Wednesday, November 11, 2009
I am fortunate enough to be selected as one of the fellows in Paragon 100, an event held by the Foundation for Youth Social and Entrepreneurship (FYSE) that aims for the development of Asia’s young entrepreneurs. I hope this venture could bring a lot of opportunities, not just for me, but to others as well. Let’s see how this goes!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Today is my second day in Singapore, and I’m writing this from the Geek Terminal, supposedly 15 minutes before the ASEANpreneurs event starts. And I’m really enjoying the superb high speed connection here. A true broadband, nonetheless.
As a sidenote, in case you didn’t know, the ASEANpreneurs Youth Leadership Network is an organization created to promote entrepreneurship in the ASEAN region. And their current program is the Alpha Challenge, focused on the young potentials so that they also could become successful entrepreneurs in the future. I was fortunate enough to be invited as one of the speakers in the networking event today.
It’s been almost four years since I went to Singapore, and every time I went here, it always brought me the same fascination. Some say that they who lived here are often complaining because of the strict rules and that Singapore is a “fine” country. You can’t practically do anything without being fined. Okay, maybe I exaggerated, but there are tons of rules here like no littering, no smoking, no illegal street-crossing, no chewing gums, and so on. Maybe the citizens grew tired of the rules, but as for me, it’s a relief from the chaos in Jakarta. To me, Singapore is a heavenly ordered country with clear signages, clean roads, better traffic, and a good neighborhood.
Getting somewhere from anywhere is painless here, the public transportation is second to none, accurate, and somewhat affordable. During my stay here, I rely mostly on MRTs and public buses. Of course, there is one hassle today when I took the wrong bus and went the wrong way =). But that was entirely my fault for not checking the route before going in the bus. Taxis, however, are expensive and not recommended for short trips.
Wayfinding is also terrific, the whole island is packed with free Wi-Fi, and thanks to my friend Dirman Suharno for letting me know about gothere.sg, and thank God for my iPhone, finding my directions on the go is truly a snap! Even my iPhone didn’t require additional settings to use StarHub’s GPRS service. How cool is that?
During my stay here, it feels like I’ve been burning out calories more than I did for a year in Jakarta. Walking from one end of Orchard Road to the other end twice really pulled my leg. But no matter, walking is healthy, and walking for three days straight is a good workout.
I sure wished I could stay here longer, but I’m taking a break in the middle of work. So I have to head home tomorrow and enjoy the world’s best airport just before I have to deal with Soekarno-Hatta and its ugliness. But one thing that I must do before leaving tomorrow is hawking right next to Concorde Hotel (was Le Meridien).
Lastly, given the question “when do you think Jakarta, or in this case, Indonesia could be like Singapore?” I would say… KAPAN-KAPAN!!!