Day 4: High point

That's him!

It was another early rise day today, with the added wrinkle that we had to relocate, so the luggage had to be up early as well. At breakfast, another complication became evident: a second large group had just checked into the hotel yesterday and was turning out in force during our breakfast time. Nothing for it but to stand in line watching in amazement how unthinkingly people can wait for a minute in front of the toaster for their personal piece of bread to reappear and then block the queue for another minute to apply butter to that piece on the spot. A throughput three times as large could easily be achieved by a less dimwitted scheduling of the scarce resources. Granted, the placement of toaster and butter in itself showed that the hotel staff had very little understanding of queuing models themselves.

After the delayed arrival of our luggage last Monday, luggage jokes had been made so frequently that the humour had worn rather thin, but fresh inspiration was found in the many plans drawn up, announced and rejected to get our stuff to Marina Bay Sands somewhen during the day. For now, after applying the "business formal" dress code and squashing everything else into the hold of the bus, we made our way to the first visit of the day: MAS, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, regulatory body, central bank and mint rolled up into one.We were visiting a new branch of MAS, the FinText Innovation Group.

Improvised meeting room

Interestingly, though on ground floor it looked as though we had finally hit the right level of formality, with suits aplenty swarming around us and a thorough passport scan, after lifting up to another 13th floor we were met with the sight of a hallway in the process of complete overhaul, with panelling mostly missing and walls chalked full of well-wishing messages; and we were welcomed by a friendly guy dressed no more formally than our own "casual" code, who introduced himself merely as "Roy". The presentation he confronted us with, too, was full of keywords like "startups", "initiatives" and "technologies", and indeed he seemed to mean it. In fact, apart from the research group hosting at USTD, this was the only place where emphasis was put on security. The thing is, Singapore is relying on its position in the financial market as one of the cornerstones of its economy (together with transport and tourism), and the financial world is nowadays in a bit of an uproar due to new enabling technologies - first and foremost Blockchain, which we had already had a nice introduction to on Tuesday (by TNO). It turns out that MAS is reacting to this by trying to be proactive and bringing in people who can help them retain their prominence. I have to admit that the way this was cast by Roy sounded quite exciting, though ever before this, finance has been high on my list of ten most boring topics I could think of. He even promoted a FinTech festival mid-november that I later heard some of our students seriously considering to make time for at the end of their (post-study-tour) trip.

May Ideas Soar!

We were invited to ask questions, but true to the pattern that is emerging, there was not enough time to actually exhaust the curiousity of the group. I wonder: in the book The Culture Map there is a dimension on timing and scheduling, which essentially ranges between cultures from being very strict and rigid (more than five minutes late is a problem) to being extremely relaxed and flexible (anywhere within an hour of the scheduled time is quite OK). Though none of the countries the study tour is touring are explicitly listed in the book, all Asian cultures tend to be on the relaxed/flexible side of the spectrum; but that is not actually what we have seen around us. Every time that insufficient Q/A time is scheduled in (which is every time), there is little flexibility towards the delay incurred when questions are actually asked (which is also evey time).

Back to propaganda time

After the presentation we were led back downstairs into a standard exhibition of MAS on their financial policies and past triumphs. This pretty much meant going back to propaganda time. The most interesting (and slightly awkward) thing was the fact that some of the students managed to interrupt one of the running demos and start up an internet browser on the demo machine. My role is not that of a parent or responsible adult, at least that is the way I see it; but it might very well not be the way the Singaporese see it when push comes to shove. I suspect they might think that seniority means, well, seniority, and breaking into a demo means breaking the (unwritten) rules sufficiently for seniority to be expected to step in. In the end, I let my perspective prevail, did not step in, and luckily push stayed sufficiently far away from shove.

