While everyone here’s been busy talking about our election (incidentally, is there any other country where a football stadium attracts more supporters for a rally than for a match?), elsewhere in the world everyone seems to be talking about us.The New York Times dropped by for 36 hours and wrote up a little itinerary. Yet while we can’t fault their recommendations (though we do hope that Wild Oats and Kith Café don’t get overrun with tourists just yet…), one glaring error speaks volumes. Perhaps we missed the memo, but we hadn’t realized that when “Orchard Street, the city’s main shopping district, received a multimillion-dollar revamp in 2009” said makeover extended to renaming it.You can’t blame them, the loveable old hacks. From their ivory Midtown towers we’re just a blip on the screen. Poor, tiny little Singapore. Do they even have roads? Don’t they still ride bicycles, or those funny things with three wheels? You don’t need roads for them, I bet they just make do with a street.Picture the scene: Factchecker #1: “Hey man, this piece on Singapore is sweet. Says here that “at the Maxwell Road Food Center near Chinatown, vendors sell everything from dumplings to onion pancakes to dessert.”Factchecker #2: “Wow. That’s like a whole meal or something. Under one roof! We should totally do that here.”#1: “I know. Those Asians are smart, dude!” #2: “Asia, huh. Isn’t that where they found Bin Laden? You think it’s safe to go there right now?”#1: “Yeah, you’re right. I dunno, man. It says here they put their artwork in army barracks, which sounds pretty sketchy to me.”#2: “Right. And you just know a restaurant called Wild Rocket is trouble.”#1: “So we’re agreed? Let’s never go there. I just wanna get this factcheck done and forget all about it. Says here there’s a place called Orchard Street. But every single entry on the internet refers to Orchard Road. Whaddya think?#2: The internet? You can’t trust that thing. Why do you think we’re still printing newspapers? Stick with Street. As if they’ll spot it. It’s not like they can read English over there anyway.
