Home, Sweet Home

Short and succinct: it's great to go away, but there's no place like home. Period.

View From the Top, Part 3

Following previous posts 1 and 2 about flying (this is my blog, after all), this final installment in our "View from the Top" series is about my last flight in Asia for a while!

I started typing this on my laptop in seat 72A on the upper deck of a JAL 747-400 on my way to Tokyo. I was cruising at 529 miles per hour, at an altitude of 36,000 feet over the South China Sea, 527 miles west-southwest of Manila. Time to Tokyo: 3 hrs, 54 minutes.

Here I am sitting in my seat before departure:

And here is the real view from the top:

The view from up here in the “hump” of the 747 is really amazing: from up here, you’re about five stories above the ground, so you’re pretty much looking down at everything else. The cabin is smaller up here – only six seats across, compared to ten down on the main deck. The windows and overhead bins are a little smaller, too. But the view is incredible…

My last view of Singapore for a while - adios!

It was a cloudy day:

Some small Japanese islets not all that far from Iwo Jima:

Mount Fuji in the distance:

The Japanese coast before landing:

All in all, it was a great flight, and now I'm ready for the 14-hour flight to Dallas! Now I'm sitting here at the airport in Tokyo, waiting for my 7pm departure (it's about 5:30pm here now).

Homeword Bound

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go I'm standing here, outside [the] door... ...the dawn is breaking, it's early morn The taxi's waiting, he's blowing his horn

Alright, the time has come!

It's now not even 5am yet, and I'm leaving my apartment for the airport in about 10 minutes. My flight (JAL 712) leaves Singapore this morning just after 8am, and is scheduled to arrive into Tokyo at 4pm this afternoon. Then, I have a three hour layover, and then it's on to Dallas on American flight 61.

See you soon!

An American Student in Singapore: Closing Thoughts

"No man, freedom didn’t fail. Right now we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time."

—Austin Powers (Mike Myers)

Well, it’s my last day here in Singapore. Tomorrow morning at just after 5:00 in the morning, I’m leaving for the airport to begin the long, one-day (a full 24 hours) journey back home to Texas. Now, at the end of my semester in Singapore, I can reflect on what I’ve encountered and experienced, and make some informed judgments not only about my adopted home for the last four months, but my true home—America—as well.

First and foremost, while I have been here in Singapore, I have had a sort of philosophical revelation: that pure capitalism for pure capitalism’s sake isn’t worth anything. Without expression, and creativity, and innovation, pure capitalism is just a word thrown around, and it doesn’t mean much. Janis said that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I think that without something interesting, exciting, and original in our lives—we’ll never really be free. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Coming to Singapore, I expected to see a capitalist utopia—completely free and open borders across which can openly flow ideas, designs, capital, goods. What I found instead was a place where the image projected to the world is one of a 24-hour convenience store nation: always open for business, 24/7, 365, but which—after peeling back the layers—is not that free (economically or otherwise) at all. One visitor to Singapore, put it this way: “tourists [find] nothing to see or do, only the shops and skyscrapers, no sense anymore of the mysterious east. A sterile place, Utopia gone wrong.” Now I’m not sure if I’d go quite that far—there is some to see and do here beyond shopping, and the people are mostly wonderful, but I agree with the basic sentiment that Singapore is not in the slightest bit “foreign” or “exotic” to the average westerner. But for the obvious Asian ethnicity of 95% of the inhabitants, Singapore could be any city in the west, but most certainly not any city in Southeast Asia.

