Singapore Day #1
By: William Woska, MBA Candidate 2018
Thirty MBA students from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business arrived in Singapore to begin a four day immersion of business in the city-state. After check-in at the Park Royal on Beach Road, students departed for a tour of the island, including the famous Tiong Bahru neighborhood. Our tour guide, Alvin Cheong, provided a brief history of Singapore including how it became independent from Malaysia when in 1965 Malaysian Parliament voted unanimously to oust Singapore from Malaysia. Of course, the city-state and island country is now one of the wealthiest nations in the world. In fact, Singapore’s GDP per-capita is the third highest in the world at Int$87,856 according to the World Bank. Jose Cacho, an MBA student in the full-time program said “its stunning that all this could be made on an island with little resources, even 70% of the water consumed in Singapore has a foreign origin.” At the conclusion of the tour students perused the area for dinner at one of the many open-air food courts, a mainstay in Singapore. Known for its transient culture, Singapore’s food scene is much the same. Dozens of choices are available from English Fish and Chips to Vietnamese Pho. Most students sought to try something new opting for something with a local flavor. Tomorrow, January 10, students will begin visiting organizations such as Action Community for Entrepreneurship, the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research, Impact Hub Singapore, GE Healthcare, and LumenLab. The purpose of these visits will be to help students learn more about doing business in Singapore and take these insights to their consulting projects.
