Singapore - a beautiful little country

Singapore is a little country near the equator, wonderfully managed, clean, nice people, good diverse inexpensive food, very safe for kids and women, timely transportation, footpath on every road. In short - it caters to great standard of living.

Inside a MRT station	Chinese vegetarian stall

I found very few people (including Singaporeans) who have praiseworthy words for Singapore. Most of the Singaporeans are of Chinese ethnicity and they seem to identify with China, Indian Singaporeans (mostly tamils) build their own cocoon and are happy in their world, foreigners who come here think more from opportunity angle and want to move on to Western country or go back to home country after having some savings. Nothing wrong, of course, but there are quite a few, who make negative comments about Singapore. This bothers me.

People often compare one-to-one with their own culture. Such comparison is flawed, because in most of the cases they are blind to the negative aspects of their culture. Singapore has it own set of unique features that makes a memorable living experience.

Beside Singapore, I have lived in India, USA and short visit to few more countries. I find Singapore lovely place to live for this phase of my life, where I have kids. Some of them are as follows:

Enriching the Habit of Reading - Being in computer/Internet age. Much of my time at home goes with computers, kids or doing errands. Reading in home is just not the activity I am psychologically prepared for. However, I have taken up reading during my 30 minutes commute to work, which is by bus or train (MRT). I actually look forward to the commuting time! In last six months, I have finished some good books - biograpy of Abraham Lincoln, The Plague Race, and The best American Science Writing. I never had this wonderful reading time in my life. In USA, you drive for work and in India, it is difficult and barely managible.

Inexpensive Food - In Singapore, usually there are food courts in the shopping complex or business center. They sell food that is inexpensive (about US$2.50) and it makes no sense to bring food from home. The food is quite diverse - differnt variety of chinese dishes, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean. If you are less inclined to eat ethnic food, fast food resturants like Mc Donald, Subway and Burger King is also there.

Ethnic food is relatively healthy and less fried. In a sense, it is real homely food. The chinese resturants in USA tend to be highly fried and unhealthy (although more tasty).

Vegeratian Food - In countries other than India, vegetarian food is not easy to come by. Strangely singapore food courts always have one Chinese vegetarian shop. The food is made up of vegetables and tofu. For some dishes, they try to immitate tofu with the taste and looks of chicken, beef, pork. The dish cost like US$1.50! Sometimes I feed bad for them for charging so little. I try to avoid the Indian resturant for health reasons (they use lot of oil)

Having Maid - In Singapore one can hire maids on live-in or scheduled basis. Maids are available for US$300 and are usually from poor coutries like India, Indonesia, Phillipines. Government takes 2/3 of the share and maid gets the rest. Live-in maid take care of all the chores - walking kids to school, preparing food and cleaning the house. Hiring of maids are handled by agents and there is minimum risk.

In India, one cannot trust maid to handle children and one needs to have their grandparents or guardian supervising the maid activities. In USA, one cannot afford the maids. I greatly respect the single parents of USA, usually women, who have to work and rush to pickup their children and take care of the house. I hope their employers are kinder to them as a part of social responsibility.

Exercise - Singapore government has provided sports complex, stadium, water playground, swimming pools. All residential complex has little play area for kids and adults. The swimming cost about US$0.75 per entry, which is quite inexpensive compared to even India. Since the weather is warm throughout the year, I get most of the excercise from jogging on the footpath beside the road and some exercise on the play area. In US, it is necessary to have membership with a gym to get exercise, especially during cold weather.