A family is defined as the basic unit in society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children or a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head and having a common ancestry. But a family is so much more than that. They are your biggest supporters, the people who love you unconditionally and under any circumstance. They are there through thick and thin and show up when you need them the most. This poem is a celebration of those ties and the love they have for you.
When you are down, they are there for you When the stakes are low, they are there to pull you up When you need to get things done, they are your trusted crew And they are there to prop you up when you need that pickup
They are your family, your loved ones Who wouldn’t hesitate to go all out for you with blazing guns Family, a word that brings automatically brings a smile to the face The anchor in your life, your secret life’s ace
The foundation on which your values stand strong The close circle of love to which you and your loved ones belong The people who know you inside and outside From whom try as you might, but you can’t hide
So, learn to treasure your family, the memories The ones who knew you at your worst and your best With whom you may squabble and quarrel and who may torture and tease, But you have their love, and with that, you know you are blessed.
Today is the International Literacy Day. Literacy is a very important as without it, an individual cannot engage in our day-to-day life. Most commonly defined as the ability to read and write, Literacy is not as simple as it sounds. Reading and writing abilities vary across different cultures and contexts, and these too are constantly shifting. Today, reading encompasses complex visual and digital media as well as the printed material. We need to be literate to navigate our daily life, including using our phones, signs outside our homes, prices in a store and many more which we use and do without really thinking too much of it. But beyond the functional level, literacy plays a vital role in transforming people into socially engaged citizens. Being able to read and write means being able to keep up with current events, communicate effectively, and understand the issues that are shaping our world.
International Literacy Day celebrated each year on 8 September, was declared by UNESCO on 26 October 1966 and celebrated for the first time in 1967. Its aim is to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies with celebrations taking place in several countries. About 775 million lack minimum literacy skills; one in five adults are still not literate and two-thirds of them are women; 60.7 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.
According to UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All of 2006, South Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate at 58.6%, followed by sub-Saharan Africa at 59.7%. Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina Faso at 12.8%, Niger at 14.4% and Mali at 19%. The report shows a clear connection between illiteracy and countries in severe poverty, and between illiteracy and prejudice against women.
The 2021 edition of the International Literacy Day or the ILD will be celebrated under the theme of Literacy for a human-centred recovery: Narrowing the digital divide. The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted the learning of children, young people and adults at an unprecedented scale. It has also magnified the pre-existing inequalities in access to meaningful literacy learning opportunities, disproportionally affecting 773 million non-literate young people and adults. Youth and adult literacy were absent in many initial national response plans, while numerous literacy programmes have been forced to halt their usual modes of operation.
Even in the times of global crisis, efforts have been made to find alternative ways to ensure the continuity of learning, including distance learning, often in combination with in-person learning. Access to literacy learning opportunities, however, has not been evenly distributed. The rapid shift to distance learning also highlighted the persistent digital divide in terms of connectivity, infrastructure, and the ability to engage with technology, as well as disparities in other services such as access to electricity, which has limited learning options.
The pandemic, however, was a reminder of the critical importance of literacy. Beyond its intrinsic importance as part of the right to education, literacy empowers individuals and improves their lives by expanding their capabilities to choose a kind of life they can value. It is also a driver for sustainable development. Literacy is an integral part of education and lifelong learning premised on humanism as defined by the Sustainable Development Goal 4. Literacy, therefore, is central to a human-centred recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst disturbance to education and training systems in a century, with the longest school closures affecting more than 1.6 billion learners at its peak time. By November 2020, the average child had lost 54 percent of a year’s contact time, which could be interpreted as the loss of over a year’s learning if the time of forgetting what was previously acquired is counted. The pandemic and its repercussions have also magnified the pre-existing inequalities in access to meaningful literacy learning opportunities, disproportionally affecting 773 million non-literate young people and adults. With low or no reading and writing skills, they tend to be more vulnerable in managing their health, work, and life. At the same time, the COVID-19 crisis amplified the centrality of literacy to people’s life, work and lifelong learning. Reading and writing skills are essential, for instance, to access life-saving information and sustain livelihoods. In addition, the need for digital skills, which are part of today’s literacy skills, have been recognized for distance learning, a digitally transformed workplace, and participation in a digitalized society. While there is no single internationally agreed definition, digital skills are broadly understood as a range of abilities to use digital devices, communication applications, and networks to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately in an increasingly technological and information-rich environment. Various aspects of digital skills are increasingly becoming indispensable to be literate. However, many young people and adults are digitally non-literate, including those who lack basic reading and writing skills. In Europe, 43 percent of adults lack the basic digital skills required to participate in distance digital learning. As acquisition of digital skills involves complex cognitive processes, these emerging skills demand calls for ensuring an adequate level of reading and writing skills, the integration of digital skills into literacy programmes, if appropriate, and the consideration of the inter-relations between these skills, kinds of technology and teaching approaches to be adopted, as well as learners’ motivation, life situations, contexts, and cultures.
