I just wanna lay down some general thoughts I have been having about the land of the merlion, having been based out here for the past 5 weeks and having spoken to as many people as I could.

Okay - compared to Singapore, Malaysia is a far richer country in terms of natural resources. It has land, oil and minerals. Geographically, it also has an advantage over Singapore in that it is more centrally located and within a shorter distance to India, China and other Asian countries. So it’s no surprise that the leaders of Singapore decided quite some time ago to focus its efforts on developing its only strength: human capital. Then, it filled its own government with the mostest and bestest human capital it could, and that resulted in a government beaurocracy and legal system which is one of the best in the world. Now as a fun-lovin’, creative, slightly rebellious guy, I didn’t care too much about that - I mean: it has a great transport system? zzzzzz. It’s one of the safest cities in the world? double zzzzzz. It is clean and there are no chewing gum stains? double zzzzzz (and don’t bother to wake me up). I just wasn’t up for visiting a city where everything can just be looked up in a directory and there is nothing to be discovered.

Despite what you or I may think about this country at a personal level, take a read of this article from the FT (www.ft.com):

Hedge funds flee HK smog for Singapore

By Florian Gimbel in Hong Kong

Published: August 3 2006 22:00 | Last updated: August 4 2006 04:25

Hong Kong’s worsening air pollution is prompting a number of hedge funds to move to Singapore, reflecting a trend that could undermine the territory’s financial sector.

Senior executives at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the world’s biggest providers of hedge fund broking services, say health and lifestyle issues are causing rifts at the top of a growing number of Hong Kong-based funds, most of which are owned and operated by mid-career professionals…

You have to subscribe to read the rest of the article but the gist of it is that Hong Kong, which is the financial centre of Asia is suffering from enormous pollution problems and as a result, hedge fund managers are packing up and moving to Singapore, attracted by guess what? Its strong legal system, great city infrastructure and easy transport! (Not to mention the fact that property prices are also 3 times cheaper in Singapore than HK). Let’s think about that for a moment. Here is a country where participants in a multi-trillion dollar industry want to live and work, which has a policy of making things positively easy for them to do so, which is also much cheaper than its nearest competitor, who is experiencing some serious difficulties ahead. And I haven’t even begun to factor in its upcoming integrated resorts yet!

So as an investor, we are extremely fortunate to be living so near to a country at this particular juncture of its history, which we can literally just hop across and check out if we had any questions about it. So if I were you, I would seriously consider looking to invest in some eggs over here, either through its index via an ETF or in a REIT at least.