When it comes to foreign trade and international business, Singapore definitely is quite free. Its port is open to anyone, from anywhere, anytime. Internally, however, Singapore’s economy is extremely statist in nature. The government owns the land, the homes, and the media. (Sort of sounds like that Florida’s Natural orange juice commercial, doesn’t it?: “We own the land, the trees, and the company,” but I digress.) The largest super market chain, NTUC FairPrice, is government-owned, and essentially regulates the “fair” cost of basic goods (which suffice it to say, is more than I could get at Wal Mart). Wages in many sensitive industries are influenced by, if not outright set by, the government, despite the government’s continual mantra of “meritocracy.” And, like in many countries where the state runs the show, most of the really bright, talented young thinkers are snapped up by…you guessed it…the government. The government intentionally compensates these people so well that the private sector never gets to benefit from them. (After all, though, there isn’t much of a purely ‘private’ sector to speak of in Singapore: everything from the newspapers to the TV stations to the national airline to the mobile phone providers are government corporations.)

As for housing, nobody (or almost nobody) really owns anything. As much as 90% of the population or more lives in government-built/-run/-owned high-rise public housing towers. Now, to be fair, of course, this is Singapore: so the buildings are generally spotless and well-maintained. But, nonetheless, while the government loves to preach about how important home ownership is in given Singaporeans a “stake” in their country, the truth is that the best most can do is a 99-year lease with the government for a specific apartment. They don’t own the land underneath. There are a few small enclaves of residents—mostly local elites and foreign expatriates—who are landed, meaning they actually own a standalone or semi-detached home and the land underneath it. But, there too, not really. Should the government ever want that land, people have virtually no recourse. The government can take it at any time, and people need only get the compensation the government deems “fair.”

Now to some of the more liberal among us, this may well sound like utopia. And that’s perfectly fine, I respect that. But, I don’t think I could live in this sort of environment permanently. It stifles creativity and free expression, both of which are officially encouraged, but at least one of which (I think you can guess which one) is largely nonexistent in practice. Those who express views deemed ‘derogatory’ towards the nation’s leaders can be sued for defamation and thrown in jail (it has happened many times). The media tightly controls and censors what airs on the news and is printed in papers. And perhaps most egregiously, the two electoral districts (out of 84) that aren’t represented by a member of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) are the last to get just about everything: their public housing blocs don’t get renovated, their transport systems aren’t upgraded, etc. People don’t even flinch about it: for most, it’s just a cause for laughter. The ruling PAP doesn’t even make qualms about it—leaders have said that those areas most “supportive” of public housing modernization (meaning the politicians who dole it out) will get it. A bit scary, really.

But, to be sure, this was the choice of the people here in Singapore: Singaporeans have made the decision that economic prosperity need not necessarily bring political freedom. They have negotiated with themselves and decided that material wealth is more valuable than free expression, a concept hardly foreign to them because of their historic relationship with the western (ostensibly free) world. And, one would find it hard to argue with the results: Singapore does amazingly well compared to the rest of the world, with one of the highest per-capita incomes of any nation on earth, and when compared strictly with its neighbors in Southeast Asia, Singapore is doing stupendously—far and away better than any other nation in the region. One would have to go as far away as Australia or Japan to find another nation where citizens enjoy the standard of living that those in Singapore do. Considering that this nation was essentially a British port town just over 50 years ago, and was no more than a backwater fishing village 150 years ago, that achievement is all the more impressive.

So what this all comes down to is that Singapore is not really a nation. Minister Mentor and elder statesman Lee Kwan Yew (known locally as simply “LKY” or “MM”) even says it himself. He was quoted by one author early on as saying that the idea of an independent Singapore was “a political, geographic and economic absurdity.” The most accurate description of Singapore would be to call it a corporation that happens to have a military. Singapore isn’t so much a country as a rapidly-expanding business enterprise.

This place really is—in virtually every sense—one giant corporation. The locals will even tell you– they all pretty much know it. It has—truly, in all seriousness—all of the hallmarks of a modern multinational.

