Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

As the plane lifts off from the runway, you’re reminded of how tiny Singapore is: the entire country fits in your aircraft window. No wonder it’s so well managed.

In the picture here are Sentosa, Singapore’s official recreational getaway island; the harbour; and part of downtown Singapore, literally “down”, for the central business district is at the southern end of the island. The strip of land you see at top left is Indonesia.

Changi airport was the first I’ve been where they do not x-ray baggage prior to check-in. Must be done after. The airport’s pretty nice, but I much prefer Bangalore’s: it’s just a little building with an aeroplane on one side and a taxi on the other. No endless miles of dragging your luggage past duty free shops that you don’t want to give your money to; no gate after gate leading to planes not waiting for you; no queuing up at position #8 on the runway, sitting there hot and sweaty, waiting for takeoff, when the air conditioning will finally kick in and overpower your neighbour’s armpits.

Bangalore’s is a no frills airport that specialises in the business of getting people in and out of the city. There’s only one gate and miraculously it’s always the one where your flight is waiting. Okay, there are two, but they barely count as distinct gates.

I like small airports for the sheer quickness of passing through them. I will miss Bangalore’s when the forces of metropolisation finally take it down.

First impression on arriving in Bangalore: “My god, what have they done to the roads?” Then I realised they had done nothing at all, the roads were just like when I had left. What’s changed are my expectations of them.

Commuting on Singapore’s MRT can easily take over twenty minutes for common destinations, so I’ve taken up listening to podcasts. I’m currently catching up with the archives of Venture Voice, “a podcast that explores how entrepreneurs build their businesses and live their lives.”

I especially enjoyed the interview with Fabrice Grinda of Zingy, who made his latest fortune selling ringtones. Fabrice is unusually open about all the mistakes he’s made and how’s learnt from them. When describing successes, he also states the figures. I found it very informative.

Singapore is one big gated community.

Whatever creaky infrastructure Reliance uses to bring text messaging to a non-GSM network isn’t well oiled. Messages I’ve sent Reliance users from Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have all failed to deliver. Potential Reliance users with global aspirations, please note.

And then again, Zee complains messages she’s sending me on the Singapore number don’t deliver, but messages to Airtel roaming on the same provider (Starhub) get through.

New number in Singapore is +65-8203-0690. Card cost four times as much as in Malaysia and messaging costs twice. They also wanted identification and put me in a queue half hour. In KL I could buy it like any other commodity at a convenience store.

From grand experience of one day, Malaysian telecom is better than Singapore’s.

You’ve got to take the day train from Kuala Lumpur to Singapura.^† The Malaysian countryside is gorgeous.

Singapore immigration was the first place they insisted on scanning bags. Sniffer dogs inspected the train. Among the list of items needing declaration are books and magazines. Certain categories of publications are not welcome here, you see.

† As far as the Malaysian railways are concerned, the place is called Singapura. What fun if they decide to rename the country to lose its colonial hangover.

The nice people at the Singapore embassy gave me a multiple entry visa. That’s another first for this trip. Now I want to make full use of it, but there’s nowhere to go around Singapore.

Sorry, folks, but I can’t afford another trip to Cambodia. I’m broke. I will do Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos together another time when I'm better stocked up in the bank and there are fewer tourists around.