JBW » Singapore

Soros in Singapore (part 2)

12th January 2006

To my amazement, AsiaOne (Singapore Press Holdings) ran an AP report today on Soros’ comments about the lack of openness in Singapore society. An article entitled ‘S’pore not an open society, argues George Soros’ also made p. 7 of the ‘Home’ section in the Straits Times (albeit minus the names of opposition MPs who have been bankrupted through law suits). The ST piece also reported that: ‘Responding to Mr Soros’ comments on Singapore, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts said: “If we are not an open society, George Soros would hardly be able to make the comments at an open forum in Singapore, and be reported in the Singapore media.”

Lest we forget

30th April 2005

Kranji Cemetery, Singapore, 25 April 2005

I made my annual pilgrimage to the ANZAC Day dawn service on Monday morning, my second here in Singapore. Some of the pomp and ceremony makes me feel a little ill at ease, especially the religious aspects of it — or the institutionalised religious aspects do, at least. The words used by these people always seem so hollow and insincere. I also baulk at the singing of the national anthem. Not that I’m unpatriotic, it’s just that some people look upon this as a nationalist symbol, which is a little ironic given that nationalism has been the source of so many wars. Anyway, these personal hang-ups aside, ANZAC Day is always a special day for me, and this year was no exception. It was a very moving occasion, and the highlight was the halt in proceedings when, after all the dignatories had laid their wreaths, an old digger came forward to place his bunch of flowers in memory of his mates. This is commonplace in Australia, of course, but not in Singapore. Having read The Naked Island (by Russell Braddon) recently, I imagined to myself he might have been one of the inmates at Changi during the last war.

A trip to Sembawang

22nd April 2005

Sembawang beach (facing south)

After perusing the Singapore weekend papers on the ‘raging debate’ (sic) about the proposed casino (should Singapore be hip and have one to bring in squillions of dollars of tourist revenue each year, or take the moral high ground and remain boring), I decided that this was way too controversial for me and I set out to see if this country I temporarily call home has the remnants of a ‘soul’ somewhere. I’d read in a Reuters report that, amazingly, the Republic of Singapore has grown in size by around 20% over the last 40 years — that’s not population, but area. Roy and HG once joked that such was the Singaporean zeal for land reclamation, it wouldn’t be long before ex-pats like me could take a weekend drive back to Australia. Maybe the only thing that’s preventing this happening is that there aren’t many hills left to bulldoze in Singapore, and the Indonesians stopped them dredging sand from the ocean bed a couple of years ago because it was starting to affect their coastline! Anyway, in this Reuters report, a reference was made to Sembawang Beach at the northern tip of the island, and how this was one of the last remaining ‘natural’ beaches, the others being man made, a few dumper loads of sand having been tossed around the concrete retaining walls after the land reclamation process. I also read that a small group was lobbying to save this beach from reclamation and development and had even gone to the extent of setting up a web site to “provide quiet feedback” to the government. This sent my pulse racing and I simply had to see this beach with my own eyes.

The case for city dwelling

28th January 2005

The view from my home office window

Having been a resident of the concrete jungle of Singapore for the last 18 months, I sometimes long for the wide open spaces of my Kobble Creek five acre block … the fresh air, the striking contrast of the bright blue of the cloudless sky against the many greens of the eucalypt trees, the beautiful birdlife and the peace and quiet. What I don’t miss is the 1000km per week in the car commuting to and from work and to kids’ music and sports events. I don’t own a car anymore. I get taxis and take the bus or the train because everything is so close by, and the services are cheap and efficient. Paradoxically, therefore, my ecological footprint, although still unconscionably high, is a lot lower than it was when I lived in Queensland. A recent article in the New Yorker (republished this week in the Australian Financial Review), entitled ‘Green Manhattan’ tells a similar story (see below if the link doesn’t work).

Unnatural disasters

30th December 2004

Women reach out for packets of rice from a relief van in a village near Cuddalore, 185km south-west of Chennai.
Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty; Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8542,1380675,00.html

As a kid I always struggled conceptually with the notion of ‘natural disaster’. What’s ‘natural’ about a disaster? Is it a term made up by insurance companies? Certainly the events of the last few days have been very unnatural, so much so that I’ve had difficulty getting my head around it all. Spending Christmas in Malacca with my family meant I was close to the epicentre of the earthquake, and not far south of the tidal waves, and yet I was completely oblivious to it all until a mate from Australia called me on my mobile to see if I was ok. It seems that the island of Sumatra acted as a shield. Back in Singapore this week, I’ve been taking big gulps of carbon monoxide fumes on Shenton Way with glee and life doesn’t seem quite as mundane as it did before Christmas. I’ve also been reading about the personal grief and the eyewitness accounts of individuals at The Guardian weblog. It is very humbling.

Foreign workers in Singapore

4th August 2003

There’s a bit of a furore at the moment here in Singapore over the issue of foreign workers. With unemployment at a ‘heady’ 4.5% (which is pretty high by Singaporean standards) a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) economists released a report last week indicating that 3 out of every 4 new jobs between 1997 and 2002 went to foreign workers.

Sustainable development in Singapore

29th July 2003

Arriving in Singapore last week, I was immediately struck by the changes in the landscape since I was last here for an extended period in the mid-1990s. It’s bigger and glitzier and more ‘Western’ than ever. This caused me to ponder just how much more development can take place on this tiny land mass.

A new chapter

28th July 2003

And so begins Chapter Three in my life. After a 15 year spell in the antipodes, the boy from Birmingham now finds himself in Singapore, at least for the foreseeable future.

Category: Singapore