by Eric Feigenbaum On Christmas Eve 1965 – roughly five-and-a-half months after the nascent Singapore’s independence – “The Mexicans” arrived. Their job: to help build and train a Singaporean military. At the time, the British remained nominally committed to protecting Singapore as part of a planned military phase-out, but Singapore needed its own defensive capabilities.…

by Eric Feigenbaum “This hospital makes mine look filthy,” the nurse manager from Sacramento said to me as we walked the halls of Tan Tock Seng Hospital. This wasn’t a surprising first reaction to a Singaporean hospital. What Nancy said later surprised me more. “I’m not sure about whether these nurses can handle working in…

by Eric Feigenbaum The assertion that religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organizing large-scale cooperation may vex many people for whom it represents first and foremost a spiritual path. However, just as the gap between religion and science is smaller than we commonly think, so the gap between religion and spirituality…

by Eric Feigenbaum Singapore’s domestic debate is a matter for Singaporeans. We allow American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their fellow countrymen. We allow their papers to sell in Singapore so that we can know what foreigners are reading about us. But we cannot allow them to assume a role in…

by Eric Feigenbaum From a corner room in Singapore’s Peninsula hotel, I spent many nights staring out the windows, watch sparks fly silently from the nearby construction sites. Up on the 18th or 14th or 20th floors, Singapore looked still and calm at midnight or 1am. Unlike many big metropolitans, Singapore streets – even in…

by Eric Feigenbaum “We have to develop Singapore’s only available natural resource, its people,” Lee Kuan Yew often said in one variation or another. Lee, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, held the role for 31 years before his “emeritus jobs” of Senior Minister and later Minister Mentor – staying active in Singaporean government until his death…

by Eric Feigenbaum In 2016, my then-wife and I took our one and three-year-old children from Los Angeles to Bali, Indonesia. It took 21 hours of flight time with one stop in Tokyo to refuel and another in Singapore to change planes – making for a roughly 26-hour journey with two kids in diapers. It…

by Eric Feigenbaum Among the many things America is wrestling with right now is what constitutes a level playing field? What are the elements of a society where everyone has opportunity? There are certainly multiple competing answers to these questions. Like America, Singapore is multicultural and, in their view, multi-racial – although I would call…

by Eric Feigenbaum “Peaches are $8.99 a pound!” my friend texted me yesterday. “This is the valuable package,” a very nice man named TJ who works at Trader Joe’s but disavows any personal connection said to me as he packed my grocery bag, “It has the eggs!”  $5.49 a dozen for jumbo organic free-range eggs…

by Eric Feigenbaum At about 6:30 am, we pulled up to the Labor Ready office in the Central District. My friend – who for the sake of this column will be called Rick – and I were responding to a trespassing call: a woman who was asked to leave the day-labor agency office was refusing.…

by Eric Feigenbaum When I tell someone I lived in Singapore, the most common response is some variation of, “Singapore – isn’t that where it’s illegal to chew gum?” I know a Greek couple who refuses to visit Singapore because they feel the rules are too strict and inhumane.  I don’t think they know what…

by Eric Feigenbaum The smell of Thai Boat Noodles always reaches to the parking lot. As you walk further into the Weekend Food Market at the Wat Thai of Los Angeles, whiffs of fish sauce, shrimp paste, garlic, frying rice noodles and more start to chime in. But always the Boat Noodles. “This smells like…

by Eric Feigenbaum In 1965, Singapore’s Founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew corrected an Australian news reporter: “I am not in fact Chinese. I am Malaysian. I am by race Chinese. I am no more Chinese than you are an Englishman.” He refined the example on other occasions, eventually saying he was “no more Chinese…

by Eric Feigenbaum When I first traveled to Thailand at age 23, friends warned me that should I ever encounter the police – for any reason, whether I was right or wrong – to quickly offer them 100 baht. One friend I made during my backpacking period got in trouble for smoking a joint on…

by Eric Feigenbaum Like the Montagues and Capulets, the owners of Zam Zam and Victory restaurants – adjacent to one another on Singapore’s North Bridge Road – have been at war for roughly a century. A one-time partnership turned bad led to two families operating restaurants with almost identical menus to operate in parallel. The…

by Eric Feigenbaum My great-grandparents were among the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island and equally a part of the wave of 20 million immigrants who entered the United States between 1880 and 1920. America’s fast-growing economy needed more manpower than its existing population had available, and the poorer classes of Europe were…

by Eric Feigenbaum Anyone who has ever watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit knows Los Angeles’ entire trajectory was changed dramatically in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when politicians and planners of the day  – perhaps spurred by some alleged corruption – believed cars and freeways were the direction of the future and invested massively…

by Eric Feigenbaum Professor Paul Heyne practiced what he preached. I had the good fortune of having Professor Heyne’s Microeconomics class in my very first quarter at the University of Washington. He may have been tenured faculty whose own textbook we used, but he was a natural instructor who engaged students effortlessly. Which is no…

by Eric Feigenbaum Two of the most frightening words in America: Medical Debt. And this nightmare is not just something you hear as an anecdote or cautionary tale. One in three of the people reading these words are likely to have medical debt. In 2022 roughly 100 million Americans – almost one-third of the population…

by Eric Feigenbaum Singaporeans call it “The Moment of Anguish” – when their founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew broke down in tears announcing the independence of Singapore. There are relatively few surviving recordings of the actual event – a non-televised press conference on August 9, 1965 with international correspondents – but the still images…