What's it like to be Singaporean?

I have lived in a bunch of places in South East Asia. I wouldn't say that I "lived" in Laos, Cambodia, or Malaysia, but i have spent a significant time there sort of living there in that I would rent a place for a month or two and kind of get the lay of the land.

One place over this way that is extremely different than the rest of the areas is Singapore. There are a lot of reasons why I think this but the main one is that while all the other countries are very inexpensive compared to the western world such as most of Europe and America, Singapore is one of the most expensive places on the planet. It actually doesn't make a lot of sense that some place this wealthy would be surrounded by relative poverty, but that is just the way that it is. I don't know the specifics in their become an autonomous country, but it was bloodless and they were more or less "kicked out" of Malaysia. If am totally wrong about this please don't hurt me @davidke20 !

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Singapore is a pretty outstanding place and prior to my move to Vietnam I had a really good job making really good money and I had this wild idea that I was going to go and live in Spore for a year or two. I will be honest why I thought of doing this, it was because of a girl. When you meet someone super-hot that appears to like you and also speaks your language fluently, you are sometimes foolish enough to try to do whatever it takes to be with them.
It didn't take very long for me to realize that my temporary dream of moving to the most industrialized and modern city/country in SE Asia was a bad idea, and it wasn't just because the super-hot chick was married and didn't tell me about that until I said I was going to move to her country.

Bad girl!

Anyway I looked into moving there anyway and talked to some people while visiting and I thought I was flexing when I asked "what kind of place can you get for say $2000 a month?"

I was expecting them to say "whatever you want really" because that would be the case almost anywhere else in this part of the world but instead the response was something along the lines of "you might be able to find a 1 bedroom in a highrise but it's gonna be pretty far out on the train line."

I was awestruck. I went and looked at one of these sorts of places and quickly changed my mind. The apartment was NOT nice and true to my friends' word, it was really far away from the action. My plans to move there were not shot down for more than just the infidelity reasons.

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I cut off all romantic ties with her because I am no homewrecker, but I did stay in touch with her here and there and she tells me what it is like to live in Singapore.

The worklife of a Singaporean to me, seems just dismal as hell. They all get a ton of education, most are able to speak at least 3 languages fluently, and they spend an inordinate amount of time working. I once stayed in a strange AirBnB with a family (I thought I was getting the unit, I was really only getting a bedroom in their house) and while hanging out with them the man of the house told me that they would not be able to afford the mortgage if they didn't rent out the room. He also leased a car and drove for Uber at night to make ends meet for him, his wife who also worked, and their young daughter.

There place was nothing super special either. He was a mid-level manager for a chemical firm, and made a pretty decent salary too. Imagine studying your ass off for years, getting a good job, and now you have to rent out part of your house to strangers, some of which are going to end up being nuts, and you also have to drive a taxi during your free time. Just to be able to have a decent house?

No Thanks

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A recent article i read ranked Singapore as the "2nd most overworked city in the world" and all the people there basically exist just to go to work. The super hot girl who was cheating on her husband is no exception. They got divorced by the way and she quickly remarried and not to me.

She has a degree in Business, is completely fluent in Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin (reading and writing as well), and English, she has over ten years of experience, in industry, has sat on the board of several charities, but after a downsizing of her company a few years ago the only job she can find is an extremely demoralizing position as a secretary. She is also now "too old" (nearly 40) to be considered for any sort of fast-track position that they would offer to very bright up-and-coming graduates.

She feels very depressed about this and I think it is understandable. She and her husband live with his parents, and it doesn't look like they are going to be able to get their own place. They don't like to talk about it, but they have kind of resigned themselves to inheriting the house of his parents once they pass on. That is so tragic.

I do not know the husband, but it's not like he is an unemployed do-nothing. He has a job, some sort of management job with a tobacco company which is ironic because Singapore has some of the strictest tobacco laws in the world.

I've spoken to her about how it is that anyone can get ahead in Spore and she just tells me that all positions are normally given out because of nepotism (favoring family members or friends) and that very few positions are merit-based. This might just be jaded and biased talk on her part, but seeing as how the rest of the world functions like that as well, it wouldn't surprise me if she is telling the truth.

When you are in Singapore you also have the added depression of knowing that your country is so small that they cannot have a ultra-marathon race in a straight line in it. The furthest straight line from one end of the country to the other is 43 miles. Most of the others are significantly less.

So for me, in my home country, if say, Los Angeles or NYC was too expensive, I always have the opportunity to look for work in a less expensive city like Minneapolis, Cleveland, San Antonio, just name it...there are tens of thousands of cities I could relocate to. Singapore? Nah man, you are trapped.

The do thankfully have a very valuable passport, but so few of them actually seek out employment overseas and I have urged this woman on multiple occasions to at least entertain the possibility of working for another company elsewhere that regularly deals with clients form China. Or even a large hotel that focuses on Chinese guests. Her answer to this is something that I can kind of relate to when she says that she doesn't care for interacting with Chinese groups.

It just all seems so depressing and it kind of makes me count my blessing I suppose. I have had a world of opportunities available to me in my life and most of the things that I chose to do, well, I had a lot of other choices as well and picked the best one.

This completely overqualified woman is working as a receptionist at a company that when it comes time for that one to downsize, who do you think is going to be the first one out the door?

It's really tragic.

In the meantime though Singapore is a wonderful place to visit and maybe it is best to just not think about how a vast majority of the population are basically wage-slaves.