International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Singapore

It started with the four million smiles campaign (sounds familiar to Thailand’s – the land with a thousand smile motto?). With this initiative, all Singaporeans and foreigners in Singapore were encouraged to smile to everyone in the city especially when the delegates from all over the world who came to Singapore for the coveted Suntec Convention Hall.

With so many smiles all over Singapore, would there be conflicts and protests? Apparently so from the number of policemen and police tanks that is circling around the city weeks before the event. Former NS servers were sent for re-service just to ensure they are available to protect the country in the event of any mishaps. And you know what is the funniest thing: the sight of a few men protesting with small banners and posters surrounded by fleets of policemen. What can a harmless protester who might not even know how to spell English properly do? I was in Suntec City the other day and saw everything in action. Dogs sniffing bombs were around everywhere, metal detectors installed in every entrance to Suntec City and every little holes from the basement to the penthouses in Suntec City were sealed. This is really taking things to extreme. Talk about "Better safe than sorry". Never have any country impressed me so much with their non-negligence. Malaysians could clearly learn from them a tiny bit and the country would have improved a lot.

Finally, after incredulous hard work, the IMF came and go without much fanfare. While talks on protests were heard in the vicinity, there were not much other problems. This IMF could have passed as the quietest IMF ever. Even when it was held in other countries, I would have known more about the protests and agenda in IMF compared to being in Singapore itself. However, it was fun nonetheless to be in the same country in which the event was held, fanfare or not.

Last but not least, I was lucky to be able to catch the fireworks from the top of a building on the last day of the IMF. Watch it here.