Law, Partially

I’m in Singapore, and Singapore is not part of China. Singapore is far south of China. Singapore is a very small nation. It is an island nation, and the city of Singapore composes the entire nation that is Singapore. It’s a city-nation-state. My Singaporean friends tell me that Westerners always think Singapore is part of China. In a way, that’s not a completely uninformed guess, as China does have some special city-states that were former Western colonies – Macao and Hong Kong – and Singapore herself is a former colony city-state. And the majority of the population in Singapore is of Chinese descent, as in, part of the Chinese Diaspora. But young Singaporeans speak English very well. It is their first language. The schools here are good. That’s why I came. 

Can you picture the place now? One degree above the equator, snuggled between Malaysia and Indonesia, composed of nothing but a big island and a few smaller islands, ships with goods manufactured in China have to pass through the Strait of Malacca, near Singapore, to get to the Suez Canal and on to Europe, likewise, so does oil from Arabia bound for China, this makes it strategically placed, and this is where I am. I’ll be home for Christmas.