Malay Village also.
Is the failure of our tourist attractions due to our scholar's ineptitude or is SG not meant to be tourist attractive?
The scholarly people do not possess shrew business acumen. They could be good administrator / bureaucrat, but they are not businessmen.
Take Malay Village fo example, it is being fenced up like a prison.
My goodness, it is supposed to be a shopping cum recreational hub, but now, you would need to hunt high and low for the entrances in order to get in.
It makes sense to fence up a police station as it signifies authority. When a criminal walks into the compound of a police station, psychologically, he knows that he is under the appropriately authority's jurisdiction.
But when you have a shopping centre fenced up, you effectively stop your customers from coming.
Your customers must be able to come into the village from all 4 directions and not only from few fixed entrances. That's the way to do business.
Of course, from administrator's point of view, when people can come in from all directions, the roads surrounding the village will be messy as people will conveniently stop their vehicles at the roadside.
But, we are talking about business. In business, you must be prepared to accept a certain level of 乱 (messiness). You look at those streets in Hong Kong, they are a little 乱 but that is exactly the factor for the town being bustling, lively and full of vitality.
But our best and the brightest think otherwise. They would go all out to ensure that the place is clinically clean. But the result is that the place is dead, dull. Hong Kong people say "新加坡...? 好闷.." (Singapore.. a dull place..). This is the meaning.
If you were to get a comment from the old Far East boss, he would scold in Hokkien whoever behind the idea of fencing being "cum lan".