Random bits about Singapore

I have trouble with pronunciation at the best of times. When they use words from other languages without changing the spelling, I get locals looking at me in bewilderment. I'm staying in Kallang which is pronounced Car-lung and drink I like is Bandong which is pronounced Bun-dung, it's made from a rose extract and condensed milk, I had to get a friend to go over it with me a few times before I could get it right.

If you go to a hawker centre (a place with lots of little stalls selling food) and you see a sign saying self-service, it means that you are supposed to collect the food once it's ready yourself (normally waiting close by) as normally you tell them your table number and they'll bring it over.

From what I've seen and heard, I have to conclude that Singaporeans can't drive, it's quite puzzling, but they also seem to be involved in accidents. This is particularly so if they hired a car on an Australian holiday, you've been warned.

The local newspapers are quite amusing at times, one of the letters to the newspaper I read was someone being outraged at how some students were dressed, the length of their skirts and the like. One of the other Singaporean newspapers I read had a daily crime story, most of the time it was about a minor crime, like someone's laptop got stolen, bag got snatched and the like, of course there are also more serious crimes here, but they're normally public when it gets to court.

Mozzies love me, Singaporeans complain about the flies when they visit Australia, but at least that means we have fly screens that keep out mozzies when we sleep, not so here, instead they have security bars on the windows, even if you're on level 37 there are still bars on the windows. Maybe it's to stop people from slipping and falling through windows, although I still think they're more to stop the 1 in a billion chance of someone breaking in. After a while I decided covering myself in repellent, and closing the windows wasn't quite that bad.

The wireless access at the local McDonalds had stopped working, so I sat outside the building I'm staying in, and fired up my laptop, on the first go I found a public access point with the SSID linksys. =) So I can add sitting between two HDBs (government built apartments) to the list of places I've connected so far here.

HDBs were a little strange to me, 85% of Singaporeans live in one, the rich ones live in Condos and the really rich ones lives in houses. HDBs are built by the Housing and Development Board (I think) and have improved dramatically over the last 20 odd years. You will still see the odd one in strange colour schemes, like a whole 20 story HDB being painted in pink and purple, but the newer ones look half reasonable.

As Singapore is paranoid, these HDBs are extremely well built, one of my friends, another exchange student who studies architecture, told me how they tried using explosives to known down a HDB, they took out all the support and found the building was still standing afterwards. In all last four years or so all new and upgraded HDBs have this storeroom which are supposed to protect a family of four from direct bomb hits, chemical weapons, etc.. and for the occupants to survive a fall of ten stories for a few hours. I don't understand how that could work, but they think it's worth the effort. What is much more likely to work are the civil defense stations. Most of the underground MRT stations also function as bomb shelters.

Piracy, porn and fines in Singapore/Malaysia

I read a recent newspaper report about how they're trying to increase in penalties in Malaysia for illegal copying of and sale of discs, they mentioned how you can get copies of DVDs there for as little as 10RM (about AUD3.50), don't believe them, the starting price is actually about 8, if you buy a fair number you can get it down to 5, and I have an unconfirmed report of someone paying 3 RM each (probably for a purchase of 100+ discs).

At times there are crackdowns, but it seems that it's not taken very seriously, it was interesting on my previous visit to Malaysia (last March) where in one shopping centre there were people coming up to me, giving me their cards saying they'll deliver internationally, asking me to come into their stores to look at their wares. They has a little shop selling cute CD wallets, some legit VCD and the like and a door leading into the back. The back of the shop, is where 80% of the floor space went, with the shelves lined with CD/DVD packets. It was amusing seeing the door swinging open and close all the time.

Singapore on the other hand takes IP (Intellectual Property) enforcement a little more seriously so you don't find places where there are 10+ stalls selling illegal DVDs, you will however, if you go to where the locals live, walk past shops selling illegal copies of games and software, and while they are set up so that they can be shut down and moved in about an hour, you can find them in one spot for months at a time. In some ways they're like the shops selling the discount books in Sydney.

One change I noticed in Singapore is how the illegal CDs are getting more expensive, it used to cost about SGD5 (AUD4.20?) or 6 for a single CD, such as a copy of windows, now it's about SGD9, they stayed at about 6RM (AUD2.30) each in Malaysia though. A reason why one should resist purchasing these DVDs is because these elaborate operations are ran by organized crime.

While Singapore might be relatively lax with their IP laws, they are serious with their ban on pornography. Taking gum or pirated DVDs through Singapore customs might result in their confiscation, porn however will result in a fine, and the fines in Singapore have one or two digits more than the fines we have in Sydney. You might see people sipping water from bottles on the trains, but anything else might well result in a $5000 fine.