Deep Background

     Wondering why you should read my posts about Singapore? If you are curious about these questions:

• How does this multi-lingual, multi-ethnic/racial, multi-cultural society function?  Is it doing better than the USA?
• How does this island nation, which imports almost all its food, feed itself so well?

Read on.

     For me, awareness of Singapore began with my dad telling the story of how he sailed on a troop ship from Halifax around Cape Horn in the early days of World War II. After the ship set down his American Field Service contingent in Bombay, the boat carried the remains of the British Commonwealth Army on to Singapore, where they were bombed, sunk and captured in the Japanese invasion. Noel Barber, an early contributor to Gourmet, wrote about this from the British perspective in his Sinister Twilight: The Fall of Singapore. 

     Contrast that to the account that the late leader Lee Kuan Yew gives in the first volume of his autobiography, The Singapore Story.  

     A better understanding of the Singapore perspective is my goal.