Second Day in Singapore

This was our first day of official company visits. Read: Tali had to dress up in something other than flipflops and jeans – Boo! I’m going to be a little more organized with my postings since I’m writing a ton and people can just skip to the sections they’re interested in reading.

The Port of Singapore Authority
Our first stop of the day was at the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA). Rocky told us the port is the lifeline of Singapore – “Singapore is the port and the port is Singpore.” The port is built on reclaimed land and was state owned from 1964 until 1997 when it was privatized. Now it’s a big money making machine with 28 ports in 16 countries. The company is able to be much more customer focused since it doesn’t have to deal with all of the bureaucracy and red tape of going through the state. It only deals with container operations, no passenger vessels. We went on a tour and got a whole spiel about the “operations” of the port including the fact that there are no long “queues,” it takes 25 seconds to clear a truck bringing cargo to the port through the security gate, and there are apparently no true bottlenecks in the system (really?). Good thing we just finished our core Operations class so we knew what the woman was talking about (or maybe some of us didn’t but that’s another issue altogether). She took us up to the top of one of their main office buildings so we were able to see a 360 view of the port and the ships coming in to dock. Amazing view!

Lunch
For lunch we went to Newton’s Circus, one of the many food stalls/courts in Singapore where you can get a variety of cuisines. Rocky ordered for a group of us from a few different stalls. We had Chicken Rice which is roasted or boiled chicken/duck/pork on rice cooked in chicken stock; Indian lentils; Prate (Indian fried bread stuff the resembled Matzo Brie; Indochinese friend noodles; and to drink many of us bought sugarcane juice and lemon or coconut water which is just the natural water/juice inside the coconut. Good stuff! I feel like I’ve already eaten more than my weight on this trip.

U.S. Embassy
Our second visit of the day was to the U.S. Embassy. We met with two officers – one from the State Department who works on economic issues and another from the Department of Commerce. While many people think that Singapore is a U.S. ally, they’re mistaken. It’s actually a “close friend” of the U.S. This just means that there is a lower level of information sharing than with allies and an attack on Singapore is not an attack on the U.S. whereas with an ally it would be. There is a free trade agreement between the U.S. and Singapore and much collaboration on that front. But because most of the companies are state owned there are few homegrown private companies (this doesn’t bode well for entrepreneurship here). Most of the private companies in Singapore are brought in from overseas and are attracted here because of the great incentives that the state offers for companies to locate their offices in Singapore. Also, it’s an English speaking country that’s largely corruption free, employs a U.S. style of doing business, and is an Asian hub. People here want to get down to business and make money. As a result there are around 1,500 U.S. companies that have offices in Singapore, 20% of the workforce is comprised of ex-pats (including 18,000 Americans), and it has the 2nd largest foreign direct investment in Asia.

I am really interested in how Singapore handles its foreign workers since many developed countries with large percentages of these workers tend to get lost and develop a foreign worker problem. Germany, for example, has had foreign workers for years that just stayed, had kids, settled into society but are still not citizens. What about their kids though who were born in Germany and it’s the only place they’ve ever known? They’re part of society, yet the state doesn’t really want them and doesn’t know exactly how to handle the situation. Israel has the same problem. In Singapore, they’re pretty clear on this and employ a very controlled process to make sure they don’t develop this problem. Foreign workers can only sign on for 2-year contracts and the women are not allowed to get pregnant. Foreign maids are required to get a pregnancy check every 6 months and if a maid is pregnant she is sent back to her home country.

The officers stressed the controlling nature of Singapore’s government. For example, the state decides ahead of time the GDP breakdown and makes it happen. There is also very little freedom of the press or speech. When we asked if Singaporeans feel that the government meddles too much in their lives, a native Singaporean working there answered that many citizens think this is true yet they don’t say anything because they can’t. The government apparently has “feelers” in the community that report to them what citizens are thinking and feeling and will implement programs to answer their needs. My sense is that things are good here – most people have jobs, money and good lives in general. There’s no real reason to put oneself in jeopardy for minute issues with how things are run. It’s an interesting social experiment because with a larger population, I think this type of controlling environment would unravel and become oppressive whereas right now it can be frustrating at point but the benefits outweigh the costs. One benefit that I am extremely jealous of is that there is practically no crime here because of the huge penalties the government enforces for any crime, minor or major.

Botanical Gardens and A*STAR Organization
After the U.S. Embassy we took a slight detour through Singapore’s Botanical Gardens They were beautiful and we had a nice walk through them, although most of us were sweating buckets in our nice clothes by the time we left. It’s humid here!

We then headed to A*STAR, a state medical research entity that likens itself to the National Institute for Health in the U.S. To be honest, I was already wiped out from the day at this point so I didn’t do too much listening.

Evening
After a little rest at the hotel, we had a group dinner at a place called “Sundanese” in Boat Quay, which is an area right next to the water with lots of restaurants, bars and clubs. Hostesses stand outside of the restaurants and try to entice you to come in but pushing the menu in your face as you walk by them. It kind of reminded me of South Beach in Miami for some reason. We had a nice time at dinner and went out to a couple of bars in the area afterwards. It was an early night though since we were all super tired.

Other interesting info and reflections from the day:

• Water in Singapore: Singapore has no fresh water source therefore they have to rely on other sources for their drinking water. They import the majority of it from Malaysia, employ desalinization techniques, and are now creating a new fresh water reservoir that will be filled with rainwater. I was super interested in this topic because of Israel’s water predicament and how it affects its relationship with its neighbors. Not surprisingly, Singapore does work with Israel on the desalinization techniques given the advances there in this technology. The fact that it is very dependent on Malaysia for its water also affects its political links with it in the sense that the relationship must remain amicable. Should Malaysia cut off its water supply or reduce it, this would have a significant effect on Singapore.

• Greening of Singapore: At some point in its history, Singapore was a very gray country so its leaders embarked on a “greening” of Singapore. It really is green everywhere you go and there is a hefty fine (like for many other things) for cutting down trees. Rocky told us a story about a construction contractor that cut down one tree without getting permission from the government to build something and the state fined him $100K (Singaporean dollars which is about $66K US dollars). There are now more plant and tree species in Singapore than in the U.S.
  

• Housing in Singapore: 85% of Singaporeans live in government housing units and 97% own their own homes. Those are staggering statistics. From what I understand, the state builds tons of housing units in different sizes and taxes citizens a certain percentage for housing. This amount goes into a fund that becomes the down mortgage payment for an apartment or house. So essentially the state forces you to buy your own home. The other interesting tidbit is that each housing block is segmented proportionally according to the four majority ethnicities in Singapore and when a family sells an apartment they are encouraged to sell it to a family of the same ethnicity in order to keep the proportion balanced in the complex. I didn’t have a chance to ask any Singaporeans, but I wonder 1) if this really works in terms of true desegregation and 2) if Singaporeans internalize this and are more tolerant in general?

• Bathrooms: Fun times in the bathrooms here. They have “eastern style” toilets (thanks Faheem for expanding my bathroom vocabulary) here. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, these are flushing toilets that are on ground level so one has to squat. They’re like a modern version of a hole in the ground. Some of the bathrooms only have them but others that I have seen give you a choice between eastern style toilets are what I guess are referred to as western style toilets. Now I will admit that I am completely naïve and this is the first time I’ve seen this, even though when I was in army boot camp in Israel when I was 15 we only had a hole in the ground (literally) for a week.