It’s official. Singapore is now too expensive for human habitation, with a new survey pegging it as the sixth most expensive city in Asia. Japan took the top four slots (fuel prices having skyrocketed after every last tree was felled to print the new Murakami book), Seoul scooped fifth (with total annual spending on hairgel standing in for GDP). But Singapore was the shock, leapfrogging Hong Kong into sixth. Taxi fares are going up, Causeway fares are going up, stamp duty is going up, the price of the paper you buy to read about prices going up is going up. What to do but strike out for a new home? To leave this overpriced city state behind and set up camp elsewhere: Singapore 2.0. Fortuitously the ideal candidate has just emerged.Kepler 22b might sound like just another condo address, but in fact it’s a newly discovered planet, one that scientists say is eerily similar to Earth. What they don’t say, but is obvious if you read between the lines, is that it’s also eerily suitable for residents of Singapore. The planet sits smack in the middle of the so-called Goldilocks zone—a distance from the nearest star that’s neither too hot, not too cold, but just right for life to evolve and survive. In fact, it’s described as having a “shopping mall-like surface temperature” of a steady 22 degrees Celsius. A mall the size of a planet, people! A place that doesn’t just come with air, it comes with air conditioning.What’s more, the planet’s year is a full 75 days shorter than ours. That’s 75 days a year we wouldn’t have to report to work, a full two-and-a-half months of MC. What’s not to like? (So what if technically the next year comes around sooner; that just means more annual bonuses!)Of course, it’s not quite like hopping over to JB. Keppler 22b is some 600 light years (or—nerd alert—5.6 x 1015 kilometers) distant from Earth. But you know what? There’s not a single ERP toll along the way, and Comfort DelGro aren’t yet imposing surcharges for destinations outside our solar system (though who knows what they have planned for 2012).The only real problem? Scientists say it’s probably too big to support life on the surface, and is perhaps more like Neptune, a gas-and-liquid giant mostly covered with ocean and lacking a rocky surface to walk on. But when was the last time you heard anyone in Singapore talk about how much they like walking? Send an advance party of terraformers equipped with a planet’s worth of floating travelators, and we have ourselves the perfect home away from home. Grab your tissue packets people and get ready to reserve your spot on the other side of the Universe.