ILD 2021 will explore how literacy can contribute to building a solid foundation for a human-centred recovery, with a special focus on the interplay of literacy and digital skills required by non-literate youth and adults. It will also explore what makes technology-enabled literacy learning inclusive and meaningful to leave no one behind. By doing so, ILD2021 will be an opportunity to reimagine future literacy teaching and learning, within and beyond the context of the pandemic.
ILD2021 will be celebrated across the world to uphold the right to literacy and foster the acquisition of literacy and digital skills by youth and adults for a human-centred recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. Some key questions that ILD 2021 will ask will include questions on what are inclusive and good policies, measures and interventions to put literacy, and possibly also digital skills, at the heart of a human-centred recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and to narrow the digital divide and how can the learning of digital skills be integrated into technology-enabled literacy programmes in a meaningful manner as well as how can governments and other agencies mobilise adequate technical and financial support for the promotion of literacy programmes, including the ones that integrate digital skills learning?
Hopefully the efforts that ILD2021 undertakes will increase awareness of the importance of literacy and digital skills for a human-centred recovery and possible ways to make policies, measures and interventions for youth and adult literacy better and more inclusive to counter the digital divide and key issues are identified and new ideas generated for reimagined literacy teaching and learning that integrate literacy and digital skills.
Yesterday was India’s 75th Independence Day and inspired by the post on Singapore last week, I decided to do a similar one for India and specifically about my hometown of Mumbai.
I’ve done my home state of Maharashtra and Mumbai in my Travel Bucket List series and the links are there for anyone to explore more about the place I grew up in. So here are some things which are unique to my home. Some may be common knowledge, while others may come as a surprise.
Mumbai is today a peninsula, but this was not so. It was earlier an archipelago of seven different islands which were reclaimed to become the core city of Mumbai. The islands which were reclaimed were the Isle of Bombay, Colaba, Old Woman’s Island or Little Colaba, Mahim, Mazagaon, Parel and Worli. It took six decades to merge the islands into one landmass, starting in 1784 and finishing in 1845. Today, any place beyond Mahim on the western side, Sion on the central side and Koliwada on the eastern or harbour side are known as the suburbs.
The ubiquetious auto rickshaw is not allowed to ply their services within the original city, that they can only serve residents beyond Mahim on the western side, Sion on the central side and from Chunabhatti on the harbour side. Why this is so I am not too sure, but I assume that when this rule was made, it was probably due to a variety of factors, including the fact that the original city roads were narrower, autos were light vehicles and may cause more traffic jams or perhaps it made more sense at that time to have autos cater to the suburbs where the transport system was not yet so fine-tuned.
Mumbai is named after a local temple deity, Mumbadevi, whose temple still stands today in Bhuleshwar. She is the patron goddess of the kolis, the fishing community who were the original inhabitants of the city.
But before it was called Mumbai, it was Bombay and regular readers know I still use Bombay interchangeably with Mumbai. Long-term residents still use Bombay and this name is courtesy of the Portuguese. During their rule, it was called Bom Bahia which means a good bay as Mumbai has a natural harbor on its eastern side.
Mumbai was part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza when she married the English, King Charles II. Charles II received the ports of Tangier and the Seven Islands of Bombay as part of the dowry which he then leased to the British East India Company for an annual rent of 10 Pounds. For over 300 years the city was known as Bombay, until 1995 when the ruling regional political party Shiv Sena changed the name to Mumbai.
Mumbai is home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Elephanta Caves, The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, formerly known as Victoria Terminus, and the city’s distinctive ensemble of Victorian and Art Deco buildings.
The library of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, housed in the iconic Town Hall building in Fort, houses what is considered to be one of the only two original manuscripts of the Divine Comedy written by Dante Alighieri in the 14th century.
The 61m high Gilbert Hill in Andheri was formed when molten lava was squeezed out of the earth’s clefts, and is about 66 million years old. The hill was declared a heritage structure in 2007. There are two two Hindu temples atop the hill which have fantastic panoramic views of the city’s western suburbs.
Mumbai was where the first train in India commenced operations. On April 16 1853, India’s first passenger train ran between Bori Bunder which later became the Victoria Terminus and then the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Bombay to Thane, a distance of 34 km. The 14-carriage train was hauled by three steam locomotives, Sahib, Sindh and Sultan and carried 400 people. It was built and operated by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.
