I love Singapore

And it's not for the reasons that you think. Ok, Singapore does have really tasty dishes, but the reason I love it so much is because it's INCREDIBLY EFFICIENT. More so than the US (can you really believe that?)

I had a Maxtor external hard disk that I bought from the US, and it went bad on me as I arrived in Singapore. I was afraid that I'd have to return it to the US for a warranty exchange, but decided to look into options here. Turns out that Seagate (the parent of Maxtor) is based in Singapore, and there's a local address for RMA returns. This past Friday, I took a cab to the building, did my warranty return, and was told to wait about 2-3 weeks. (Interesting side note: This place was completely full of pallets of hard disks, seems like it's a regional distribution center for Asia, if not North America)

Today (Monday), I got an email from the company that my new hard drive will be shipped to me by Tuesday.

Incredible! I was seriously prepared for a long wait, or at most, logistical issues since I bought this in the US, but the service was beyond my expectations

Just like my experience opening my bank account here... They needed only a few documents, and within an hour, my bank account was open. I made a wire-transfer from the US, and it was credited the next day. That's faster than it takes for me to make domestic wire transfers between banks in the US!

One interesting thought: once Singaporeans (or expats in Singapore) get used to this type of high-quality efficiency, it must be so painful to move to other Western countries (eg, France), where things move at glacial speeds...