Comments by "Zhi Han Lee" (@lzh4950) on "What Happened to Singapore's TSMC?" video.

Semiconductors is still a big business in Singapore today (~1/5 of all manufacturing here, or 4% of the country's GDP) but now mainly by multi-national companies as foreign investors e.g. Micron buying over & expanding TI Semiconductor's plants here as well as it's JV with Intel (IM Flash), Samsung/Siltronic & Jabil setting up shop in Tampines Industrial Pk
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@jimseah7089 That's more due to the fixed/more rigid timetabling of the trains' CBTC signalling system I think. The trains are programmed to automatically close their doors after being open for a fixed duration at each station without anyone checking if anyone are still in the doorways I think (though there're warning sounds and lights before the doors close)
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At least in my factory now in Singapore it's also 2 12h shifts daily
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Singapore would like to diversify into multiple industries to make it's economy more resilient I think, though in the past there was some concern about us becoming too much of a jack of all trades but master of none. E.g. Singapore wanted to attract more IPOs & private universities too (to become an educational hub, or "Global Schoolhouse" as officially called) but ended up with companies mired in governance issues (e.g. China Aviation Oil (CAO) accounting scandal) and universities that suddenly closed down without refunding their students. Singapore had success in tourism (before CoViD-19) but I'm not sure if it's sustainable in the long run as it seems to be significantly dependent on frequent hardware renewal e.g. the demolishing of the barely 20-year old Merlion observatory tower on Sentosa island to be replaced by a sensory park to be able to remain 'relevant' & continuously "renew our offerings". The Underwater World aquarium which I don't remember as being that old was also replaced by the S.E.A. Aquarium & in the process we lost the ability to view sea creatures while standing on underwater travellators. In the process, dolphins were also imported from the Phillippines where there were also opposition campaigns against the importation (especially as 1 or 2 of them died during importation), over concerns about the stress the dolphins are subject to while in captivity
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1 of my classmates mother tongue is Hindi (instead of Tamil as is traditionally more common among Indians in Singapore) & he was saying he found it less useful in Singapore. Well I guess it's more useful for this job
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@jlo7204 Yup I think Micron now has an IT office in Hyderabad. & China (the other major countries that many Singaporeans' ancestors had migrated from) also has many different regional languages (or dialects as they're called, as they share the same script as Chinese but with each character pronounced differently) e.g. Hokkien, Foochow/Hockchew, Shanghaiese, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, but China was more forceful than India in pushing everyone to speak the same language (Mandarin, the language native to the Beijing capital region). This is probably reflected in Singapore's educational policy too, where multiple Indian languages are offered as subjects (Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali & Hindi, besides Tamil, though only available in 1 level of difficulty instead of 3) but the only Chinese language offered is Mandarin.
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@Asianometry Can imagine the country's petroleum industry on such a scale might be politically impossible in some other countries though due to environmental opposition. Also reminds me of how the country was ranked the world's worst environmental offender in a 2008 study (that the government slammed) because of the country's large amount of bunker fuel (probably due to the country's large petrochemical industry too) (apparently the only other metric/criteria/factor considered by the study was the % of each country's land that was developed; Singapore as a city-state has a % of above 60%)
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I remember the PM had previously brushed off the state media ranking for supposedly ignoring journalistic quality, but I don't have a way yet to verify who is more accurate
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