The Bhor Ghat section of the line between Bombay and Pune, a mountain passage located between Palasdari and Khandala situated on the crest of the Western Ghats was completed by Alice Tredwell, an English railway contractor and photographer in 1863.
The first electric train in India ran on 3 February 1925, between Bombay’s Victoria Terminus and Kurla Harbour. Later, the electric line was extended to Igatpuri and then to Pune.
The Mumbai train network is the busiest in the world, carrying nearly eight million passengers daily, packed to almost three times their capacity over a network that spans 465 km. During the rush hours, each train carriage is rammed with around 500 people, yet they were only designed to carry 188 people. Thats roughly 14-16 people per square metre, double the recommended figure. The rail staff have coined a term for this phenomenon: Super-Dense Crush Load.
Mumbai also home to the most obsolete electric rail chain in India, which was installed in 1925. This means that instead of there being a third rail on the ground powering the trains, the cables are overhead. This is also one of causes of deaths among passengers that sit atop overcrowded carriages.
The first bullet train in India will be launched in 2022 and will run between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Mumbai’s Juhu Aerodrome was the first airport in India founded in 1928 as India’s first civil aviation airport. Juhu served as the city’s primary airport during and up to World War II. In 1948, commercial operations were moved to the much larger RAF Santacruz which is today the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport, built 2 km east of Juhu aerodrome during the war.
In October 1932, the industrialist JRD Tata landed at the Juhu aerodrome, inaugurating India’s first scheduled commercial mail service. This service, between Karachi and Bombay was the inaugural flight of Tata Air Services which started as an airmail carrier within India after winning a contract with Imperial Airways.
The first person to own a car in India was Sir Jamshetji Tata, the founder of the Tata empire in 1898, the grandfather of the man who would go on to build the first Indian indigenous car. While the first car to come to India in 1897 was owned by an English man Mr Foster of Crompton Greaves. The following year, Jamshedji Tata became the first Indian to own a car.
The first motor bus route in India can also be attributed to Bombay. The route was started on July 15, 1926, and ran between Afghan Church and Crawford Market. The bus fare for the journey was four annas, 25 paise or quarter of a rupee.
Mumbai has a coastline of about 150 kilometres and not many know about this. From Colaba to Marine Drive to the Worli Sea Face to beaches of Dadar, and beyond, Mumbai’s coastline is vastly underrated and its potential needs to be tapped.
One of Mumbai’s best kept secrets are the flocks of flamingos who make the city their temporary home during the winter season, usually from October/November to March/April. They can be found in the stretch from the Thane Creek to the Sewri jetty area till the Elephanta caves area, a 15-20 km stretch. One of the easiest areas to access is the Sewri marshland area, where photographers and nature lovers can see and photograph them. The best time to watch these birds is during the early morning time and a few hours before and after a high tide.
Covering an area of 104 sq km, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali is the largest park in the world located within city limits. This dense forested park is home to a resident tiger population, over 2000 year-old Buddhist caves, two large lakes and so much more. Its lush green cover counters much of the air pollution in Mumbai, leading to it being referred to as the lungs of the city. With a history dating back to the 4th century BC, the park is home to 274 species of birds, 35 species of mammals, 170 species of butterflies and more than 1300 species of trees.
One of the newer symbols of the city, the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, officially known as the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link is a 5.6 km long, 8-lane wide bridge that links Bandra in the western suburbs with Worli in south Mumbai. It is a cable-stayed bridge with pre-stressed concrete-steel viaducts on either side. The bridge is made up of cement and steel wire that equal to the girth of the earth and was made with 90,000 tonnes of cement and steel wire.
Mumbai is the most populous city in India with a population of exceeding 23 million and the sixth most populous metropolis in the world. The city is so densely populated that there is only 1.1 sq m of open space available for Mumbaikars. It is the most cramped city on the planet with less space per person than in New York, Mexico City, Shanghai, Hong Kong and even Tokyo.
Also known as the entertainment capital of the country, Mumbai is home to the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood. It is also where India’s first feature film, the silent film, Raja Harishchandra was released in 1913. The film, produced and directed by Dadasaheb Phalke premiered at the Olympia Theatre in Bombay on 21 April 1913, and had its theatrical release on 3 May 1913 at the Coronation Cinematograph and Variety Hall, Girgaon. It was a commercial success and laid the foundation for the film industry in the country.
The Bombay Stock Exchange or BSE is the first ever stock exchange in Asia. It was established in 1875 and is the first in the country to be granted permanent recognition under the Securities Contract Regulation Act, 1956.
