12 Observations On Singapore

Automation, luxury, design thinking, and more

Hi there,

Sorry for not writing anything last weekend. I promise to fully refund the $0 subscription fee to any subscribers who went into clinical depression because they didn’t hear from me last Sunday. But there’s a silver lining to this catastrophe.

The reason I couldn’t write anything last week is because I was in Singapore, busy following the rules and avoiding crippling $1000 fines that they impose for severe infractions- like smoking in an elevator or stopping your car at a bus stand for 1 picosecond.

It was a fun exploration of an admirable city state with a fascinating culture, and my dehaati mind had a ton of observations on the very different structure of reality it noticed.

Here’s a bunch of raw, unfiltered observations on Singapore by an Indian traveler:

1. Order and Prosperity: Experiencing Singapore today made me feel (especially while driving back home from the airport) that the country has achieved a level of order, progress, and prosperity that almost makes you wistful when you look at India. Everything feels orderly, well-defined, and rich. There’s no basic problem—things work perfectly. It’s so smooth that it becomes controversy-free to the point of being boring. One of the headlines I saw in a local paper was about a celebrity quitting drinking. Even their craziest Sansani news is a positive update (lol). What kind of a society it must be when your biggest controversy is probably the blandest shit in the planet? It almost felt like nothing ever goes wrong in Singapore.
   
   

   

   This is a free pic stolen from the Internet. I possess neither the skills nor the budget to make such photography happen

   
   
   

2. The Design of Everything: Everything is pre-defined. You’ll always see a green or red sign at the pedestrian crossings, so if you don’t see it, you know you’re not supposed to cross. Every building has accessibility ramps, and lifts lead directly to the metro compartments reserved for accessibility. Diaper-changing stations are everywhere. Even the basement parking has clear signage, guiding you before you need to turn. It’s a society where design thinking has stripped away all uncertainty and leaves no room for confusion, guesswork, or judgment calls. You just follow.
   
   
   

3. Rigidity: But this rigid order can sometimes get annoying. A great sign of an extreme rules-based society is the constant visibility of fines—parking violations, stopping at bus stops, canceling a Grab ride, etc. They’re everywhere. You have to book a cab only when you’re 110% sure you’ll be at the exact pre-determined pick-up spot before your driver arrives. If not, pay a penalty. No “Bhaiyya, road ke iss side pe aajao” and the cab driver spending the next 10 mins trying to figure out where in the galaxy you are. You can’t even leave a bag on the seat in a cab. At one point, I got severe stress thinking that my son's shit-stained diapers might create such a noxious smell in the hotel that the govt might slap a SGD 10,000 fine on us for disrupting the safe olfactory levels in the locality and perhaps even deport us for engaging in such heinous crimes against humanity.
   
   

4. I wonder if all this rigidity also creates a citizenry with a similarly rigid mindset. When everything is defined, why think of anything different? When following rules becomes muscle memory, does it stifle innovative thinking, which necessarily depends on seeing past imposed constraints? (Not yet, I guess)
   
   
   

5. Luxury Consumerism: I also wonder if a society that’s so used to doing things only a certain way, and of having a very easy, orderly, predictable life, will be ready to embrace a world of pain, disruption, and chaos. It felt like a heaven of luxury capitalism where everyone’s hunter-gatherer brains are running amok with mimetic desire when they see another person with the new faddy phone sticker, coffee mug, or clothing brand. People will queue up and wait long hours just to get their hands on brand new logos…before they can move on to the next wallet-destroying fad. Everyone’s sipping tea, living the good life, making almost 100k USD on average, buying luxury brands like it’s nobody’s business. It’s like the ultimate life ask of any deluded consumerist- only I wonder if the meaning crisis is secretly raging within the populace. I did see a church or two, but there were barely any signs of religiosity. Perhaps not easy to notice, and I’ll have to do some research on this.
   
