About to become the 15,001 American expatriate living in Singapore, someone declared that it'd be brilliant idea to chronicle the experience. I don't think so but what the hell! Here is a blog written by the naive, exploring and handsome American and the Singaporean crazy enough to take him in.
Heads Up: This is a continuation on my blogging about applying for an S-Pass employment visa in Singapore. If you miss part one, scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the corresponding sequences!
And now the moment of truth. I have all my paper work filled out, every document notarized by the proper professional and I've even put it in a nice purple folder for presentation... hey, purple is super professional looking so stop snickering!
It's time to register my employment pass and have it made official by the government.
So in most cases, if your company has any legitimate Human Resource department, they can make the appointment at the Ministry of Manpower for you. Those that don't... it can require some hunting through the usual bureaucratic nightmare that is a government website. I personally believe that instead of going this route it just easier to call the Ministry and wade through the hour of operators to get a real live person to confirm your appointment. I however lost charge on my battery and was thrown back to step one before my appointment was confirm.
But HR came to the rescue and got in my appointment situated.
Once your confirmation is in the system, they send you a email with all your details, along with a registration bar-code. Print off this paper and bring it along with all your other documents.
With that all nailed down it was just holding out the days until it was time. Now remember this is a bureaucracy... it doesn't mean being punctual, it means being early. Finding the front entrance to just the campus wasted at least 20-minutes and thankfully I was there nearly an hour early, so it wasn't a mad dash to the door.
Inside its crowded, but keep your eyes peeled because Ministry officers are moving through the cluster of confused and waylay people, helping to get you to your appointment as fast a possible. They will take you to a nearby electronic kiosk. This is where that confirmation paper you printed off comes in. A quick scan and all your information is confirmed along with your physical arrival and in response, it prints off what lettered queue you are suppose to head to (A, B or C).
Inside the queue you have to wait in another line, though this is so short it will barely take longer than a few minutes. A screen on the wall will chime when a interview desk has opened and the corresponding number of said desk. Within minutes you'll be ushered into a glass lined cubicle that is so small you'll feel as if one wrong move and you'll be in the interviewer's lap!
Here is where you'll be handing over all your important documents that you've been collecting since the beginning of your journey:
Passport (Include multiple photo IDs and your social security card just to be safe).
In-Principle Approval Letter (the letter you were sent when your application was approved).
Disembarkation/Embarkation Card (basically the long-term visitor visa you were issued at Singapore customs when you arrived).
Completed Medical Examination form.
Make sure to note if your American or European, that the sequence your name is in will not match the common naming sequence on naming documents in Asia. To clarify, in Asia it is common to first list your last name, any numeral relation (junior, senior, III, IV), your first name next, finalized with any middle names you have (its common in this region of the world to have none at all or more than one, hence going last). In the case of Americans, who go First, Middle, Last, Numeral, this means you'll have to be issued a name amendment so they don't completely spell your name on the card in a disorganized manner. I had to correct the interviewer twice that she listed my name out of order... interviewers don't like to be corrected.
Next is the picture for your card and lets be clear, make sure you look presentable and wear something that you won't be embarrassed to be seen in. For the Indian man in the ratty, stained and torn t-shirt with Michael Jackson on the cover... congratulations, every official document your picture will appear on in this country will also show your poor taste in fashion.
I will admit I looked damn good in my picture, though at 5-foot 8-inches, I still had to bend my knees to fit into the camera's frame. You get two takes and after that its picking the lesser of two evils. I very much approve of the black and white, high contrast picture of me... whoever the photographer is, I want her doing all future photo shots for me!
With this completed, all those documents you brought (save the official ones like your passport and social security card) are taken for your registration and now are all gone... never to be seen again... thank God!
Now its time to wait. In general, you or your company will get a call within the next four to five business days, confirming that your card is ready. If you work for a major company, generally they will send the card directly to your office by secure messenger. If not, then you'll have to go all the way back to the Ministry office and pick it up yourself.
Until that day, I'll keep you posted but until then, the AngMoh is now a semi-registered American Expat in Singapore! For those that missed it, here is the complete S-Pass Application Process. Click below for:
So this video 'What Kind of Asian are You?" by David Neptune and Ken Tanaka has been making the rounds on Youtube recently and by far I find it is the best and most humorous portrayal of what I like to call 'Ignorant Racism'. By definition, its not intended to be racist, just in trying to appear non-racism, you actually achieve what you intended to avoid. In the video the racist, if you want to call him that, is attempting to come off as worldly, liberal and open to foreign cultures while failing to flirt with the woman, in fact his attempt comes off making him look completely ignorant and a total ass.
But this topic, while funny for some, is one that has been extensively researched by others. While its not common in many countries, it is one that has been creeping up in the increasingly politically correct and culturally liberal people of America, where our 'great melting pot' welcomes all cultures... as long as they don't exist outside our preconceived notions of what different ethnic groups should act or look like.