Mumbai is the financial and commercial capital of India because it houses many important financial institutions like the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange as well is the headquarters of many national corporations and the India office of international corporations.
Mumbaikars are also the top tax payers in India with the city consistently being the city which is the highest contributer to the national exchequer. The city contributes almost a third of all tax collected in India.
Mumbai is also considered the wealthiest city in the country and is well-known for it’s stark contrast between the rich and poor, both often living cheek by jowl. While there are several large slums and chawls, The city also houses the highest number of millionaires and billionaires in the country, making it the richest city by average estimates.
The Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba is India’s first ever 5 star hotel. Founded in 1903, the hotel was the first in India to have electricity, Turkish baths, and German elevators, among other features. It also had India’s first all-day restaurant, as well as the country’s first discotheque. The hotel is built in the Saracenic Revival style and is located next to the Gateway of India. The hotel is believed to have been built back to front, was founded by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata and the story goes that Tata was denied admission to the Pyrke’s Apollo Hotel then situated close to the Taj and decided to build a hotel in which Indians can enter. Today, the Taj is one of India’s best five star hotel chains.
Mumbai is one of the most helpful cities of India. Even though the city is known to have a callous attitude and there are many instances of not knowing neighbours, when the push comes to a shove, Mumbaikars are a helpful lot. Even floods, bombings, terrorist attacks don’t faze us and the helpful city goes out of their way to shelter and feed those who are stranded. I have many stories of this attitude, both personal and anecdotal which proves this adage right.
Mumbai is the birthplace of many internationally renowned authors. Rudyard Kipling, author of many children’s books including The Jungle Book and Kim was born in Bombay. Kipling’s birth home on the campus of the J.J. School of Art was for many years used as the dean’s residence. Although a cottage bears a plaque noting it as his birth site, the original one may have been torn down and replaced decades ago. Salman Rushdie, famous for the Satanic Verses and one of my favorite books, Midnight’s Children was born in Bombay as was Rohinton Mistry, the author of Tales from Firoza Baugh and Such a Long Journey.
The dabbawalas of Mumbai are internationally known with a system that is even being studied at institutions like Harvard. The famous century-old network of dabbawalas is a lunchbox delivery system, unique only to Mumbai who deliver hot lunches from homes and restaurants to people at work. The lunchboxes are picked up in the late morning, delivered predominantly using bicycles and railway trains, and returned empty in the afternoon. They are also used by meal suppliers in Mumbai, who pay them to ferry lunchboxes with ready-cooked meals from central kitchens to customers and back. More than 5000 dabbawallas split into 200 teams of 25 people each and manage everything, from pick-up to delivery. The enormous complex network is so well maintained with a near-perfect success rate, that the Forbes magazine has awarded the network with its highest rating, Sigma Six, a rating shared with corporate giants like General Electric and Motorola, which signifies less than one error per one million transactions. A colour-coding system identifies the destination and recipient and each dabbawala is required to contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta-pyjamas, and the white Gandhi topi or cap. Each month there is a division of the earnings of each unit and fines are imposed for alcohol, tobacco, being out of uniform, and absenteeism. A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker’s home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are of limited literacy with the average literacy of Dabbawallahs that of 8th grade, the dabbas or lunch boxes have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols.
Something even I was not aware, but now that I know, doesn’t seem far fetched is that Mumbai ranks among the top five in the largest number of stray dogs in the world. And because of this, the city has one of the highest numbers of cases of people being bittem by these dogs and due to which all hospitals are equipped with rabies related treatments.
Mumbai is also home to the world’s second most expensive property, Antilla. The house, which is the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani and his family. At 27 stories, 173 metres tall, over 37,000 sq m, and with amenities such as three helipads, air traffic control, a 168-car garage, a ballroom, 9 high speed elevators, a 50-seat theatre, terrace gardens, swimming pool, spa, health centre, a temple, and a snow room that spits out snowflakes from the walls, the skyscraper-mansion is one of world’s largest and most elaborate private homes. The architectural design of Antilia has been fashioned along the lines of the lotus and the sun. The top six floors of the building have been set aside as the private full-floor residential area. It is also designed to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake. It is valued at more than $1.2 billion, deemed to be the world’s second most valuable residential property, after British crown property Buckingham Palace, and the world’s most valuable private residence.
Imagica, a 130-acre theme park in Khopoli on the Mumbai-Pune highway is India’s largest theme park. The park has an estimated daily capacity of 15,000 visitors and to date, has hosted over 5.2 million visitors. The park has theme, water, and snow parks.
