singapore culture etc. whatever

When I think about the aspects of Singaporean culture that really surprise me compared to my experience with English culture then really I can raise one thing above all others:

Wherever there is TV, there will be a crowd of people watching it. So there's a video store displaying some DVD and you can guarantee there will be a sizable crowd watching it (mostly male.. not sure why this is). It just strikes me as so weird, why are there so many people standing in the street watching televisions, this isn't a poor country everyone has a TV in their home and yet there will be such a big crowd outside of any store displaying an audible TV that it makes it difficult to navigate past the store in the street.

I guess another thing that really fucks with my mind is that in a country where English is supposedly the first language and most of the TV stations, newspapers and media are written in English, barely anyone can speak English well. For a start even Singapore's most popular newspaper features grammatical mistakes in pretty much every issue. In the world of business it goes even further downhill. 90% of the e-mails I receive are written in terribly broken English. It's common to pluralise singular words and singularise plural worlds (damn it be consistent). Apparently it is the same in education as well according to my girlfriend. How is almost everyone managing to avoid learning their country's language?

At least they get the food right. Damn do they get the food right. Generally the cheaper it is the better it is as well. Which is great. Don't spend too much on a meal, eat the cheapest meals you can find in hawker centers. They are lovely.