First off, let me admit a huge bias of mine against Greenpeace since meeting one of these clowns in a bar. Every member I’ve met has been more concerned with being counter culture than solving problems and as a result, I’ve always seen them as the worst kind of NGO: the kind that would be deeply upset if the problems they claim to be in the business of resolving ever went away. That said, this is a pretty good stunt. And most importantly, it worked. They even went for a classy finish on the website with the following:
I just tried to watch the American VMAs on mtv.com and instead of seeing Tailor Swift win an award, Kanye West behave like a child, Beyoncé earn the accent on her é with this classy move, Madonna talk about Michael Jackson (and herself), I got shut out. Maybe it’s MTV telling me to stay in Asia. Maybe it’s a server thing. Maybe it’s a censorship thing. Whatever it is, it happens a lot and it’s about as annoying as it is pointless since with a bit more effort you can find most of the content elsewhere. Take THAT.
I checked in with my flickr account today and guess what? After a year in Singapore, there are hardly any photos of Singapore in it. In London, I spent my Saturday mornings wandering the town snapping photos of interesting characters and curious happenings. In Singapore, I occasionally have to force myself to go out with my camera. In London, my photostream was a real time photodocumentary of the city around me. Moving to Asia has turned it into a photo documentary of the Asia I visit on weekends, the cities I visit on business, but not the Singapore I live in. Strange, right?
The government is currently putting a lot of effort into making Singapore the kind of place that attracts foreign talent but no matter how much infrastructure they build, the same critique ends up in their suggestion box: “Singapore lacks character”. Or put more imaginatively by my friend Bruno:
“Singapore is like a giant airport. They have great shopping, lots of food courts, and you can get to many amazing places in Asia from there.”
Airports don’t make for eventful photostreams (i takethat backactually). Point being, the process of building the infrastructure that turned Singapore from a resource poor island to a first world city didn’t leave room for “interesting characters and curious happenings.” Don’t get me wrong, that level of control has created an amazing place. But it doesn’t allow for quirks and curiosities that people from other places love about where they live, or the new ones they hope to experience when they move somewhere new. After all, interesting characters can’t be molded and curious happenings can’t be planned. It’s an interesting paradox for a government that takes the challenge of keeping Singapore interesting very seriously.
I just returned from a few days in Macau and Hong Kong with my casino project to what looks like the start of a great few months. Friends passing through this weekend, C Ph.D.-ing away happily, a great government project kicking off tomorrow and some interesting bits and pieces of work that just might keep us fed and entertained through to the end of the year along with a long overdue trip home end run on sentence here.
