#25 A Message Received on My Morning Commute

Editor: @nwangerd

A few weeks ago, on my way to work, I received a DM from a friend living overseas. She thought it was something I might enjoy reading. It was a link to a post written by Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, titled Cities and Ambition. You can read the full post through the link (and I recommend doing so before continuing with this article).

 

Summarizing Paul Graham’s message in my own words:

• Cities are communities of similar people.
• As a result, each city carries its own form of "ambition", influencing its residents through a message it projects.
• Each city sends a slightly different message, and unless you live there, it's difficult to fully grasp it.
• Because it's hard for an individual to nurture ambitions that don't align with their surroundings, finding a city whose pulse matches your own ambitions is crucial.

After reading the post, I found myself thinking about the message that Singapore—the city I currently live in—might be sending me. Of course, as a foreigner and a corporate employee, my social circle here is somewhat limited, and that inevitably colors my perspective. But even so, I believe the message I’ve felt is genuinely part of what the city conveys.

Singapore: "You must quickly settle into the structure and rules we've laid out for a stable life - preferably in the form of a family." 

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Even if I hadn’t come across Paul Graham’s post, this message must has been consistently and quietly delivered to me over the three and a half years I’ve lived here. And from early on, I felt that Singapore’s pulse didn’t quite match my own. For a long time, I saw this place as a city to work, save, and eventually leave.
But as time passed—as I crossed from my late twenties into my early thirties—the message began to feel less foreign. I even applied for Permanent Residency at the end of last year, a fact that says it all. This shift in my thinking created a peculiar blend of comfort and discomfort. Sometimes comfort outweighed discomfort; sometimes the opposite was true. What remains certain is the steady undercurrent of unease. This discomfort even shaped my motto for the year: “Don’t be deceived by false peace.”
I wonder — Is this unease a sign of the discord between the ambition I hold and the city’s pulse?
Or is it the fading echo of my ownw message, dimming quietly within that dissonance?

Lately, I’ve been grappling with questions:
How much longer will I stay in Singapore? Can I truly settle here? Will I continue working here—and even if I want to, will I be able to?

Pushing these thoughts further:
What am I really seeking through my work? If the company cannot fulfill this longing, where else will I find it? Why am I not starting my own startup yet? What is weighing me down?

As I trace these questions back to their source, I find a yearning within me - a desire to live each day with passion, to seek more beyond what is already set. That yearning feels like a message I am sending into the world, a message still rough and undefined, the earliest shape of my ambition.

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Reading back over what I’ve written, it might seem as if I’m ready to leave Singapore any moment now. But realistically, I don’t think I will—not just yet. After all, this very article was born during a morning commute in Singapore, sparked by a link sent by a friend I met here. Even if I were to return to Seoul, I no longer have the naive optimism to believe that quitting my job would seamlessly lead me into entrepreneurship. Perhaps this is what growing older feels like.
I don’t know what the right answer is. But what I do know is this: Singapore is sending me a message. And I, too, am sending my own message into the world. Between these two pulses, what matters most is the choice I make.

 

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While writing this article, I asked ybp readers to share the messages they feel from their own cities.
Here are their responses, along with my own commentary.

 

• Seoul: "Just work :("
  • Editor's comment: Sounds like a survival signal from a reader exhausted by overtime.
    But it’s not just about overtime—Seoul is a vast iron cage where people with similar profiles live side by side, trapped by ever-rising, oddly skewed standards. Today, too, the weight of comparison presses down on the people of Seoul.
• Hong Kong: "Move quickly to the next stage - whether it's work, leisure or life itself."
  • Editor's comment: When I visited Hong Kong last year, the city’s frantic pace was unmistakable. Buildings shooting up like bamboo shoots, people racing through the streets—it felt pretty different from Singapore. I wonder what it would be like to live in a city where even the streets seem to urge you forward. Maybe it would be like Seoul.
    
• New York: "Live boldly, and stay hip."
  • Editor's comment: Featured multiple times in Vol.2, New York really is the embodiment of relentless dynamism. As you walk the streets, the city itself thrusts new content upon you almost every minute. There’s something truly irreplaceable about its energy.
    • Though personally, I sometimes wish the city could ease up on the hipness just a little...
• Austin: "Find your true self among dynamic and diverse people" | The slogan “Keep Austin Weird” says it all. In Austin, individuality isn’t just accepted—it’s encouraged. You can wear anything, act however you want, and still feel a sense of belonging. Austin feels like one of the few American cities where you can still sense the late 90s and early 2000s lifestyle—where rapid tech-driven growth coexists with a deeply rooted analog soul.
  • Editor's comment: When I visited this city earlier this year, it was surreal to see Waymo self-driving taxis and cowboy hats sharing the same streets. New and nostalgic pulses flow together here. I’d love to experience living there someday.
• Tokyo: "It's a bit slow and inconvenient, but bear with it, it's Tokyo."
  • Editor's comment: Even from Korea, Japan feels fundamentally different. When a Japanese person says, “That’s just how Japan is,” there’s little to debate. Japan seems to have built such a robust internal system that anything new is either absorbed into it—or quietly rejected. (Unofficial commentary from someone who has visited Tokyo 16 times already. Dozo!)
• Shanghai: "Growth is driven by labor. Without individuality, you're just a shell."
  • Editor's comment: My visit to Shanghai last year shattered many preconceptions. I was struck by how stylish the people were—maybe that’s part of what this message points to.
    Still, it seems that the infamous “996” culture remains firmly in place in Shanghai as well.
• Singapore: "Despite its nickname 'Singabore', if you look closer, there’s plenty of excitement to be found."
  • Editor's comment: What makes a city truly special, I think, is how differently it can be experienced by different people. I'd like to keep discovering what makes this city come alive for me, too.