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The Top S’pore Saga in 2022, According to Google, is the Omega X Swatch Saga

2022-12-09 , 6:46 pm

Last Updated on 2022-12-10 , 9:49 pm

You’ve seen your Spotify Wrapped, but did you know that Singapore has its own version of a “Wrapped” as well?

It’s called the “Year in Search 2022”, an annual report done by Google exploring the searches shaping every nation.

Here’s what Singapore’s Year in Search 2022 looked like.

Top S’pore News Included… the Omega X Swatch Saga

“MBS Swatch let us in at 7am to Expo 10am, then they say they only have 100 to 130 pieces available and ask us to leave without any reasonable explanation!”

Sound familiar?

If it does, we don’t know if it’s worth congratulating you for but we’ll give credit where credit is due. Congratulations for remembering the 5th most trending Singapore news in 2022.

A quick recap: the Omega X Swatch MoonSwatch saga looked a little like snaking queues in Marina Bay Sands and ION Orchard, Singaporeans yelling at police officers and generally, a whole lot of chaos.

Those who didn’t manage to snag a new watch from the MoonSwatch collection despite queuing for hours got riled up, so much to the extent that one even challenged a police officer to “take your gun and shoot me”.

This saga even caught the eye of the Minister for Law K. Shanmugam.

While other nations fight wars, we’re fighting over watches—it’s bizarre, and it’s no wonder this saga made it into the top Singapore news in 2022.

Other pieces of trending Singapore news, in true kiasu Singaporean spirit, include GST vouchers and CDC vouchers.

Even Google knows about our obsession with promotions, discounts, and all good things to help us get some bang for our buck.

Monkeypox was also one of the trending searches for Singapore news, while the search that came out on top was, as expected, COVID-19 cases in Singapore.

Northshore Plaza Makes it to the List of Trending Activities and Places in S’pore

According to Google, the most trending activities and places in Singapore this year included i Light, Gastrobeats, the LKY Musical, Marquee and Northshore Plaza.

The biggest festivals drawing in the hipster Singaporean crowd, a musical about our founding father, the biggest club in Singapore and… a mall in Punggol?

This is almost as surprising as when mask mandates were finally lifted. West siders might not have even heard of Northshore Plaza before this.

The mall was opened in Punggol just this year and boasts being HDB’s first seafront neighbourhood centre.

Equipped with a 24-hour Giant outlet and a breathtaking sea view, perhaps it’s not that surprising after all that this mall managed to make it into the top ranks.

Watch out ION, Northshore Plaza’s coming for your title soon.

Joseph Schooling Not Among Trending Athletes

The likes of Joseph Schooling and Loh Kean Yew might have earned their places in competitions and even the spots in our hearts, but not the top ranks in Google Trends.

Eileen Gu, Djokovic, Nadal, Casemiro and Darwin Nunez are the top five searches in Singapore for athletes, with familiar names like Loh Kean Yew coming in only at 9th place.

The most surprising thing?

Joseph Schooling, Singapore’s favourite swimmer and Milo ambassador, does not even make an appearance on the list at all.

Perhaps this signals a shift in time for the new generation of young athletes to shine.

These were Your Favourite Movies and TV Shows in 2022

These movies and TV shows might have mixed reviews from the floor, but they made it onto the top searches anyway.

First up for movies, we have Thor: Love and Thunder—one of the many additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2022.

While the superhero film’s ratings on Rotten Tomatoes may not be the best, at least it takes the cake for the #1 trending movie searched in Singapore this year.

Other movies included Black Adam, Top Gun, Jurassic World and the absurdist comedy-drama film Everything Everywhere All at Once.

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As we learnt to live with COVID-19 and work-from-home arrangements gradually slipped away, we had less time to enjoy our go-to TV shows in the comfort of our homes. Yet, that didn’t stop Singaporeans from catching their favourite dramas and reality shows this year.

TV shows that captured our attention in 2022 included All of Us Are Dead, the Korean dating show Singles Inferno, Business Proposal, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Manifest.

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Well, I guess Singaporeans really love their oppas and their Korean TV shows.

A JB Getaway – A Tale As Old As Time

It’s been a rough few years struggling with the stringent restrictions imposed as a result of COVID-19.

When border controls started easing, rest assured that Singaporeans were the happiest about this—we were all dying to get out of our little red dot for a brief getaway.

The top travel-related search was “Causeway Link”.

We just can’t stop thinking about Malaysia and our weekend JB trips. It’s a tale as old as time.

For those of us who wanted to fly a little further, Google’s trends seem to suggest that many Singaporeans had their eye on Japan.

The second top travel-related search? It was “SGD to YEN”.

Perhaps the recent upset of Japan beating Germany in the World Cup opening fuelled a surge in travellers eager to visit Japan as well.

The other top travel-related searches included the Singapore Arrival Card, our vaccinated travel lanes, and almost as if Google was promoting itself, Google Flights.

Trends that Captured Your Year

As the year comes to a close, Google’s Year in Search 2022 gives us an idea of what captured Singapore’s attention this year and what our priorities were.

Evidently, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on that as well as the way we go about our lives every day.

With any hope, this “new normal” will be something we can learn to live well with.