New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has Singapore and hurricane Katrina on his mind.

That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.

At a point when we are contemplating how to rebuild a mostly destroyed city, invoking Singapore is intriguing. The Disney Land of nation-states, Singapore can best be framed in the context of its airlines. There is one size dress all the flight attendants wear. Either the fit in the dress, or they don't fit in the job. Its one way to run a society, and when you only have one city and 4.4 million people involved, it can work. I'll admit to having found the vision of Raffels somewhat appealing when sitting in the 1st class section named after him cruising at 40 thousand feet while enjoying the most complete booze selection of any airline servicing asia-pac.

"In the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it. But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. ... [So] the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree of accountability in Singapore."

Accountability Singapore style can be pretty brutal. Lets just say you best dispose of your bubble-gum properly. Either way, they are pretty much telling us we suck, and they actually have a point or two. Granted they kill people over drug offenses, yet are still one of the major transit ports in the south-east asian heroin trade and a major venue for money laundering. I guess that's what comes with having the largest port in the world in terms of tonnage and being a major outpost in the free market.

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