I just went to dinner to Holland Village, to some Northen Indian place with my two housemates. Since I have been going home in the early hours of the morning, I have very rarely seen my housemates at home. We set aside some time to enjoy one evening together. Food was super nice (they bake extraordinary naan breads in this city) and I am so full that I wasn't sure that I'd fit in the cab on the way back. We swapped notes about our Singapore experience. We called the city: a laboratory, some sort of antiseptic place where people breed efficiency, safety and curtesy.

Shanghai in comparison, was chaos, energy and initiative, booming with life. But even disorder when it does not go as far as being dysfunctional is charming. A perfectly organized life lacks character, uncertainty sustains interest, desire, motivation. I actually like the amusing hiccups in Fontainebleau.

A couple of other anecdotes:

if you ever go to Shanghai: become a house owner. The property market is fairly healthy right now, and does not show any sign of slowdown. You can borrow up to 70% of the cost of the property - say an appartment would sell for about US$100k - at about 5%, then get a 9% return through rental, or a LOT more (I talked about a BOOMING city) on sale of property. No need to be a genius to understand that this is a good deal for a US$20k initial investment. In fact, one of the alumni that we met was about to buy his 5th home. His wife was spending all her time redecorating them to make them more attractive for the rental market.

Most of the customers purchasing goods in the high end stores were extremely wealthy Chinese. They could buy a watch for 1m RMB (yes you heard me, this is equivalent to about US$120k). Some stores did not display prices. Every salesperson could try to exercise as close as possible to a perfect price discrimination.

In contrast, the fake or copy market was full of foreigners - and was posing a major challenge to the leading brands.