Malik Watkins's Bloglines

As I mentioned, Singapore overall is completely up-to-date. But not only up-to-date, they take care of what they have. Some people call Singapore the big Nanny State, but there is a price to pay to take care of what you have. There are rules for everything. Here is just a sample:

• Absolutely No Drugs – Death Penalty; and they don’t care who you are, how much money you have, gender, or what country you are from. As Anthony Bourdain says, “you would have to be dumbest person the world has ever seen to bring drugs into Singapore”. No exceptions!!
• No Chewing Gum is allowed anywhere whatsoever, so don’t bring it;
• On the list of limits for the Duty Free products allowed to be brought into the country, Singapore is the only one that does not allow cigarettes to be brought in. Again, no matter who you are, or how much your cigarettes cost, they will throw them away right at the gate; you can purchase them once in country, but make sure you don’t drop a butt on the ground;
• $1,000 – $2,000 fine for littering, plus public service
• $1,000 fine for smoking on the metro
• $500 fine for eating or drinking on the metro
• $500 fine for eating Durian fruit on the metro (it has one serious unique smell)

And, this is just a sample. Bottom line, if you go to Singapore, you best know the RULES; because they are not playing….and caning is for real as well!!

As I mentioned, you don’t see a lot of police officers, but obviously something is working quite well:

Interesting thing, is that you hardly see any Police around, anywhere. But, much of what they have accomplished here is the ability to take policy and merge it with the values of society so that they are not really in great competition. The Rule of Law is for real here….

Case in point, look at these pictures of the metro rail station…absolutely spotless…What is also interesting about the metro is that you see so many kids throughout the day riding the train. You don’t see school buses. For it seems that they have resolved the public transportation issue for kids to school by putting them on the metro. And, trust this, thousands upon thousands of kids ride these metro rails throughout the day and night, and it is completely safe. You may even end up in jail or getting a public caning from staring at one of them too long…they mind there business…and everyone else minds their business as well…and, I am for that…it is something to see. While you don’t see a lot of police, they do make sure they communicate what you need to do and don’t need to do while in Singapore:

There were also a lot of interesting random things I saw around Singapore, too much to just post here, so I have just been showing a few items. This biker caught my eye…sometimes in the United States, we don’t conceive that people around the world like the same things we like, and do the same things we do…check out this Sikh Biker:

Another interesting observation that really caught my eye was some of the public demonstrations of solidarity amongst groups. It is widely known that women from around different parts of Asia serve as maids for more affluent families. Often times this takes them away from their homeland – Indonesia, Malaysia, China, etc. They even have agencies that recruit and place maids from these countries with families in other parts of Asia. Obviously, this can lead to a major sense of displacement. Well, on the weekends, this group of maids gets together. This is a picture early on in the day, so there are only a few in place. But, by the end of the day, this place was packed. They are all maids from different countries coming together to provide an impromptu family for each other, to find joy, and to support each other.

Reminds of the movie in the United States called “The Help”….maybe one day, one of them will write a book and we will see the South East Asian version of the “The Help” 🙂