From the Eyes of An Ang Moh

Only recently, I brought an Arab businessman to visit the warehouse and office of a large Singapore company. The Singapore company sent an Ang Moh, a Dutch who has been living in Singapore for the past 7 years to show myself and the Arab around the premises. While doing so, the Dutch also cracked jokes and tossed off sniplets of his observation of Singapore which proved to be most entertaining even for a Singaporean like myself, especially since all these observations were made from the perspective of a foreigner.

On the efficiency at which things are done here: "In Singapore, things are decided and done very fast and efficiently. You see this is a very small country so it is easy to coordinate things here. Compare it to places like Germany where if you want to implement something new, you have to probably coordinate with people hundreds of miles from where you are and worse you have to get everyone scattered all over the place to agree with you. Here, not a problem at all... and besides when the government decides on something, no one dares to disagree."

On the smallness of Singapore: The Dutch was showing the Arab the map of Singapore and the broad land usage. Pointing to the north of Singapore, the Dutch said, "Here's Sembawang where you have another shipyard, but of course nobody lives in Sembawang."
"Why is that so?" asked the Arab
"Well... Because the downturn area is all the way here which is very far from Sembawang" replied the Dutch pointing to the south of Singapore.
"How far is this downtown area from Sembawang?"
"Well... about 20km?"
*Laughter*

On "packing efficiency": "Because Singapore is so small, people here would tend to make full use of every inch of space. If you go to Europe, you would find that if you want a shopping mall, you would have one large building which is an entire shopping mall by itself. Here, the shopping mall is built on top of the subway AND an underground carpark AND on top of the shopping mall, they managed to even stack residence or office. So not only do the people here built upwards, they built downwards as well! You see, everything in Singapore is built for multi-purpose use. It is amazing."

"Now because the people in Singapore live in all these small public housing flats, they become very good at packing things. In Europe, our house would easily have 3 storeys and we can just dump lots and lots of stuff in our house still with room to spare. When I first came here, I stored things in my home the same way I did in Europe and suddenly, I realised I have totally run out of space! But these Singaporeans, they are amazing. They can somehow stack and arrange and squeeze so much things in such small spaces!"

On the public transport system: "When I was living in Europe, I used to have to cycle for miles to the nearest bus-stop, chained my bike there and then hop on to a bus. Over here, if you walk downstairs from your flat and you don't see a bus-stop then, that is considered far and inconvenient. You know, they have something like one bus-stop every 100 metres!"

On the lifestyle of Singaporeans: "People here would just spend their weekends at home. You see, everything they need is all within a short distance from their homes. They can walk to a neighbourhood shopping mall and they would be able to buy all their groceries there, watch movies there and many other things. There is no need to go anywhere else far from home."

Weather: "Even walking here for 10 minutes is an immense effort. With this kind of weather, after 10 minutes you would be huffing and wiping sweat off your face."

"The weatherman here has the easiest job in the world. It is always 'Sunny with afternoon shower'"