32 billionaires live in Mumbai, with a collective net worth of US$115.1B. This places the city in sixth position on the world’s list of cities with the highest number of billionaires.
While Mumbai may be the wealthiest city in the country, it also houses the Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi which houses about a million people. And Dharavi isn’t just Asia’s largest slum, but it also happens to be one of the most pricey with houses here likely to cost at least Rs 300,000 or about USD 4,000. Combined with Kurla-Ghatkopar, Mankhurd-Govandi, and Bahndup-Mulund slums, they account for more than half of the city’s population and it is estimated about 62% of the population lives in slums.
I hope you enjoyed reading more about my beloved city as much as I enjoyed writing about it. And some of these facts were unique enough that once the travel starts, you will make a trip to visit Mumbai. Actually, this blog post is making me very nostalgic about the city and I want to make a trip there as soon as possible.
Do you know that just 10 to 12 percent of the world’s population use their left hand as their dominant hand? But this 10% include some of the most influential people on this planet. Being a lefty is thought to be genetic, but I am not too sure about this. GG is left handed and in mine and S’s extended families, we don’t have anyone who is the same, but I wonder if this is because she is a twin?
The way the brain works is incredibly complex, but here’s a simplified explanation which will give some understanding of where our left-hand dominance comes from. The brain is cross-wired so the left hemisphere controls the right handed side of the body and vice-versa and hand dominance is connected with brain dominance on the opposite side, which is why we can safely say that only left-handers are in their right minds!
This brain dominance makes left-handers more likely than right handers to be creative and visual thinkers, which is supported by a higher percentages of left-handers than normal in certain jobs and professions like music and the arts, media in general. Left-handers are also generally better at 3-dimensional perception and thinking, leading to more left-handed architects than normal. Left-handers are also usually pretty good at most ball sports and things involving hand-to-eye co-ordination.
So why are there so few left-handers in the world? In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University developed a mathematical model to show that the percentage of left-handed people was a result of human evolution, specifically, a balance of cooperation and competition. In other words, they thought that, though the basis for right- or left-handedness may be genetic, there could be a social factor that explains why the ratio is so high. The more social the animal, where cooperation is highly valued, the more the general population will trend toward one side, according to Daniel Abrams, an assistant professor at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science who helped develop the model. The most important factor for an efficient society is a high degree of cooperation which in humans, has resulted in a right-handed majority. In other words, we may have, for some reason, evolved to favor right-handedness, so anyone deviating from this may have been conditioned to use that hand primarily despite their genetic predisposition.
Stone Age implements discovered seem equally divided between left and right and studies of cave drawings have indicated a preference for the left hand. When tools became more sophisticated, a clear hand preference emerged. The right hand preference may have originated in sun worship. In the Northern hemisphere you have to face south to follow the sun and move from left to right until the suns sets in the west. This gave moving to the right and the right hand side a great significance. Another theory says that as the heart is on the left hand side, a shield would have to be in the left hand to defend it and any weapon therefore had to be held in the right, which became the dominant hand. Recent theories have included one that right-handedness is the normality and left-handedness is a deficiency which results from a traumatic birth! The historical bias against left-handers is best reflected by the English word ‘sinister’, synonymous with evil or menacing; its Latin root ‘sinestra’ meaning ‘on the left’.
There are many superstitions about left handed people. In certain societies, they may be considered unlucky or even malicious by the right-handed majority. Many languages still contain references to left-handedness to convey awkwardness, dishonesty, stupidity, or other undesirable qualities. In many societies, left-handed people were historically, and in some cases still are forced as children to use their right hands for tasks which they would naturally perform with the left, such as eating or writing. In the late 20th century, left-handedness became less stigmatized, and in many countries, particularly the Western world, left-handed children were no longer forced to switch to their right hand anymore. Actually when we first found out that GG favoured her left hand, there was a lot of resistance within the extended family asking me to force her to use her right hand to eat and write. But, for reasons that I don’t really understand, I refused to do that and told everyone who asked me that if she was born favouring a certain hand, then I will not force her to disregard it for her non-dominant hand. And so today her left hand is her dominant hand and she is proud of this, though there have been many challenges, especially when using writing and other implements not designed for left handed people.
To celebrate the uniqueness of left-handed people and raise awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of being left-handed, the International Left Handers Day is observed annually on August. The day was first observed in 1976 by Dean R. Campbell, founder of Lefthanders International, Inc and is oberserved to raise awareness about the everyday issues that lefties face as they live in a world designed for the righties.
