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> Recently Singapore has been making a push for the arts, yet it's clearly evident how inorganic the output is

Last time I went to Singapore I was struck by how it was impossible to buy any local music. I associate by music, so I always buy local music when I travel. But in Singapore's tiny music stores, I couldn't even find a Dick Lee CD for sale, and his music wasn't available through Australian iTunes.

(In the end I emailed his website asking which stores to try, and instead they sent one of his personal assistants to my Singapore hotel in person to hand deliver one of their remaining CD copies. For which my family were deeply grateful, we had discovered him 25 years earlier on a cassette we bought of The Mad Chinaman, and as a little Aussie kid I'd learned all the words of Rasa Sayang: "Everything we have has to be the best of the fabulous east and the wonderful west".)

Lately I've started to find Singaporean bands on Bandcamp, so things are improving. But it wasn't like I could walk into Starbucks and find CDs from a bunch of emerging local artists at the counter. I'm heartbroken that the 100th Starbucks store near The Fullerton Waterboat House has apparently closed too.

Speaking about art in SG. I find that street artists in Europe are way more better than those in SG. I’m always amazed by their skill and enthusiasm in my Europe trip. While back in SG, the only ones I see are art students or old uncles playing some music that you can hardly say “good”. This is sad.

Some of that is cultural. Education is math and science, art is for when you’ve done your homework and is regarded more as “play” than a serious subject worth dedicating yourself to (some exception noted).

Wasn't it a while back when the government licensed out certain building facades to artists who wanted to display their work lol? Or was it Dubai?

I also noticed that the foreign startups they lured in with their juicy incentives were not the better ones. Nonetheless they probably still believe that the same techniques that brought in Shell in the early days needed to be adapted for the "modern world".

Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.

They managed to persuade Grab to move from Malaysia to Singapore though.

Tech salaries are not poor if you compare them to other South East Asia countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc). If you compare them to other professions in Singapore... then I can't say (I don't know).

Moving Grab isn't a big deal, considering Grab's founders are Malaysian Chinese, and likely face indirect discrimination thanks to Malaysia's constitution. Malaysia drove them away, Singapore didn't persuade them.

Edit:- to counter your example, devs are not as highly paid for the living costs of Singapore. And they don't even form part of the upper bracket, which is largely populated by people in finance and management.

> Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.

That's just Asia. I don't think a developer is considered "high status" anywhere in Asia.

Top devs in India and China are usually paid on par with the managerial salaries there. I have a bunch of mates who get paid on par with/more than mid-level IB bankers.

I wonder why this is the case. I also heard the software engineers are not considered "high status" as well in UK. Not sure in Europe (like Sweden, Germany, etc).

I don’t think we’re high status in the US either, especially socially, though staff SDEs at FAANGs can make as much as doctors.

> Singapore feels so artificial, just like another Dubai. … Compare that to SG or DXB, where the homeless are stashed away/deported so that the tourists don't see them.

Singaporean here. The central touristy area is artificial, but the public housing areas surrounding it are slightly more organic — with a fair share of homeless people who sleep on benches at night, too.

I agree. I've seen my fair share of homeless folks in SG, but I heard they are regularly stashed away in some temporary housing that can barely fit anyone.

And of course, for an actual taste of SG culture, one has to visit the hawker centres and the HDBs to actually get a feel of the city's life. But they seem so staid and artificial still, almost Soviet-esque, compared to their counterparts elsewhere. Even if I take a locality in Dubai (the other culprit here), the Dubai Marina is still vastly more lively than MBS, and the less fancier residential colonies in Old Dubai are still more lively than the average HDB complex. Shenton Way turns into practically a ghost town on weekends in comparison to its counterparts elsewhere.