A short trip down south to Singapore over the weekend was a timely break for me. Thank you to my ex school mate who was getting married; for otherwise I would not have found the chance to travel due to my extremely tight schedule.

It is really ironic whenever I enter Singapore, be it via Changi or the Causeway, that there is always this sudden, overwhelmingly strong desire to be a better person. Not that I have a choice.

Let’s face it: Singapore is probably the worst destination in the world for any smoker to set their foot on.

In Singapore, if you love the cancer sticks, be prepared to be treated far worse than a second-class citizen. In fact, they can make you feel like an idiot for being a smoker!

You are not allowed to smoke in public areas, even outdoors. Let's not even talk about smoking indoors for that "luxury" does not exist in the island republic.

You can only puff away at designated areas; next to those smelly trash cans. Now, who on earth would stand by a filthy trash can for 5 minutes each time? No prizes for answering correctly!

Enough about me being an idiot.

As always, Singapore have never failed to impress me each time I become its visiting tourist. They have everything to be proud of in terms infrastructure and human capital. Everything is in place and structured. You get the impression that every single detail of the republic's town planning has been thought out thoroughly.

Singapore gets me thinking. How can it successfully manage to get things right whereas Kuala Lumpur, more often than not, get wrong.

My mind drew me to a simple conclusion. Being a small country that it is; even if the ongoing land reclamation has given Singapore today its 704km/sq in size, they cannot afford to make any mistakes when it comes to the country’s development.

Borrowing the adage "less is more and more is less", I am not proud to say Kuala Lumpur, in some ways, is far behind Singapore as far as basic infrastructure is concerned.

We have seen how many roads, flyovers and similar public amenities removed to make way for new ones. Sometimes, they have not been around that long.

I can understand this is necessary in order to make room for new developments but the frequency of such cases makes me wonder if our authorities are farsighted enough.

Let’s not even touch on our own transportation system because that is another chapter altogether.

Is the luxury of space we enjoy today making us complacent? A simple analogy I normally adopt is this: a golfer would take a bit more time to compose himself before teeing off on a narrow fairway, as opposed to a generous fairway without any hazards.

Getting it right the first time should not be an option to us.

*The views expressed here are the personal views of the writer.