So to honur this day and my GG, here are some fun facts about these unique individuals:
Left-handers tend to perform well in tennis, baseball, swimming and fencing.
Most left-handers draw characters facing to the right.
In sets of twins, there is a high chance the at least one of them will be left-handed.
Stuttering and dyslexia occur more often in left-handers, particularly if they are forced to change their writing hand as a child.
Left-handers adjust more readily to seeing underwater.
Left-handers usually reach puberty 4 to 5 months after right-handers
4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed
1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed, 250% more than the normal level.
Left-handed people are more intelligent and creative thinkers with a greater degree of mental flexibility than the rest.
Deemed to be more skilled in terms of language, left-handers are also considered to be better leaders.
In Britain in the Middle Ages, lefties were associated with the devil and often accused of the crime of witchcraft, meaning they would get burned at the stake.
Today Singapore celebrates its 56th National Day and in honour of that, here are some perhaps known and unknown facts of the country I now call home.
Singapore is not just one island, but is made up of 63 other offshore that surround the main island. These include Sentosa, the largest of the offshore islands, Pulau Ubin, St John’s Island and Sisters’ Islands.
Singapore is one of the 20 smallest countries in the world. The main island is 42 km long and 23 km wide and has a total land area of just 683 sq km.
There are only three city-states that exist in the world, and Singapore is one of them, other than Monaco and Vatican City.
After New Zealand, Singapore is the easiest place across the globe to do business, according to a business list published by the World Bank.
Singapore is the least corrupt city in Asia and the third least corrupt in the world, after Denmark and New Zealand at number one and tied in third place with Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Standing 165 meters high, the Singapore Wheel is the second-highest in the world, losing the first rank by only 2 meters.
Singapore’s Changi airport has been has been named the world’s best airport for the eighth year in a row at the annual Skytrax World Airport Awards in 2020.
Singapore’s national carrier, Singapore Airlines has also consistently been voted the best airline with SIA at number 2 in the 2020 Skytrax World Awards.
As of April 2021, Singaporean citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 192 countries and territories, ranking the Singaporean passport 2nd in terms of number of countries a passport holder can visit without pre-arrival visa arrangements according to the Henley Passport Index.
There are over 3000 kilometres of roads in Singapore, which when stretched from end to end, can cover the distance between Singapore and Hong Kong.
Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world after Monaco as well as being fully urbanised.
Singapore has often been called, locally and internationally as the Little Red Dot.This term was first coined by then Indonesian President Habibie who used it to make a remark about the country’s appearance on the map which is usually represented as a red dot. Although that was an unfortunate reference and one which Singaporeans did not take too well to, the term has stuck and is commonly used by the media.
The national language of Singapore is Malay. The four official languages of the country are English, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay. And although English is Singapore’s language of business, locals speak Singlish, not just English. So visitors should not be too surprised to hear Singaporeans adding exclamations like ‘lah’ and ‘leh’ to their sentence. Singlish— our colourful local slang— is an integral part of everyday conversation amongst Singaporeans. So what is Singlish? Singlish is a collection of colloquial catchphrases and lingo influenced by Singapore’s multiculturalism. Other examples include the Singlish term “chope”, which means to reserve a seat. Locals often chope seats at a hawker centre using packets of tissue paper. And like many Asian countries, Singaporeans also tend to refer to older strangers as Aunties and Uncles.
Singapore is renowned for having some of the cleanest streets in the world, largely due to a 50,000-strong cleaning workforce employed to keep the streets clean. Singapore is also known for its strict laws on littering, spitting on the streets, vandalism and public urination that can result in heavy fines and/or a punishment called Corrective Work Order, where offenders are required to pick up litter in public wearing a bright vest.
Singapore once disappeared from maps. There was a period of time when the city was wiped out from the map. With the exchange of hands between the Majapahit Empire and Siam’s Ayutthaya Kingdom in present day Thailand, as well as marking itself as an important trading port for the Sultanate of Johor, Singapore became hot sauce for traders. This led to Portuguese pirates burning the city down in 1613, leaving the city obsolete for more than a hundred years until migrants from around the region started setting camp, rising it from its ashes. In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles established a British trading post, and word about Singapore got around.
Singapore’s time zone has been changed six times. From 1905 to 1932, Singapore was seven hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time or GMT, and then it moved 20 minutes forward from 1933 to 1941, and a further 10 minutes forward from 1941 to 1942. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, clocks were moved an hour and 30 minutes ahead to sync with Japan’s time. When the war ended, the clocks reverted back and finally settled to sync with Malaysia’s in 1982. Currently Singapore is 8 hours ahead of the GMT.
