I am standing in a living-room-of-the-future. You can navigate the TV using hand movements, instantly swishing and touching to get subtitles to any international programming. Yes, a la Minority Report - but from across the room. Doesn't every good living-room-of-the-future have a nod to Minority Report? (cf: Qwiki ) Meanwhile, on the patio-of-the-future, just off the living-room-of-the-future, a hologram of a lady tells me that the glass-sided windows of this loft are coated with a self-cleaning glass. Dirt beads up and, when it rains, it's washed away. "Oh those rainstorms in the tropics!" she says with a slightly stilted laugh. This isn't Tomorrowland. It actually has a more Disneyland-sounding name if you can believe it-- FUTUROPOLIS. People live and work here, crafting futuristic crazy research like this. Welcome to Singapore's rare impractical side: Government-subsidized research conducted mostly by welcomed immigrants who can't find this kind of science-fair-project cash elsewhere.