S'poretopia

Scorching headlines from around the world read of crises, violence and nuclear threat. It’s all so gloomy I’ve been switching to other channels and brushing past newsstands without even a glance at the latest Hello! cover. But just the other day I froze in my tracks when I saw Singapore’s banner news.

The tiny island nation figures big on a global scale. By the estimates of Citibank Private Wealth and Knight Frank, an international property management company, Singapore’s GDP per capita is the highest in the world. That makes it the world's wealthiest country! It is banking on that status through to 2050.

Wealth isn’t the only nugget of news from the city-state. According to the Happy Planet Index, Singapore pays dearly for their prosperity. The HPI ranks the Lion City a lowly 90th out of 151 counties in the world.

I think Gunter Grass said it best: Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

Or was it Albert Camus when he wrote, “Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.”

This is my final blog posting from Singapore. I’ll be leaving the Strait Life in Singapore for the Mid-Level Life in Hong Kong. Stay tuned for a brief history of the Fragrant Harbor.