All of its activities are closely controlled and monitored by smart, if bureaucratic, central management. They test out new projects with pilot programs and evaluate results with Swiss watch precision. There are corporate slogans and marketing jingles and buzz-words that filter down from the top (political leaders) through middle management (schools, the media) to the worker bees (everyone else). The place is fixated on market share and constantly monitors its standings and rankings in various metrics compared with regional competitors like Hong Kong. They even have community racial harmony dialogue meetings, their state-run version of those wonderful corporate “diversity training” seminars we’ve all come to know and love. Everyone here (and by that I mean all the employees…uh, I mean, citizens, of this company…uh, I mean…country) sits around and strategize about the challenges facing the country and how it relates to them: why China might pose a threat, why it’s important for them not to leave Singapore to go work and live overseas, why they have to get an education, why they have to respect others, etc. Doesn’t that sound like a corporation to you?

You get the very real sense when you’re here that this is a completely contrived and artificial society. It may sound harsh, but it’s really not: even leading academics in Singapore have called Singapore an “artificial country” because of its unique history and non-struggle for independence. Everything in this country—and I mean everything—from the art, to the history, to the satirizing sketch-comedy shows on TV, are contrived. Nothing is really historically-rooted, or organic. Singaporeans would say that they’re trying to assert their own national identity. However, to someone from the country that has been the genesis for just about all that is “modern culture” in the last century, it all just seems ‘forced,’ for lack of a better word. They don’t have art for art’s sake, or creativity for creativity’s sake, or innovation for innovation’s sake. Virtually nobody just sits around in a garage (who in Singapore even has one of those?) writing the chords for the next great rock and roll song, or writing code for the next great web site, or dreaming up the next great business idea. It just doesn’t happen. For better or worse, this society—again, much like an organized, if lumbering and bureaucratic, corporation—is just far more focused on efficiently executing on ideas, but not actually creating them itself. And they are great at it: Singaporeans are absolutely brilliant and relentlessly focused; they excel at executing. But they are, more often than not, executing someone else’s vision, be it with technology, finance, or anything else.

Now please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that there are government censors breathing down your neck everywhere you go. There aren’t. People can and do express their opinions, however, everyone is ever-mindful that a) the official channels of expression through which to voice opposition to those in power are quite limited and b) those in power now have little chance of being thrown out of power anytime soon. For those reasons, while people do (at least officially) have the right to criticize the government, you don’t hear it that often. Most people have completely “bought into” the corporate mythology—and I mean that with no sarcasm or disrespect. It just is what it is.

Like any great corporation in the world, Singapore watches its position in the marketplace. Singapore (and Singaporeans) are immensely competitive, and it’s reflected in their national obsession with rankings. Any uptick in Singapore's standing in any particular measurement is a major national cause célèbre, touted by politicians, the media, and college professors. And, given the results, it’s not hard to see why: Singapore usually places pretty high in them. The nation’s economic development agency happily trumpets all of Singapore’s accolades on its website:

#1 Most Competitive Place for Business
#1 Easiest Place to do Business
#2 World’s Most ‘Network-Ready’ Country
#1 Best Labor Force
#1 Best Air Hub in the World
#1 Best Port Infrastructure in the World
#1 World’s Most Globalized Nation

…and on and on. All of these numbers are immensely impressive, considering that in virtually every one of those rankings, the only other country that Singapore is really competing with is the United States: a country with about 60 times the population and about 14,000 times the land area (yes, that’s right: Singapore is about the size of Poughkeepsie, New York).

But there is one ranking not on that list that I think is just as important as any of those. Freedom House, the international political freedom monitoring organization that annually scores countries on the freedom of their citizenry, calls Singapore merely “partly free” and gives it fairly low scores for both political rights and civil liberties. The United States, on the other hand, receives the highest possible score in both categories, and is one of relatively few countries in the world classified as truly and completely “free.” In this listing, Singapore doesn’t even rank in the top 10.

I, like most new arrivals, was initially awed by the Singapore system. I walked around in amazement, awed by how ‘the system’ worked: trains ran on time, the streets were spotless, signs posted everywhere, etc. People seemed to generally get along, even among the several major ethnic groups present. The place has no crime. Well, it has some, but basically none. There are cities in the world with one tenth the population of Singapore that have more than ten times the crime. Nothing tragic really every happens—no muggings, rapes, murders, etc.—and when they do happen, they are so rare and so unexpected that they cause enormous shock to the entire country.

