Glimpses of Singapore (And video on the beach)
This post has nothing to do with technology, web strategy, or social media. This post has everything to do with sharing some of the sights and sounds that I’ve seen while here in Singapore.
It’s a modern country-state-city (it’s all the same you know) with a population of 4 million, one of the highest per capita incomes of all Asia, very modern, clean, safe, and easy to get around in. The primary language is English, so anyone who can read this blog would feel comfortable getting around. There are races present from all the continents, and no one bats an eye when they see a tourist or friendly, it’s easy to get around. The weather is hot and humid, and the cost of living is high, even higher than New York.
My Google analytics indicates that most of my readers are from Silicon Valley, so for direct comparison, it’s far cleaner and safer that San Francisco, as expensive, and appears to be a good place to do business. The bay area culture is still a very very open and unstructured community, while Singapore appears highly structured –but wanting to undergo a change to be more flexible, especially when adopting social media tools.
After we got acclimated, we took a walk through Singapore, we didn’t sissy it and hail a taxi, we wanted to see what the city was really like, so we walked from Little India to Marina Bay in the middle of the afternoon.
Here’s a video I took at Santosa Island, a resort on the southern area of Singapore. I was particularly impressed with the cleanliness of the beach, and lounge like area that anyone could rent and be served at, quite nice. My last video at the Apple store received over 10,000 views, I wonder if this one can beat it.
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I’m heading back for day 2 of the IX 2007 conference (I present again today to the main hall) and will be reporting back in to you all from this blog. My notes from Day 1. I’ve two interviews with the local tech press and will be writing up a report for the whole world to read and better understand doing business (if you’re a web company) in Singapore. To come soon.
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that’s cafe del mar, the only other branch of the original cafe del mar from ibiza, spain. nightlife and beach life is convenient in singapore, you can get anywhere in 15-20mins unlike how we had to drive 40mins from mtn view to SF to club. or drive 2 hrs to half moon bay to surf. of course the waters here ain’t the pacific ocean so no surf at all!
a great t-shirt souvenir to get is one called, “Survivor Singapore, OutEat, OutShop, OutChill”… highly recommended!
one thing that the singapore urban landscape stands out from SF is that it’s more colourful. the buildings are well lit and painted in a rainbow of colors. more pleasant to the eye i feel.
business climate wise, it’s definitely pro-business but the lack of a sizeable local market makes it difficult to build critical mass.
my observation is that in general, the mass market here is 1-2yrs behind SF. i.e. Second Life was abuzz in SF starting around 2004/05 but only got buzz here in 06/07.
even facebook took a much longer time to take root here in the local market.
however, the blogging scene is intense here. every other young person has a blog. but they’re mainly mundane and self-centred diary types. .ie. http://www.dawnyang.com/ or xiaxue.blogspot.com
topical bloggers are much rarer as people here in general either don’t have much opinions or prefer to reserve them privately.
as digital cameras are so widely available, most bloggers, especially the females focus on camwhoring, taking pictures of shopping finds and food conquests. hence expressions of identity usually come in the form of pictures rather than rants.
the dominant social network here is friendster with a reported 1.4m profiles out of 4m population but as a result it’s turning into a myspace…
the question on many of our minds is that: can the country that banned pod-casting and video-blogging during the last election in may 06 achieve anything significant in the social media space?
Hi Jeremiah,
If memory serves me correctly, which would be a shock given my old age now, I believe Sentosa Isaland was entirely man-made as well. A fun place to visit.
I never made it out to Santosa, but I remember walking along another beach: Did you notice the long line of cargo ships lined up along the horizon, waiting to get into the harbor?
Also, I found it pretty amazing that the whole city seems to be undermined by a giant network of inter-connected shopping malls…
Peter, that’s correct. I can’t tell if the underground mall is an efficient way to travel the city in air conditioning, why not subsidize it with commercialism?
Damon, you’re right, the sand is imported, although the massive island doesn’t appear to be man made. Heavily development is present. I suspect those islands in the photos are man made.
Peter
I don’t know what those ships are doing, but Singapore does have one of he largest shipyards in the world, I wouldn’t be surprised
Wow Justin that’s some serious ideas. I didn’t know that about the banning, please leave a link.
Jeremiah,
I’m afraid the ships really _are_ just there to wait for their stop at the harbor, at least that’s what my Singaporean friends were telling me… As for the underground malls: Good point! I’m not sure if they’re an efficient way to navigate the city, but I’m almost convinced there’s hardly a part of town where you couldn’t get without even leaving the malls. (Personally, I was so confused by where we popped up after a few minutes walk through the mall tunnels, I couldn’t help thinking of the city as some kind of bee hive-ish structure…)
Anyway, enjoy your stay!