   
   

6. The Awe of Singapore’s Rise: I felt such awe and wonder after the national museum visit, despite my son's attempts to shatter the windows with his 150 dB screaming and trying his level best to get us kicked out or imprisoned. What was once a random backwater has become such a dream city state that the world envies after a series of so many fortuitous accidents. The British development, the independence, Lee Kuan Yew, and his masterstroke policies. Felt wistful thinking about how he got the 2 child rule right while Indira Gandhi’s goons were busy castrating men and reducing thousands of Indians to crippling beggary attempting the same stuff. There were similarly a million other things that could’ve gone wrong but didn't, to make it a modern icon of a nation- Singapore’s story is just dreamy and inspiring. And the fact that they depend on importing everything and are still one of the best city-states in the world really blows my mind. What’s to be seen is how they handle the fracturing of global trade and the unraveling of the existing world order.
   
   
   

7. A Parental State: Free libraries, upskilling for people even in their 50s, and government programs that encourage learning—Singapore’s government clearly does a lot to ensure its people have good opportunities (the quality and volume of books in their libraries struck me). It’s like a big papa watching over everyone, ensuring you have all the resources to live a great life while also punishing you if you err. It’s an effective approach, but I couldn’t help wishing India could adopt a similar mindset and take some steps toward improving the quality of life for its citizens.
   
   
   

8. Lee Kuan Yew’s Legacy: I guess I felt exactly what Deng Xiaoping must have when Lee Kuan Yew invited him over and showed him how a third-world backwater could become a first-world country. That must have been a turning point that motivated Deng to undertake China’s own transformation- and look where our neighbor stands today. Charlie Munger once quipped that perhaps no person has done more for China than LKY for this reason. It’s a truly wondrous thing to witness. I wonder if enough Indian policymakers have spent studying the state experientially.
   
   
   

9. Automation and the Future: The level of automation in Singapore was also impressive—two-minute immigration thanks to automated counters, robots delivering food in restaurants, and ordering machines everywhere. It’s a glimpse into the future. But one question remained unanswered- who’ll do the dirty work if robots can’t? They better automate THAT stuff first, because it can bring a society to its knees, and the 100k earning gentry ain’t gonna do stuff like cleaning shit, lifting stained diapers, and scrubbing toilet floors even if tough times impel them to. I guess Japan and SK must’ve caught onto this already, given their crashing fertility rates and lack of immigration that provides cheap labour to do a society’s dirty work. Time to research.
   
   
   

10. The Loss of Surprise: Thanks to travel videos and standardization, global cities all feel like they’re converging into the same aesthetics and urban layouts. The “wow” factor is starting to fade because, thanks to the internet, you already know what to expect. I sometimes envy the travelers of the pre-Internet era, who must have experienced a genuine shock every time they visited a new place. These days, travel has become more about luxury consumption than exploration. By removing unpredictability from travel, are we reducing it to a mere consumer experience, ticking off boxes instead of discovering anything new? Are we losing the essence of what travel once was? This was more a meta-observation than a specific comment on SG.

    
    
    

11. The zoo was beautiful, and I found it amusing that the giraffes there came from Mysore Zoo. Singapore makes a killing with its global visitors, while Mysore Zoo, though well-regarded in India, doesn’t quite get the same level of international attention. It makes you think how many other wonders we have that don’t get the same level of discovery or appreciation.
    
    
    

12. Low Sugar Society: All drinks had really low sugar, and it inspired me- if this luxury consumer paradise is okay to not bomb their brains with insane dopamine-triggering sugar levels, then why should I continue to take that drug every day? Why not have the tea for the *tea* and not for the sugar blast? Let’s see if the resolve lasts, but it was a pleasant surprise to see such emphasis on no, low, and normal sugar, how their normal sugar level itself is quite low, and how OUR normal sugar would probably send a Singaporean into a 3-day coma.

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As I left the country, I was in awe of what they’ve achieved.

Yet, I couldn't help but wonder whether this utopia could sustain itself in the face of declining fertility rates, geopolitical upheavals, and a meaning crisis intensified by abundance.

Given where they’ve come from, I wouldn’t bet against these people.

If you liked this piece, you’ll certainly enjoy a few others I wrote:

• Notes on Thailand

• What I Saw In London