Author Evelyn Alsultany detailed similar interactions and classification attempts that she herself endures throughout daily life due to her ancestry as being both Arab and Cuban, more importantly in her article 'Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves'. Here she showcased several deeply personal encounters of how her race and cultural identity have been so tightly defined, that to exist outside of them is a near impossibility for the everyday person to comprehend.
I seriously recommend all Americans take a read of the article, it can be a real kick in the pants to those that originally thought of themselves as liberal and open... its the reason why I actively try to avoid asking the question... "Where are you from?"
Alsultany's pain, frustration and annoyance is a feeling I relate with all too commonly and worry about constantly. A worry that tends to creep up not in America where this trend predominately tends to occur more along racial lines than cultural and more out of unintended ignorance or honest confusion than any true malice or ill-intent. Instead it is in my second country, Ireland, where I feel at odds at what defines me as a true Irish citizen and as an unwanted outsider.
In Ireland, most especially in my family’s ancestral hometown of Bandon in the south, people can effortlessly identify me as Catholic due in part because of my appearance. To many it is confusing, how you can be identify by your religion based on your appearance? In this case I quickly point out what do you think a Muslim or a Buddhist looks like, and instantly they know what appearance to supply; skin colour, accent and all.
Yet in what many outsider’s view as a a racially homogeneous country such as Ireland, hundreds of years of cultural and ethnic mannerisms have been defined on only the slightest differences. To be Catholic is as simple as the shade of your hair or the colour of your eyes. I am moderately tall, thin verging on lanky, ice gray eyes, near cream skin that never seems to tan and blond hair. Most people would call these features Aryan in appearance but in Ireland this is the look of the southerner.
When I enter a restaurant they see my face and smile, chatting with me and asking a whole array of questions out of shear curiosity. Having an American accent but speaking in the native slang they quickly inquire how I have developed such combination. I speak like a native, have no problem understanding the accents and never once ask them to slow down when they talk. In fact quiet often I have to remind them that I am not just some American tourist and they don’t have to dumb down their conversations for my benefit. This ease I attribute to my mother who until the age of four was a native and a vast majority of my extended family still remains bound to the lifestyle of farming or shop keeping in the central regions of the island country.
Yet when they inquire for my name I can always see the flash on confusion and even hostility when I half-heartedly mutter my surname... I won't repeat it here, the anonymity rules apply...
"You're not Irish," one woman actually scolded me as if I was some stupid child. "You're a northerner."
I've never been to the north, as the south calls Northern Ireland. I don't know anyone in my family that has. In fact my grandmother regards the idea in the same realm as jumping off a cliff, to do so either means your insane, stupid, lost a bet or all the above.
Among the Irish, although it has officially and publicly dwindled in recent years, a general animosity between the southern Catholics of the Irish Republic and the Protestants of North Ireland, which is controlled by the United Kingdom. Many see them as traitors, foreign invaders, turncoats and secretly undermining Irish sovereignty. To the world at large this is preposterous but to the natives, it is a grave insult.
Many people don't know the history behind the animosity between the Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestants, to the direct extent the English Protestants they descend from. Most play it off as old wounds and hate that have been forgotten to time. Some even think its funny, a good laugh and another example of how stubborn and repressed the Irish can be. Few realize that until no more than a generation ago that laughable conflict came very close to escalating to same level as the Palestine-Israel Crisis, with murders, violence, bombings and brutal acts of hate that all of Ireland now regards with deep seated shame. In the Brighton Bombing of 1984, Irish militants of the IRA set off a bomb, killing 5, injured over 30 and nearly killed the British Prime Minister, one Margaret Thatcher. It was only the fact that the old Victorian architecture of the Brighton Hotel did not implode from the devastating structural damage, that the number of dead wasn't near total and killing the always defiant Mrs. Thathcher.
We call these thirty years of violence The Troubles and though its name sounds melodramatic, it lead to over 3,529 deaths, half of which were people caught in the crossfire as the Protestant North Irish battled it out with the militant Catholic North Irish.
Few would say it today but I know one or two elderly members of the community who still refer to the IRA as freedom fighters, even if our hometown of Bandon is as far south as you can go in Ireland, making it the furtherest from Northern Ireland and the conflict zone The Troubles created. There people had the luxury of loathing the North Irish Protestants without having to see the damage done by both sides, to understand that terrorism leaves no victim free of scars.
The Troubles are however and thankfully regarded with a shame by most of my hometown, but that only helps to temper the hate, a cautionary tale parents tell their children and then roll their eyes in exasperation as their elders begin to spout their almost visceral hate of the North. I'm sad to say that few bother to correct their elders, age always denotes seniority and wisdom in Irish culture, second only to the church in the power and faith it is given.
Maturity of body does not always guarantee maturity of mind and old wounds always fester when they are not addressed.
When I try to explain this relationship and inherited hate, I get a few odd glances from my friends who's countries were also former British colonies when I explain it was because of the British colonization of Ireland that lead to all this animosity and fighting. They don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that we share a common history, that through my ancestors, the few stories that have survived and several large tomes of Irish history, I can understand how it feels to be a former colony violently trying to free itself from a foreign imperial power and feeling a sense of national failure when it legally can not. They see a white man, claiming to understand the plight of their ancestors who lived among the British colonies.
