EN - Life in Singapore

The past couple of weeks have been a bit boring. School’s been quite demanding, so travelling hasn’t been possible. But time’s flying, and at least I’m not getting any dumber. In this blog I want to give you a sense about life in Singapore and Asia, and share some fun facts I can think of, that I learned since getting here.

Singapore itself is a very strict country, but when you look at surrounding countries in Asia, you can see why. Rules are probably the only way to get countries in Asia on the right track, since many countries are very poor and have a lot of criminality. Things like expensive alcohol and tobacco, high fines, corporal punishment, and death sentence are used here to make sure people don’t cross the line. In addition to that, there are cameras everywhere, so when something happens they are likely to find footage of it. Personally, I don’t really like this, however, this approach did contribute to the fact that Singapore developed from a third world country to a first world country in 50 years. And on the other hand it does give you a sense of safety.

Next to being a strict country, Singapore is the most expensive country in the world. The high costs of driving a car, housing, and alcohol contribute to this. Gasoline itself is relatively cheap here, but new cars are ridiculously expensive. In the Netherlands, I guess you’d pay about €30.000 for a new Volkswagen Golf, but here you pay between €70.000 and €80.000. This is due to the costs of importing it, but mainly due to high prices of license plates, insurance and taxes. This is because the government tries to make people use public transport to avoid traffic jams in the city.

However, not everything in Singapore is expensive! Food here and in the rest of Asia is very cheap, and often very tasty as well. A meal often costs less than €4, so I won’t be cooking my own food here. I’ve tried lots of new food, and I noticed that the food in Chinese restaurants in Europe are not really representative of the food they actually serve here. Rice is probably the most commonly used ingredient (and way more tasty than back home), and I don’t think there has been a day so far that I didn’t eat it. However, the food is way less nutritious than the food I normally get, since I lost 4 kilos in the past 2 months. So I do need to make sure that I eat some western food too once in a while.

But despite all the rules and high fares I’m still enjoying every second here! I’m getting to know new people every day, and I’ve already made loads of new friends.

To finish this blog, I’ve got some fun facts about life here:
- In Singapore, it isn’t allowed to eat and drink in public transport or subway stations, however, eating in class is allowed
- Drugs are strictly forbidden in Singapore. Until a certain dosage people get caned, and when you carry more than this dosage, you will be hung at dawn.
- When you hit a peacock with your car on Sentosa, you’ll be fined S$5000 (about €3000)
- People in Korea are age 1 when they are born. So when they are 19 in Korea, they are actually 18.
- Champions League football only starts at 2.45 AM and from 26 October onwards at 3.45 AM.
- Many Asians that have a name that is hard to pronounce for us, have an English first name as well.
- The general stereotypes we have about Asians are quite accurate. They are quite short, and constantly on their phones