Singapore is not exciting, because … ?

I refer to the article “Singapore Tourism Board responds with witty video after Time Out survey calls the city boring” (Straits Times, Feb 3).

It states that “Singapore scored a high rating for safety and public transport and its “much buzzier restaurant scene” compared with other cities towards the bottom of the ranking.

I was somewhat curious after reading the above article, as there was no mention of what were the criteria that we were poorly ranked – only our higher ranked criteria was mentioned.

So I googled and found – “On Tuesday, Singapore came in 31st out of 32 cities in an anonymous survey by Time Out, which took into account criteria such as culture, food, drink, friendliness, liveability, affordability and happiness” (Channel Newsasia, Feb 2).

Perhaps an arguably more objective view, is to let the numbers do the talking.

… affordability – ranked as the most expensive city for the fourth year running

… friendliness – most emotionless people in the world

… happiness – worker’s happiness survey – 45 per cent unhappy, the rest neutral or happy – so, how many happy?

… liveability – longest work hours in the world

… culture – when films are banned, cartoon book’s funding was withdrawn, etc

Uniquely Singapore

Leong Sze Hian