Rolled-up sleeves: as casual as it gets

Act two of the luggage and dress code soap ensued. The plan upon which the OC had finally settled was to drive by the hotel and drop off all main luggage there, without checking in just yet. However, jackets and ties were to be kept with us for later. Then again, our next hosts had explicitly asked for casual wear, whereas the best we could do with the means at hand was business casual (long-sleeved button shirts, no jackets or ties). Means were discussed to further casualise; scissors were rejected; in the end we settled upon rolled-up sleeves. Which is really a laugh: a more casual group than the MISC students is really hard to imagine, and here we were, looking for all the world like a bunch of regular suits painstakingly playing at being casual.

One of the self-assembled SwarmX drones

After quite a bus drive northwards, we arrived at SwarmX, a small start-up company located in a non-aircoed shed-type building way outside downtown Singapore. They build drones; their "value proposition" is AI for self-guidance. Their appearance belied their ambitions and claims of current success, which were extensive. After having been shown their launching installation, outside in the really hot sun, we got to hear a fascinating overview of the sort of thing their drones can do or should be able to do soon, completely autonomously. If it's all true (and with this amount of enthousiasm, not to mention salesmanship, that is hard to judge) then this is really impressive: surveillance, policing, reconnaisance, inspection, crowd control, you name it they (plan to) do it. Interestingly, our guide (an American himself) told us that, though they're located in Singapore for quality control, their prospective clients are rather in the surrounding countries, where there is much less regulatory objection against drones.

SwarmX launch installation

It made for a welcome change in the type of visit, too: not only regarding topic but also regarding type of company. Without a good deal of enthousiasm and energy I think you can get nowhere with a startup; I'm sure you have to wrestle your way through a good deal of failure without getting discouraged. Not for me, but kind of admirable to see. We were certainly welcome and our questions were, for once, answered in full and without hurry to end the session (which anyway was conducted stand-up in the garage where it all happened, half-finished drone prototypes strewn around us); nevertheless, it was clear from the context that we were interrupting the ongoing work, and the lost time would probably have to be made up for into the evening.

Japanese food to stave off the temptation of the neighbouring Subway

Within the hour we were on our way again. After waking up the driver who was taking advantage of the break to have a nap, we made our way to an office of Info-Comm Systems, a division of ST Electronics, itself a branch of ST Engineering, a state-owned company (as far as I have been able to distil out of the info given). This was quite another type of deal again. After a quick, late lunch across the street (most, though not all of us managing to stay away from Subway and MacDonalds) we were received into a rather formal meeting room, with name tags on the central table for Luís, myself and the five company representetives present, who included the CTO, a director of research and three less senior, probably more tech-level employees. The students for the most part had to sit on chairs placed against the wall - where, to make up for the lack of status, at least baskets of chocolates and sweets as well as bottles of water were provided for all. Later, during the presentations, all that was said was directed again at Luís and me, the 25 students might as well not have been there. This was almost a caricature of the type of situation I had been led to expect from my reading of The Culture Map as well as some prior experience. The key concept here is "power distance", which involves the degree to which hierarchy is important in a culture, national or organisational. Needless to say, power distance is much smaller in the Netherlands tha almost anywhere else; I think only Denmark beats us in egalitarianism. Our hosts, who themselves were quite high up in their company, were, I think, culturally unable to grasp and believe that the students, and not us teachers, were really responsible for organisation and content of this tour; they could simply not help but address us, and leave it to us to deal with the learning process of the students.

Asset Management: 6 Key Messages

When in Rome... Unable to change the culture just yet, we had accept things as they were. That meant switching to listening mode. The company is responsible for much of the communication infrastructure in the nation, and we got to hear all about it, in four back-to-back, uninterrupted presentations of about 20 minutes each. No invitation to ask questions was issued. I had to apply all the tricks I have learned over the years not to fall asleep during this session, which so amazingly went against all that is known about effective means of knowledge transfer: biting tongue and cheeks, or trying to stay actively involved by anticipating what was being said or preparing questions in my head. Left and right I saw students nodding, and not necessarily because they agreed to all that was being said. A pity really, because given more time I think this could have been a really great visit, content-wise they had a lot of interesting things to say. As it was, we were quite badly overrunning the tight schedule. After the company presentations we had a slot ourselves, which was to be filled by a short talk by me to set the context of the Netherlands and the University of Twente, then a few words by Joyce Pebesma to explain the setup of the study tour, and finally a few slides about the Kennispark right across the street from the university, which Info-Comm had specifically asked about, after apparently having studied the place a bit. Given the situation, at the last moment we decided to skip the middle bit. Even so, we were quite hurried in closing off, and when we finally got on the bus again the driver was clearly far from pleased. I take that as another sign that Signapore does not really have a flexible-time culture.

