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Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

Is it better or worse than Dubai? Or similar?

Kind of depends. It's more sterile. Dubai you get the impression they generally care about you having a good time, at least if you're Western. Singapore they care about you looking like you're having a good time. Singapore doesn't have the de facto slavery problem of the Emirates, though. Food is definitely better in Dubai.

I always found phrases like “Food is better in X city than Y”, just silly.

I wish you weren’t being downed and the parent extrapolated.

It’s a very subjective critique… I live in a foodie city and am long tired of overpriced sandwiches splashed with an aioli served for a cool $20, no drink no side.

Went to a no name city for hiking and found a nice hole in the wall shop with great food at a quarter the price and found my kind of foodie.

I agree that those sort of generalizations are unfair and extremely subjective, but I think there is a truth to the idea that some places in the world people care more about food and are more picky about it. If you are well off person and only go to fancier places you see it less, because you are probably always served a baseline quality.

But some parts of the world just have less access to fresh produce, less cultural diversity, etc. That doesn't seem quite so subjective. And there is good food to be found pretty much everywhere, that is not the point.

Well, the problem with these sweeping statements is that there zero objectivity. There is no way to discuss or learn anything about it. There is no way to falsify it.

I could make the most easiest case that Singapore has better food than Dubai. Just because I said so.

I find them silly and not very useful.

Similarly, "I had the best ramen at this place" or "For authentic X food, you have to visit X" or "City X has the worst drivers" (Literally everyone says that about their city).

So I take it you've never been to Boston.

A friend of a friend often quips that the best way to get good Mexican in Boston is to go to Logan and fly almost anywhere else.

I love to dunk on Boston.

Mediocre place with such an inflated sense of relevance. I feel like nobody would notice or care if so many aspects of Boston and people from there didn't think people cared.

It has more colleges and hospital systems than other places.

Or just walk down Peterborough street: https://elpelon.com

My city seems to have a problem producing good bread at non-insane prices, which means it's also ~impossible to get a decent sandwich at anything but LOLWTF prices, and even then you're rolling the dice that it'll be better than what a totally ordinary sandwich should taste like, and does in cities that don't have this bizarre problem. We're in the heart of wheat-growing country, too. It's really weird.

Our Mexican food's great, though, so we have that going for us.

I truly believe that there should be an exchange program between San Francisco and Boston.

Boston needs a proper taqueria, and San Francisco needs a proper pizzeria.

Boston needs proper Thai food, and San Francisco needs proper ice cream.

Etc.

I believe the number one destination for people leaving Boston is San Francisco. You'd think this would happen naturally.

I don't remember where I read it, but one indicator is that when Boston's baseball team comes to Oakland, there are more Boston fans in attendance than Oakland fans.

Really? A statement like "New Orleans has better food than East Saint Louis, Illinois" doesn't sound that silly to me.

>Singapore doesn't have the de facto slavery problem of the Emirates

It kind of does. They import Bangladeshi construction workers to build all the glitzy skyscrapers and infrastructure and shove them in dorms 16 to a room.

Im not sure if they confiscate their passports or not like in Dubai but i think they still do those contracts where they have to pay an agent and work off their debts.

A fair number die because of lax health and safety that is lax because theyre "only banglas".

If there are differences in how theyre treated vs dubai theyre more a matter of degree than character. Theyre very much at the bottom of singapore's racial hierarchy.

Theres the occasional case of maid slavery as well.

Bangladeshis are low-status migrant workers all over Asia and the Middle East, and deal with the poor working conditions that come with that. And they're often targets of racism, because racism isn't as taboo outside the western world. But the situation in the Emirates/Qatar/etc is completely different than Singapore. Unless you're taking the tack that "all capitalism is de facto slavery" or something like that, the term really only applies to the former, not to Singapore.

It's not completely different. The whole thing where they put them in debt, stuff them in dormitories, keep them on a tight leash, work them half to death, neglect health and safety and neglect them medically when theyre injured is the same in both countries.

In dubai/qatar they just do it more and worse and also like to confiscate their passports (although technically thats illegal now...).

> Im not sure if they confiscate their passports or not like in Dubai but i think they still do those contracts where they have to pay an agent and work off their debts.

Yes, most laborers are working off a debt to their agent. Confiscating passports is technically illegal, but very common in practice.

Safety regulations are tighter than in the Middle East, although still lax by the standards of most other developed countries.

People can report labor rights violations to the government, which sometimes even investigates them and takes action. But they are mostly content to turn a blind eye unless something is very egregious, and labor rights NGOS are understaffed and underfunded. And strikes are effectively illegal.

Unlike in the Middle East you can leave the country without your employer's permission, but this might be easier said than done in a lot of cases.

So, more indentured servitude than slavery. Still not great.

Kinda weird to see maid salaries ranked by race https://transfermaids.com/blogs/maid-salary-singapore. Myanmar maids should have at least 1 day off per month.

Even if it's non-slavery, the maids do not get paid a lot and have to work quite a bit depending where they end up. No real private space and your "room" is a sleeping mat on the floor in the laundry next to the kitchen so you can be easily found. And they aren't expensive - if you can feed them and have a spare room, their pay is only around $600 per month. If that was the reality in Australia nearly every middle class family could afford one.

A couple more things I've noticed on my visits. Trucks and work vans allow people to ride in the back unsecured. They'd never let real citizens do that in their safer cars.

The airport had an entire separate processing line for the plane from Bangladesh one time when I visited.

I once arrived late at night when the newer terminal was being finished, and leaving the carpark saw rows and rows of shoes. The workers were all sleeping under the carpark exit ramp in the open air.

Those dorms mentioned caused some issues when COVID ripped through recently too.

Dubai has a much larger collection of fancy restaurants from top chefs from any cuisine in the world.

Singapore has a much better street and regular local/Chinese/Indian/SE Asian food scene.

> Singapore doesn't have the de facto slavery problem of the Emirates, though.

Singapore imports a lot of Indian (and other South Asian), SEA, Chinese migrant labor as well, to live in conditions that are not great. I mean, not as bad as emirates, but not that great either:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/06/19/singapores-migrant... (recent treatment during COVID lockdowns)

> Food is definitely better in Dubai.

Singaporean hawker centres are pretty world famous.

I recall Anthony Bourdain going to Singapore in one of his shows and he seemed to really like the food there.

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