The red of Singapore’s flag represents universal brotherhood and equality of man while the white symbolizes purity and virtue. The crescent moon stands for a young nation on the rise and the five stars signify the ideals of democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality.
A Gallups Law & Order study has highlighted Singapore as the safest country in the world, for several years running. The UN Office on Crime & Drugs also ranks Singapore as the country with the lowest crime rate in the world together with Japan, at 0.2% homicides in 2017.
80% of Singaporeans live in government housing. The Singapore government owns almost 80% of the land and has used it to guarantee housing to its citizens in what is known as HDBs or Housing Development Board which offers discounted housing to its citizens.
Chewing gum has been banned in Singapore since 1992. But it is not the chewing which carries a penalty, but the importing of it. But locals are known to bring in some chewing gum, especially from Malaysia, but one needs to be careful as technically, bringing some gum from an overseas trip turns one into a chewing gum smuggler. The penalties are quite strict with a fine of up to S$100,000 and 2 years imprisonment.
Singapore is that it is home to two very profitable casinos which jointly generate over $4bn in revenues annually and puts the country on fourth place in the world casino ranking by gross revenues, but even though it’s far behind the world’s largest casino market of Macau which generates $33bn because of Singapore size, it represents a much larger percentage of GDP. Local residents, including Singapore citizens and permanent residents need to pay $100 to access the casino but entrance is free to foreign visitors.
Buildings in Singapore cannot be higher than 280 metres. Currently, there are three buildings of that height – OUB Centre, UOB Plaza and Republic Plaza.
The National Stadium at the Sports Hub has the world’s largest dome with a retractable roof. The 20,000 sqm roof dome measures 312m in diameter and can open and close in 20 minutes. In 2016, the National Day Parade returned to the National Stadium after 10 years. The dome roof let performers ‘fly’ through the air in a first for the Parade!
Singapore is seriously green. In fact, it is one of the world’s greenest cities with nearly half of Singapore’s land area or approximately 700 sq km under green cover. Beyond numerous parks and gardens, there are pockets of undiscovered plant life housed in the most unusual of places. Like the Parkroyal on Pickering which is known for its hotel-in-a-garden concept and its four-storey cascading vertical garden. Other than green areas, parks and park connectors, Singapore is rich in biodiversity in its nature reserves and is home to over 2,100 native vascular plant species. The Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in particular, is said to contain more tree species in a single hectare than the total number of tree species found in North America. However, Singapore also has one of the highest percentages of green spaces of any city in the world at 30% according to a study by MIT and the World Economic Forum.
Singapore is also home to the world’s first night zoo with the Night Safari providing a nocturnal experience like no other in the city. Opened in 1994, the 35-hectare park features over 1,000 animals in their naturalistic night-time environments. Visitors can hop onto a 40-minute tram ride for an overview of the park’s main attractions and also walk along the four interlinked walking trails within the park, for a zoo trip like no other.
Singapore is a city of man-made waterfalls. According to the Wildlife Reserves Singapore, the first man-made waterfall was built at Jurong Bird Park in 1971. Dropping from a height of 30 metres, it is said to be the tallest waterfall in an aviary to date. At the Gardens by the Bay, in the Cloud Forest dome, there is a huge, 35-metre waterfall, which is the centrepiece of the misty conservatory, designed to house plant life from the tropical highlands. And no trip to Singapore is complete without a visit to the world’s tallest indoor waterfall. Housed in the retail and lifestyle complex of Jewel Changi Airport, the HSBC Rain Vortex soars at 40 metres, and is surrounded by a lush indoor garden.
Singapore pioneered the first F1 night race which has been held annually since 2008. The Grand Prix Season Singapore features a gamut of concerts, racing and entertainment activities, for Formula One fans and visitors of all ages. The Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix made racing history as the world’s first ever FORMULA 1 night race. The twisty Marina Bay street circuit has largely remained unchanged in the years since; the track’s brightly lit floodlights also add to the spectacular night views of Singapore. According to Formula 1, the Marina Bay Street Circuit also boasts more corners, 23 in all, than any other circuits on the Formula One race calendar.
It’s home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site with some unique VIPs. The Singapore Botanic Gardens became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015 and has a history of over 150 years since its founding in 1859, more than a century older than modern Singapore itself. Its most popular attraction is the National Orchid Garden, which houses thousands of orchid species known as Very Important Plants or VIPs. Over 200 hybrid orchids in this garden have been affectionately named after visiting foreign dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as well as celebrities like actors Jackie Chan, Zhou Xun and Bae Yong Jun. Singapore’s first botanic garden opened in 1822, on the slopes of the area now known as Fort Canning Hill. Measuring just 19 hectares, the garden closed in 1829 due to rising costs and its land was then used for various public projects, including an Armenian church, a school and a hospital.