Marina Bay Sands

Lobby (view towards towers 2&3)

We, on the other hand, were extremely pleased when we finally arrived at the hotel for tonight, the Marina Bay Sands. This 57 story, three-tower hotel, with a single boat-like structure straddling the tower as in a wicket, is one of the defining landmarks of Singapore seen in every single iconic picture of the city-state. The OC had formed the great plan to shrimp a bit on the other hotels so that we could afford one night here, at the mere price of 180€/person provided we shared rooms. They had approached Luís and me several weeks in advance to ask us if we, or rather our research groups, would be all right with that; for the other participants it was meant to remain a secret until the last possible moment. I personally had never heard of the place before they asked, but after having taken a look on the all-knowing internet, how could I possibly resist? The same for Luís, with whom I would therefore be sharing a room for the night.

Surprise!

The Singapore way

While waiting for the group checkin to be arranged, we had time to gape at the inside of this amazing structure. The three towers are not monolithic blocks of concrete but consist of two curving opposite walls meeting each other about 20 stories up, so that there is a cathedral-sized space inside, with inward-facing balconies of rooms on the inside. Better to have an outside view though: indeed, such turned out to be our luck when Luís and myself found our room, on the 16th floor.

No time to enjoy the view properly, for with all the delays it was actually high time for the pre-arranged dinner. We were ordered to get back to tie and jacket. Another surprise awaited us here, for as it turns out, this hotel features one of Gordon Ramsay's very own restaurants, The Bread Kitchen. That is where a table was set out for us, outside, with places no wider than ourselves. We thoroughly enjoyed a three-course meal, supplied with generous quantities of wine or ale. Midway some rain started falling for the first time during our stay in Singapore, somewhat unfortunately since this was the first and only time we were dining outside; however, a solution was routinely applied which I don't think would be possible anywhere in Europe: five waiters were positioned around the table to hold up umbrellas for the duration of the (fortunately neither very long nor very heavy) rain. Later, when it started to drip again, space had become available elsewhere in the restaurant, under a proper roof.

Infinity pool at night

Infinity MISC

After dinner, it was high time to get out of our constricting suits and start exploring the high point of the day, or indeed the whole week and possibly the entire tour: the Infinity Pool on top of the hotel, 200 meters in the air, with breathtaking views all around. The pool is designed to give the impression that it continues right up to the edge, from where maybe you could swim into the void. Though in reality a safe 2 or 3 meters separate the edge of the pool from that of the building, the effect is truly sensational. We were also able to follow the light shows conducted every hour or so at the waterfront next to where we had been eating before, point out other landmarks and speculate about their function - is that a football stadium down there? Is that tiny figure the water-spouting lion that protects the city? Are those lights boats waiting to be guided into the haven or buildings on the coast? Is that island over there the first sign of Indonesia?

Birthday boy Max Kerkers

Cocktail time!

At 23:00 the pool closed, but our day was not yet done by a long shot. The final event consisted of a few cocktails, back in formal dress, in the SkyBar at the stern of the wicket boat, partially to celebrate Max Kerker's birthday. One more time the views. After a Honey Rose Daquiry, a Padua Handshake and a Morning Margherita it was bar closing time, and my personal body shutdown time as well. Not so for many of the students, who preferred the idea of spending our last night in Singapore not sleeping at all and getting back to the Infinity Pool at six, in time to see the sunrise. I optimistically programmed my phone to wake me up in time to join them, then fell into a very deep sleep.

View from the SkyBar