July 3, 2005 – A Weekend Wandering About Singapore

July 3, 2005 – A Weekend Wandering About Singapore

I’m riding to Chiang Kai-shek Airport in a 500 Series Mercedes, the limousine of choice for the Hyatt Hotel Taipei. It’s early morning, Saturday September 13th 1997. At the airport, I board Singapore Airlines Flight 5 (nonstop) bound for Singapore’s Changi airport. The flight is uneventful and we arrive on time. I set foot in this part of Southeast Asia for the first time, my first steps are actually made into a modern airport that is the equal to any I’ve been in throughout the U.S. or Europe: spacious, spotlessly clean, well-ordered, and, best of all, air conditioned. Stepping outside this steel and glass oasis into the equatorial heat of the island of Singapore, I’m instantly drenched in sweat.

I’m standing on an island located at 103 degrees, 48 minutes East Longitude, 1 degree, 22 minutes North Latitude—the closest I’ve ever been to the Equator on land—I crossed it as a sailor on board ship. Today, it was just as hot and muggy as I remembered from my time at sea. Only there is yet another environmental issue to deal with, wildfires burning in neighboring Indonesia, set by Indonesian lumber and plantation companies who were trying to clear land. The fires create a dense blanket of smoke over Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, making breathing difficult.

The cab driver, who speaks English, takes me to the Westin Plaza at 2 Stamford Road, now Swissotel The Stamford. It’s late afternoon when I check in and I take a short walk to stretch legs cramped after a long flight. Within a half hour, the heat, humidity and smoke get to me and I return to the room. I promise myself to rise early the following day, get a quick jog while the sun is still low on the horizon and spend the day exploring Singapore by foot. In the short time I was outside the hotel, I got the distinct impression of being in a one-time British Colony. Sir Stamford Raffles came to Singapore in 1819 and convinced the British government to increase its presence there to compete with the Dutch, which had been the dominant European trading power in the region for nearly 200.

The Raffles name is everywhere in the city-state, on streets, hotels, shopping centers, etc. Other British names are equally represented: Stamford, Connaught, St Andrews, Havelock, among others. The British were ousted by the Japanese in 1941 and welcomed back in 1945. However, the European educated leaders of Singapore were not in the mood to remain a British Colony. Cambridge-educated Lee Kuan Yew became prime minister in 1959 and ruled for 31 years. In that time, the city-state formed a union with Malaysia in 1963 and backed out of it in 1965. Thereafter, Lee Kuan Yew achieved independence for the country. In the years afterwards, it became the economic success story of the region.

Much of that success was due to exploiting the country's one major asset: human capital. The country embarked on a program of educating its citizenry, especially in engineering disciplines. When U.S. hard disk drive and semiconductor companies went looking for a lower-cost and well-educated workforce, a tax holiday period from corporate tax, and reasonable priced manufacturing facilities, they found it all in Singapore. Major drive maker, Seagate Technology, was early to move to island and the result was a competitive price that kept the Japanese disk drive makers from being major players in the industry. U.S. companies still dominant the hard drive market.

By the time of my visit, however, Singapore’s wage rates had risen, along with corporate tax and real estate costs. Singapore had caught up with Japan, the U.S. and Europe in cost of doing business. Add in the cost of living on the island—a car is a luxury you pay dearly for, as an example, and the island nation has to compete with the world’s other high-tech centers for corporate investment. The country still continues its investment in human capital, however, and the result is a 95 percent literacy rate—citizens 15 years and older can read and write. Moreover, the country is an example of a true meritocracy: the best and brightest are rewarded both with wealth as well as responsibility.

True to my word, I rose on Sunday at about 7:00 AM and jogged along the Singapore River. Out the hotel entrance, northeast on Stamford to North Bridge where I turned south and east until I crossed the river where I followed it east for about twenty minutes then turned and retraced my tracks to the hotel. Showered and refreshed in thin cotton sport shirt and denim jeans, I lounged in the room for a couple of hours before going down for breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. After a leisurely breakfast, I ventured out into the hot, humid, and smoggy Sunday. My first stop was a camera shop on North Bridge that I had passed on my jog. I purchased a disposable camera. It was about a half-hour before noon. I continued south and east on South Bridge Road—its name turns from North Bridge to South Bridge when you cross the river—until I came to North Canal Road. I turn right heading north and east until I reach New Bridge Road where I turn left until I come to Merchant. I make a right on Merchant Street and there find my destination, the Singapore History Museum on 30 Merchant Road. It’s air-conditioned and it’s a welcome relief to be out of the heat and humidity and I take the self-guided tour.

Singapore began its journey to become the nation it is today in 1945 with the defeat of the Japanese and the end of the Second World War. Having been born in November of that year, I felt a kinship to this small country. It had begun its modern life at about the same time as me. Once I had toured the museum, I spent the rest of the day walking about the center of the city. I found Fort Canning Park, a large green space near the city center; walked along River Valley Road passing a Buddhist Temple and several schools. Toward evening as I returned to the hotel, I wandered along Bras Basah Road passing the Raffles Hotel and the War Memorial which sits across from the Westin. After another shower and change of clothes, I had dinner at Prego’s Restaurant in the Westin, got a Grande Latte at Starbucks in the Raffles City Shopping Center, then wandered about the air conditioned shopping mall before returning to the hotel.

My one appointment on Monday was at a semiconductor company a cab ride away from the city center. My meetings that day were with several American ex-patriots, veterans of semiconductor companies based in Northern California. They had been lured to Singapore by positions of responsibility and the opportunity for higher-level management positions. My experience with executives living abroad is that their tenures tend to be short, a matter of a few years at most. The strain on families tends to be too great to last much longer than that. Having been part of a family assigned to overseas military bases, I understood what their families were going through.

The visit was to show the magazine’s continuing interest in the company and the PR folks gave me a full four hours of meetings including lunch and a plant tour. It also included a five-minute conversation with the president and CEO of the company and his vice president of engineering, both Singaporean with advanced degrees from U.S. universities and management experience with major U.S. semiconductor giants. Thereafter, I thanked by host for an informative set of meetings and climbed back into a taxi that took me first back to the Westin to claim my bags I had checked with the bellman and then on to Changi Airport for my flight to Tokyo Narita, once again on Singapore Airline.

My visit to the small island nation left me no wiser about the questions I had begun this trip with: what I had accomplished in my 52 years on earth and what I needed to do with the rest of time I had. Perhaps the journey to Japan, where I spent the earliest years of my working life would be more enlightening.