A handful of visitors have asked me about personal rights in Singapore. Instead of rambling on about rights / privileges / duties, I've compacted it all down into the simple simile: Singapore works like Twitter.

It's a small upstart that has potential, but doesn't have the size of the much larger institutions it competes against. It tries to do a small set of things well, focusing on the pains of growing and trying to avoid death in its myriad guises. And it also imposes limitations on its users. You can either work within the limitations explicitly, or you can innovate ways to get what you want done.

As an aside, there was a large industrial fire on Jurong Island last night that some people on twitter noted (e.g. dpcafe) and which wasn't covered in the local news. What do you think the governments of the world think about when they consider Twitter?