Monday, August 27, 2007

The West and the East put in a blender



The best roads I've ever seen, filled with cars with some of the worst driving I've ever seen. A super modern, efficient metro system, but anyone above 1.80 meters will have to keep their head down to fit in. An ueber-hip and trendy restaurant filled with people following a 'day at the beach' dress code. A hefty fine for not wearing a seat belt in the back of a cab, while construction contractor's pick-up trucks race by with 10 passengers sitting on top of each other in the back with not even a roof, let alone seat belts. Singapore is probably the most irrationally mixed country in the world. As it is much richer and much more developed than all the other countries in the region it looks more like a 'Western' country than most countries in the 'real' West do. But even then it still has such a clear Asian identity through these examples I mentioned above. I could go on and on, but I think you pretty much get the idea. It's as though somebody dropped 4 million South East Asians into Switzerland, added palm trees and turned up the heat. It's the strangest thing and that's what also makes this place so amazingly unique. In many countries the various cultures live along side each other or they are mixed so extensively that one can not see the differences, but here it's as though the blender lost power half way. For those who have no clue what I'm talking about...come visit this great town.

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