Well, I haven’t posted to this blog in so long. But I have an excuse. I just finished traveling around the world. Now I’m dealing with the pressures of starting up my own company in Singapore and living in Singapore. Trust me, the second part is much harder than the first, but both are presenting a lot of challenges.
I’m realizing a lot about what type of person I am and what type of person I prefer to be around. I think I fit squarely into the middle class American demographic. I like living in a moderately sized house, having greenery around, and associating with people who are not so concerned about money and status. Unfortunately, here in Singapore I have none of that. 
I didn’t think the transition would be so jarring for me. Someone once told me that “Singapore is the most Westernized Asian country.” Maybe it’s true in terms of language (almost everyone here speaks some English), but in terms of living style it is definitely not Westernized. People live in big buildings called HDBs. Almost no one owns a house here except for the multi-millionaires. Which brings me to another point that really bothers me about Singapore: People are obsessed with status, work, and money here. A friend of my girlfriend once said “It’s like Singapore is filled with a bunch of clones.” And to be honest, trying to avoid stereotyping, it’s fairly true.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been introduced to people as “XXX, who went to (unnamed prestigious American university), who worked at (unnamed high paying consulting firm), who’s now working for his/her Dad’s company which makes (ungodly sum of money) per year.” The implication then is of course that they automatically deserve respect and in some ways are better than you. Ugh, this is the problem with starting up a business with a guy who has only really grown up in upper class society. He can never really understand what it is like to be middle class. He can never understand why we don’t talk about that stuff, and why that stuff is much less important than the person. And, he can never understand why the life of the upper class is not the type of life I want to have or aspire to achieve.
But, I think it’s a very Asian attribute to put achievements, status, and education before anything else about the person. I know I’ve said so many great things about Australian culture (and I am trying to cut down because it makes my business partner all depressed because I can’t say much good about Singaporean culture), but Australians seem to care much less about achievements, status, and education. They focus on the person… on the events experienced together. They focus more on life.
Furthermore, though I have met some middle class Singaporeans (not through my business partner obviously… all his friends are filthy rich and dreadfully boring), there is another thing that bothers me about Singaporeans. I couldn’t put my finger on it until my Singaporean friend told me about a term for it: No U-Turn Syndrome. I really see it now that we are trying to hire creative people for our company. The problem is that Singapore hasn’t promoted creative pursuits ever. In fact, with how orderly society runs, they discourage it. Singaporeans are taught since birth that if you follow a certain path through life, you will be happy and successful. They are not encouraged to “find their own way” like in the US.
So, what it comes down to is that it’s really hard to find anyone creative here. Recently, the Singaporean government has mandated that people “be creative.” But unfortunately, that’s not how true creative pursuits work. You can’t tell people “be creative”, you just have to give them the freedom and let them explore their own passions. I wonder whether you can have a creative society without it having many freedoms. Singapore is obviously a very orderly society, but how much freedom does its people have? The government has a vested interest now in promoting creativity among its people. But, can it maintain the strict control over people’s lives while at the same time promoting creative pursuits among its people?
I think Singapore realizes that their previous push towards technology is not enough. There are tons of graduates every year in IT or some other technical skill. But all these jobs are moving to cheaper countries such as India. What Singapore is realizing is that the country’s monetary and cultural wealth is contingent more on its ideas than on anything else. This is where the US excels in, and where it makes a lot of its wealth from is in its ideas. I have heard Singapore described as a “city without culture.” You can’t have a culture without promoting creative pursuits. Everything in Singapore is really just stolen from another culture’s traditions. There is nothing really distinctive about Singapore’s food or traditions. So in the grander scheme of things, Singapore’s lack of creativity translates directly into a lack of culture.
I’d like to think that I live my life in a logical way to some extent… well at least it makes a lot of sense to me. Right now I’m doing this startup with a “friend” of mine. Now, I’m sure you can tell how that is going with the fact that I put quotes around the “friend” part.