Introduction to Singapore

So how did we end up here? We've been here since August/September; I came here from France to finish school on the Singapore campus and he came here after completing his MBA at Cambridge. So, while studying during the last few months of 2009, he found a job and I sought to look for one in Singapore/Hong Kong as well, so thus began the beginning of our time here in Asia :)

Some background on Singapore as to be honest, even I did not know much about this country until I arrived here...

Singapore is a city state, meaning that the city = the country. Its only landlocked neighbour is Malaysia; it was previously part of the Federation of Malaysia up until August 9, 1965 where they were expelled from this federation, becoming an independent Republic of Singapore.

Singapore has made tremendous strides in its development and to give some context, one measure could be the UN's Human Development Index (Singapore is ranked as #23 (after Germany which is #22 and HK is #24) while Malaysia is ranked as #66 (http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/).

Singapore since its independence has become 1 of the 4 Asian Tigers (next to HK, South Korea and Taiwan) and is ranked as the #1 country for expatriates according to Forbes in 2008 (http://www.financialpost.com/reports/property/story.html?id=693071) [More on on the expat population here later...]

And, just to give some relative comparisons to Toronto (GTA):

Singapore vs. Toronto

Population | 5M vs. 5.5M

Area | 710km2 vs. 7124km2 (basically most things are about 10km away from us (or about the distance of my home to Finch station), where the airport is the furthest destination - about 30km away from us (about the distance of the 401/404 to King/Bay); the remaining outskirts of Singapore are undeveloped or very industrial)... so very small!