Everyone has heard about the Merlion, Singapore’s iconic emblem. The Merlion is a mythical creature with a lion’s head and a fish’s tail. But what many people don’t know is that the Merlion was partly inspired by the city’s Sanskrit name, Singapura, which means Lion City. This Sanskrit name is thought to have been given by a Sumatran prince Sang Nila Utama, who ruled Temasek, a settlement on the Singapura island during the early 14thcentury. While hunting for animals, the prince spotted a strange creature moving quickly, which was identified as a lion by his advisors. However, there were no records of lions native to Singapore. It might have been a tiger that he saw, for tigers used to be found in the wild in Singapore, up until the 1930s. The Merlion is however is completely made up and was designed by Alec Fraser-Brunner, a member of the Souvenir Committee and curator of the Van Kleef Aquarium, for the logo of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) in use from 26 March, 1964 to 1997 and has been its trademarked symbol since 20 July 1966.
Built in 1869, and originally named Edinburgh Bridge after the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit, Cavenagh Bridge is the oldest bridge in Singapore. It was named Cavenagh after the last India-appointed Governor of the Straits Settlement, Sir Orfeur Cavenagh. The Cavenagh coat of arms and original signages still stand at each end of the bridge that’s used by pedestrians today. Based on the vintage police notices that are still up, no vehicles, even cattle and horses, are allowed to cross the bridge to this date. The bridge spans the Singapore river and provides scenic views of the city’s business district. On the other hand, the close-by Anderson Bridge has a morbid past. Completed in 1910 and named after then Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States, Sir John Anderson, the steely exterior of the bridge, before becoming part of the famous F1 street circuit, used to have severed heads of spies and criminals hanging from it during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.
Singapore is the only country in the modern world to gain independence against its own will. The late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wanted a merger and unity. However, due to extreme political fallouts, the Malaysian parliament unanimously voted to expel Singapore, forcing the little red dot to stand as an independent and sovereign state.
From the From the 1960s to the 1990s, the government deemed long hair to be negative and detrimental to the country. Therefore, popular bands like Led Zeppelin and the Bee Gees had to cancel their Singapore tours due to the ban.
Collectively, Singaporeans are the fastest pedestrians in the world, walking at a speed of about 6.15 kilometres per hour.
Of the only five official Tintin shops in the world, one of them is in Chinatown in Singapore with the remaining four in Japan and Europe.
One can find the National Anthem of Singapore on the back of the SGD 1000 note, written in micro text.
Military service is compulsory for all male Singapore citizens and second generation permanent residents who serve for two years in active duty as full-time national servicemen (NSFs) in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Singapore Police Force (SPF) or Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), following which they transition to an operationally-ready reservist state as operationally-ready national servicemen (NSmen). Enlistees are called up after they finish their A levels or diploma, and are usually 18 years and above, though they can enlist early after they turn 16 with parental consent. As operationally ready servicemen, they need to come back for training on an annual basis as part of the reservist force until they turn 40 or complete a certain amount of training sessions.
The signature Singapore Sling, which contains gin, Cointreau, cherry brandy, Dom Benedictine, pineapple juice, Grenadine, Angostura bitters and lime, was first served at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel in the year 1915.
Singapore as a country has grown in land size in the last decades. This is not through expansion or invasion of other countries but through land reclamation efforts which started in varying degrees, since the arrival of the British in 1822. Around 25% of Singapore today did not exist at independence and has been reclaimed from the sea to cater to industrial and population growth.
The USB flash drive that the whole world uses was invented in Singapore. Trek 2000 International came up with the thumb drive in 2000.
The Mint Museum of Toys is the world’s first museum for toy artefacts. It houses a world-class collection of over 50,000 vintage toys and collectibles, of which 8,000 are on display in the museum.
Suntec City’s Fountain of Wealth is the largest fountain in the world! Made of cast iron, it cost almost US$6 million to build in 1997.
Singapore is the only country in the world that reclaims and recycles water. The five NEWater plants meet up to 40% of the country’s current water needs.
Singaporeans speak in a mixture of languages even in a single sentence. Growing up in a multicultural society, it’s not uncommon to have friends from different races and when that happens, one tends to learn phrases from each other’s languages. So its not difficult to have people speaking multiple language in any conversation.
So here are some known and unknown facts about Singapore for those who don’t know this city. Happy birthday Singapore and may you continue to grow and prosper. Majulah Singapura!
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Memories and Such 