However, as I began to spend more time here, I began to recognize the price of this societal efficiency and “practical” social stability. The cost that people have happily and willingly paid is their freedom—it is not a free society: not a dictatorial big-brother state, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely not free. It’s bland, and “boring” (as some other Asians from other countries often say). It is a wonderful country, with lots of wonderful people, like the Tams, who have virtually all been hospitable, friendly and welcoming to foreigners like me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing the Singaporeans personally, nor their society, in the slightest. I fully recognize that it’s not better or worse than mine, just different. They seem—at least outwardly—to be quite satisfied with it.

And I suppose, in closing, that this is the realization I’ve had, and one of the many reasons why I am today and will always and forever be so incredibly grateful that that my passport says “United States of America” on it. Perhaps Austin Powers was right: in America, we have freedom, and responsibility, to choose—our purchases, our homes, our careers, our leaders, our lives. We have found an amazing balance between not only having one of the most dynamic and prosperous societies on earth, but also one of the most innovative that humankind has ever seen. Even though we (or at least I) take it for granted, we are able to enjoy a level of economic freedom, prosperity and opportunity that is virtually unequalled anywhere else on the planet but, at the same time, also enjoy political freedom and choice that is also the unequalled envy of virtually every fledgling democracy (and, while they won’t admit it, even some senior democracies) around the globe. In the rest of the world, those two things are generally accepted by most as being mutually exclusive—if they could have just one or the other, they would be thrilled. But we are lucky enough to have both—wow! A groovy time, indeed, Austin.

My, my, how incredibly blessed we are.

The Coming Home Top 10

And...

The Top 10 Things I Miss about the United States:

10. The Salt Lick: if you’re from Austin, or are familiar with it, you’ll get this one. The Salt Lick is my favorite barbeque place in Austin (well, Driftwood, actually), and I can’t wait for that $14.95 all-you-can-eat brisket, ribs, sausage, beans and bread. (They’re going to have to wheel me out of there.)

9. Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond: I love ice cream, and this is simply the best ice cream on earth, bar none. Period. And you can’t get it in Singapore.

8. Austin: I’m looking forward to crisp mornings in the spring, when you wake up and the sun is shining but there’s still a stiff chill in the air, and I can go walking around town, by the Capitol, down to Towne Lake, etc. Austin’s just a great town.

7. Movies: I go to the movies very often, but here in Singapore, for some strange reason, movies open sometimes several months after they premier elsewhere. I can’t wait to see movies again when they come out.

6. English-language television: while my television watching has dropped dramatically over the last few years, it is still going to be very nice to know that I will shortly be able once again to sit down on a lazy afternoon and have a choice of 50 different channels – in English – to choose from, whereas here, I have 2 (one of which is just 24-hour news).

5. New York: I can’t wait to get back “home.” I miss New York – haven’t been there in almost five months, and I need to get my fix.

4. UT: wow, I never in my wildest imagination thought I’d ever hear myself begging for UT’s bureaucracy back. But after four months dealing with NUS, which makes the Postal Service look like Wal Mart, I can’t wait to be dealing with UT again!

3. Wal Mart: alright, some might laugh or sneer, but I am a big fan of Wal Mart. Anyone who knows me knows it. I am eagerly awaiting being able to go buy a roll of paper towels and an eight-pound bag of pistachios at 3am. Ah, the beauty of capitalism.

2. Freedom: Singapore’s a great place, but it’s not really a free place. Sure, there aren’t Sovietesque crackdowns on a daily basis, but the government owns/controls all the media, and pretty much runs everything. I’m looking forward to getting back to a free press, a free and open society, and a generally more open-minded way of life. God Bless America!

1. My family and friends: I miss people the most. (Yuck, I’m starting to sound like Barbara Streisand, “people who need people…are the luckiest people…”) But I really can’t wait to see everyone again after four months! So much has happened in my life, and others’, so I have a lot to catch up on.