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I think I share a lot in common with people from Dubai: the experience of growing up in an authoritarian city where the social compact is ‘shut up and you’ll have work and money and things’; of knowing that your comforts are paid for by the labor of other people.

The weirdness that is living in a place that develops so rapidly there are entire new towns, buildings; train stations, infrastructure, sometimes when you just return from a trip, definitely when you spend a few years away.

I think both cities (Dubai and Singapore) attract a very specific type of person, that I would describe as ‘people who will happily feed children into Omelas’, but at the same time

The comforts of a modern city cleaned by other people, built by other people, almost mind-numbing comfort and having basic things more or less ‘taken care of for you’, are so seductive that many people do, in fact, want this.