Dateline: Singapore. It is a city as well as a country, it’s a city-state. Today we took the subway, which is very modern and clean, to Chinatown. Yes, the neighborhood is called “Chinatown” in a city where most of the people are Chinese – go figure. There they were celebrating Chinese New Year by tying silk flowers onto bare trees to create the look of cherry blossoms – actually very pretty.
Then we took a cab to One Fullerton, a plaza alongside the Singapore River where there is the statue of a large Merlion, the symbol of Singapore. The “merlion,” for those who don’t know, is the mythical lion of the seas, with the head of a male lion and the tail of a large fish, like a tuna. At this location there is much construction happening, a giant casino for example with a very interesting shape. If you know the shape of the Greek letter pi [π] now imagine it with three vertical legs instead of two and you’ve got the shape of that new casino’s tower. I’m guessing if you go to the blog http://cruztalking.blogspot.com next week you’ll find the other DrC has posted pictures of both the merlion and the unusual casino.
A member of my onship lecture audience asked about corruption in the government of Singapore and another audience member directed us to the website of an organization called Transparency International which attempts to determine the honesty or lack thereof of governments around the world. I checked, this organization rates Singapore as one of the five least corrupt governments in the world. The other four are Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and New Zealand, not necessarily in that order. That is darn good, particularly in this part of the world.
Cabs are reasonably priced in Singapore, so is the subway. Prices in the shops are not bargains. This afternoon we are moored alongside a passenger catamaran, the Asia Star, with a home port of Nassau. These are exceedingly rare. The Bahamas are becoming one of the world’s leading flag-of-convenience nations for passenger ships [I don’t see many non-passenger cargo ships home ported there.]. When you see this you can be sure the reason is regulations in The Bahamas favor the cruise line in important ways.
