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Thursday, November 5, 2015

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New building opposite Pemerintah Kota Batam--Batam










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6 comments:

x larry said...

like the other pics of batan, it looks like las vegas

Linh Dinh said...

Batam is like a nerd who got a gift certificate to buy a brand new wardrobe.

x larry said...

very good, and how pathetic. love the two visible influences above, the british empire and the corporate american one. perhaps they once had their own (beautiful? dare i dream it?) culture? but it sure is... gleaming. you know, shiny.
by the way, linh, did you try spitting, either saliva or gum, on the sidewalk in singapore? i once heard it's a jailable offense. it looks like with the police force being perhaps the biggest employer they're just itching for some busts.

Linh Dinh said...

Hi all,

x larry is talking about the Florence Nightingale image.

To be fair, I saw almost no cops on Singaporean streets. Its citizens are well behaved. Streets are completely safe, even in the middle of the night. I asked Singaporeans about their worst neighborhood and they could only come up with Geylang, a section that's somewhat seedy and has prostitutes. I joked, "I want to go somewhere where I will get robbed, and possibly killed!" They all said, "No, you won't get killed in Singapore."

With 1.5 million people, Philadelphia has 236 murders this year. With 5.4 million people, Singapore has about a dozen murders a year, with most, Singaporeans would like to point out, committed by foreigners.


Linh

Linh Dinh said...

As for spitting in Singapore, here's Lee Kuan Yew, "I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters–who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think."

x larry said...

hi linh,
that is quite a quote. what, arrogance in the powerful? his grooming at cambridge no doubt polished his high skill of not giving a shit what the people think. i'm surprised actually by the LOW number of philly killings last year. it was nearly 600 a year when i was there, with kensington alone having over 200 ('the murder capital of philly'). but philly at least used to be so deliciously unsanitary.
also, i mistakenly called your cop photos singaporean.