Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Singapore is pretty coffee crazy as well, having their local variant, "Kopi" - which is pretty horrid unless you drink it with sweetened condensed milk or carnation milk+sugar. My Condo, international plaza in the Central Business District, has no less than seven coffee shops on the first floor (one, "Joe and Dough", just opened last week. Their "Western Style" Americano, at SG$4.50 was foul to the point of being undrinkable).

They all over charge for a drip coffee (Typically SG$4.00 - SG$5.00), make you wait way too long, and honestly aren't delivering a particularly impressive product (even the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf coffee is meh.)

Ironically - I leave the building every day to walk to McDonalds, which, for SG$2.70 has an absolutely excellent cup of coffee, and, even better, as soon as they see me walking towards the door they are pouring it and have it ready for me.

View on HN

How's life as a tech guy in Singapore? I'm thinking of relocating there.

(I've lived in Hong Kong and China, so I'm not an Asia noob, but Singapore seemed better as a long-term place to settle).

I came here directly from the valley after 16+ years. It's a super safe, clean place to live with almost unlimited (and awesome) places to eat, and tons of stuff to do outside (if you don't mind a little bit of heat), along with super cheap transportation (taxis, MRT, and Buses). Housing is pretty expensive - though you can find some reasonable places - keeping in mind that the locals have never heard of CraigsList, so if you look for a place there, it's targeted at ExPats (PropertyGuru is a more common tool for locals, in much the same way Burpple is superior to yelp). Owning a car is pretty pricey as you would have to pay $60K or so for a "Certificate of Entitlement" just for the right to purchase a car.

But, you asked, as a "Tech Guy" - and, with the exception of SimLim Towers/Squares (which are awesome electronics outlets - even better than Frys) - I feel a little out of the stream of things here, in ways I never did back in the valley. I used to go out all the time and hang out with colleagues who had worked for startups Two, Three, four generations back and were at yet a new startup, building new technology.

That sort of liquidity and networking doesn't seem to be happening here in Singapore (that I've discovered, perhaps there are niches - I know that there is an Ubisoft office here). So, that's the challenge - I know 500+ people back in Silicon Valley that I've worked with through one startup after another - and I know maybe 5 people here in Singapore 3 years later. It's not like you go to work for a company here that starts with 6 people, and grows to 600 in five years (which I've done a couple times now in the valley) - particularly if you are working for a branch of a company based out of somewhere else.

Taxes are great though.

Is it the same case at Ayer Rajah? The last time I checked it's more vibrant compared to 2 years ago. Where are you working at?

For whatever reason I've always found McDonalds to have terrific drip coffee too. Much better than the "coffee" I brew at home to save the $5 and 500 cal Starbucks coffee.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com