"Always pack a sweater," one local businessman advises visitors to Singapore, "because the best thing about our weather is the air conditioning." Singapore's first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, would have agreed-he considered the air conditioner the greatest invention of the 20th century. Another Singaporean politician once remarked that if it had not been for artificial cooling, local workers would be "sitting under coconut trees" rather than labouring away in high-tech factories.
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