground. To the right in the background are I.M. Pei’s excellent Gateway skyscrapers, one of Singapore’s architectural gems.
Marina’s Barrage’s take on the grassy knoll. The building is alive!