[gtuckerkellogg]

I'm an American who has lived in Singapore for almost nine years, in two very different jobs, in two very different parts of the city-state. Singapore has a lot of challenges, but the oversimplifications and generalisations in this glib article don't do Singapore or Singaporeans any favours. (I've been here long enough that my spell-check is set to British English).

Let's take National Service (NS). Dover writes: "after graduating, every citizen is required to do active service in the military." This is wrong on at least three points, which is impressive for a sentence that short: 1) NS is not required of all citizens, only men; 2) NS is also required of male permanent residents who turn 18 in Singapore, and 3) it's an age requirement, not a graduation requirement.

He goes on to write that "pride is the result" of the NS requirement, in that part of the article that seems devoted to unqualified praise of Singapore's success. Really? Pride alone? Yes, male Singaporeans are proud of their service in NS, but plenty — especially younger Singaporeans — also resent it, resent the foreigners and women who don't have to do it and who they believe get an upper leg in society as a result. I've had Singaporean men explain away sexual harassment of women — harassment they witnessed first hand — on the grounds of the hazing they received during NS. If "sense of pride" is the only thing Dover has to say about NS in Singapore, even after months of living here, I'm not surprised he never had deep conversations with any Singaporeans.

Pro tip, Dover: there are better ways to investigate peoples' heritage than walking around asking people about their heritage. And if you do ask, and the answer you get is "what heritage?" and a laugh? Well, that may not mean what you think it means.

There's a lot happening in Singapore. It's an evolving place, with a growing civil society, increasing activism, growing nationalism and anti-foreigner sentiment, brutal competitiveness (the Singlish word is "kiasu", which is a Hokkien term that translates as "afraid to lose"), a terrible Gini coefficient, complex underlying racial tensions, and some absurd historical hard-edged nanny-state reflexes. There are a lot of things Singapore needs, but the dynamics are complex, not ripe for banal oversimplification.

[blisterpeanuts]

gtuckerkellogg, thanks for your posting. I'm curious -- have you learned Mandarin or Malay language during your stay, enough to communicate extensively?

It was my experience living in Taiwan for two years that language is a significant requirement for understanding the culture, even when English is commonly spoken among the educated classes.

In my opinion, a month really isn't long enough to evaluate a country, even a small one such as Singapore.

[gtuckerkellogg]

I've learned to speak Mandarin, but not Malay. I can read and write enough to read the Chinese newspaper and sing karaoke. It's helpful: it breaks down a lot of cultural barriers, and makes chatting with cab drivers more fun. It also makes the Singlish more understandable. There's a lot of Singaporean English that borrows from Chinese word order, which in western English sounds harsh even though the Chinese word order (in Chinese) uses it as an expression of politeness. E.g., "Go to lunch, can or not?"

[blisterpeanuts]

We used to talk that way in Taiwan, as a joke. I would amuse my Chinese friends by taking famous pop songs (Beatles, etc.) and singing them in my clumsy Chinese. They would roar with laughter. I think and believe they were laughing with me.

[gtuckerkellogg]

Obviously, Dover can live where he chooses, and like the places he chooses. I don't begrudge him his preferences. But the shallow armchair-quarterbacking from someone who has clearly made no serious effort to have a substantive experience of a place? That I could do without.

After I posted my comment, I read his Life List, his About page, and other parts of his site, and realised that Dover's entire schtick is to promote an utterly self-absorbed worldview, so the lack of perspective is not really about Singapore.

[blisterpeanuts]

Yes, I had the same impression.

The thing is, after two years as a Westerner in an Asian country, I felt as though I was completely unqualified to judge the people and the country who had so impressed me with their courtesy, grace, and humility.

The longer you stay in a country, the more you realize that it's difficult to generalize. A one week or one month visit confers a certain shallow impression which is easy enough to express. A year or two can dramatically change one's outlook.