Money (I)

Hey, actually Singapore is a trading city-state. The openness ratio (export to GDP ratio) is more than 180% (compare this to the roughly 50% of Switzerland and the mere 11% in the US or Japan). There are numerous banks here.
But, if you wanna open a new bank account, it is somewhat onerous. Here you gotta wait 2 weeks until you get your bank card, and another week for receiving the PIN code and the access to tranfer money to/from the account. Well, may be I am spoiled, but in Switzerland it takes you at max (!) 3 days to have the account fully operational (card, PIN, e-banking etc.)...
Another difference: OCBC bank here seems to be the only one who exempts you the fee for opening/maintaining a bank account (but only for the first 5 years, and only if you open the account as a student). In Switzerland, I don't pay any fees so far for any account (the exemption lasts until you're 30 years old).
Finally, it seems normal for banks to demand a minimum deposit (!), but again here is only one account who exempts you from this. In contrast, I have never faced a minimum deposit requirement for a Swiss bank account.... the standards/customer friendlyness seem worlds apart.

So now, I just wait to get this damn PIN code to draw in new funds from my home country - meanwhile "sitting dry".

Interesting is is money also from a monetary policy perspective over here (in conjuction with the demanding/rigorous ECON325 course on "Asian Monetary Policy").
The MAS (S'pore's central bank) has apparently hybrid regime of a BBC (band, basket, crawl) in order to tighten Exchange rate and pursues also a goal of low inflation (we don't talk about central bank independence here:-).
More on this later