our eldest daughter just finishes her studies. she got the chance to write her final paper at the NTU technical university in singapore working for a joint venture company between the NTU and my german employer, the BMW car company.
well, the best of all wives and me welcomed the opportunity to visit southeast asia again and spent two and half weeks there. of course, the main goal was to see how our daughter lives (+ studies + works), but we have visited also a colleague of mine who works in singapore for three years now, strange + incredible myanmar and also spent few days at a beach in bintan / indonesia with our daughter + her boyfriend, who also works in singapore these days. please do not think half munich moved to singapore yet, but yes, there are few friends of ours right now there :-)
our stops were:
our impressions about singapore? here we go:
the biggest shock for me was the huuuuuge number of ships in front of the singaporean harbour, probably the 2nd busiest harbour in the world. when i have seen at our perfect flight back home with air france also the documentary about the (container) ships which transport all the stuff we use around the world and probably only the biggest 20 of them (!!!) pollute that much like all cars of the world (iselectric mobility for cars really that important from global point of view?), my big picture was complete ... (to do: link 2 youtube ... i'm still looking for this documentary, but here is a similirar opinion about (container) shipping at
ted talks)
- the commercial western style country in the very east
- probably world's only island city-state
- much more green and much less crowded as i supposed it would be while reading the key numbers at wikipedia about that small island (nation)
- currently only 719 square kilometers big, but growing as singapore won already about 130 km2 since its independence (from malaysia) in 1965
- 5,6 million inhabitants, mostly of chinese origin (approx. 75%). the other 2 big ethnic groups are malays and indians, which remembers us of our stay in malaysia 2015 and 2012
- strange but clever tax system with very very low income tax (up to max. 15%). there is cheap food + cheap public transport + cheap taxi transport too, but really high (luxury?) taxes on alcohol, cars & Co. ...
metal trees and walk ways? what a strange world :-(
marina bay sands
the interlace, one of the nicest condominiums out there
- clean (almost sterile) environment, surveillance via cameras, many restrictions + hard fines, low level of freedom + civil liberties + political rights ... but if you asked me, the singaporeans do not care and do not complain too much about it, because they are mostly really rich ... => looks like a clever and fine working dictatorship with really satisfied citizens :-)
- extremely wet tropical climate as SG lies just one degree (137 km) north of the equator
- after 8 kilometers at the floor plus 300 meters in the tree tops out of 10 kilometers of our walk around the macritchie water reservoir came a stop sign, the bridge was closed :-(( ... wtf, they really couldn't place any information at the two base entry points for this hiking tour? wtf again ... yes, we went back 3 or 4 km to the parking place where we could grab a taxi back to our hotel
two monkeys walking around the macritchie water reservoir
little india + chinatown:
in a chinese buddhist temple
indian (tamil) hindu temple
- chinese new year (CNY) celebrations took place many days
- there are two big universities in singapore, 'our' campus tour by i3 traffic scanning vehicle was at the NTU, the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore
the BMW project cars i3 + i8 + two beautiful women in the NTU garage will boost the electric mobility (electromobility?) in singapore for sure, if you asked me :-)
- ... more coming soon or never ...
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