A few have actually reacted with anger or scoffing laughs that I'd even think I could ever relate to them on that topic.
Few realize that Ireland was the English's first colony, before the Americas, before Africa, before the concept of a round world was really drilled into the public mind and the colonies in Asia began to spring up.
Ireland was the first test bed for an overseas British territory... we were 'colonized' first... and that carries not an ounce of pride it in... but usually is spoken with anger.
The invading Protestants of the 16th century brutalized and mistreated the ancient Irish, who were almost entirely Catholic with a fair sprinkling of Pagans. These new arrivals disenfranchised the natives and turning their ancestral lands over to British colonists, called the Protestant Ascendancy, predominately from England but a few Scots among them. New laws were quickly enacted, baring land ownership to all Catholics and even Presbyterians.
These British colonists arrived in droves, the majority in the north, this would led to the eventual modern partition of Ireland into the Republic and North Ireland. They were more than happy to administer their new lands and the people that came with them, gleefully happy to civilize the natives, which meant working them on their farms as just a step above slaves, what you called in the contemporary world, serfs. The first act was to repress the Catholic faith, which in England at the time went against the teachings of Protestism and the faith of their most hated enemy, the Spanish. Spain attempted numerous times to conquer England in the name of their faith, leading to an inherent fear of Catholicism's spread in their country, even if it largely was misplaced. Spain was only trying to garner points with the Pope and Church, they were just plain greedy and trying to hide it with religious rhetoric... rhetoric that spawned angry prejudices in the English who saw the Irish as part of the Catholic fanaticism threatening their great country.
Sounds a bit familiar today, how a few bad apple Islamists can paint the entire faith as a danger to national security and sovereignty. Its one of the reasons I am very leery whenever organized religion springs up in politics, it is too often used to single out another minority and limit them in some form.
Anyone who know's an Irish man or woman knows one thing, we can be a stubborn people, we prefer to be left alone, almost verging on isolationist and we can take a lot of punishment before cracking... but never mess with an Irish person's faith unless you want that bloody nose...
Centuries of fighting, persecution and brutally crushed rebellions followed, coupled with the economic exploitation of Ireland's few natural resources. The English colonization radically changed the country. Most wouldn't realize it but Ireland use to be heavily wooded. The country is now the most deforested in the world, its forests used immensely by the arriving colonists for shipbuilding. The lose of those vast forests radically changed hundreds of years of Irish culture, who predominately were herders or isolated villagers.
Irish history is not something that can be looked at through rose coloured glasses, its something you have to read through with a strong stomach. The Great Famine of the 1840s, rebellions of 1803, 1848 and 1867, claims of neutrality during both World Wars, the Irish Civil War, the independence votes and trade wars of the 1930s only helped to cement some of these long standing beliefs, that a Protestant would sooner sell you out for a hot meal or stab you in the back if it got them ahead in life. While these tensions have dwindled in the more moderate and progressive regions of the country, such as the ever popular Irish city of Dublin, in my family's southern home of Bandon, those tensions are still unfortunately kept alive and prevalent.
And caught between that history of violence and hate, of clearly defined but unseen lines is someone like me. My surname is a predominately Protestant name, namely a Welsh and Northern Irish name, to have it labels you as a northern and as such, very much NOT Irish.
It gets even worse when I attempt to explain my patronage, my mother is Irish Catholic, my father is an America who was raised Protestant.
Like many bi-racial people face when having to declare their race or ethnicity on the US Census, one drop of Protestant blood automatically dilutes a long Irish Catholic family line that can be tracked back over 230-years. Great-Great-Granddad could possibly be spinning in his grave for knowing that his descendant, my mother... married a Protestant!
But it means nothing to many, they see me as just a North Irish, some of have even treated my attempts to convince them otherwise as a act of 'slumming' with the southerners.
Even if I was raised Catholic, went to a Catholic grade school, attended more masses then I care to count and read the Bible so many times I can see the words behind my eyelids, the mere mention of my surname is enough to sever me from the very heritage that makes me who I am.
It shames me to say that when given the choice to renew my citizenship papers and passport I instead took my mother's maiden nameinstead, a very common Catholic name that would cause far less confusion and annoyance for me in the long run. But to no end I feel like I have just put on a façade to hide myself from the constant annoyance of explaining myself, even more so from the anger of arguing my very right to call myself Irish in my own country.
Disclaimer: Because I mention my job in this post I am enforcing the anonymity rule with comments. Do not mention my name, position, company or office location. Any comments that do will be deleted. Same applies to me, I will NEVER refer to my position, company, its location beyond country, refer to colleagues or anything they say. I will also never post pictures, taken of either colleagues or on the office premise. In general I will be as vague or broad as possible with details! Thank you.
So today I am walking out of my new office (I love saying that!) and into the lobby of sorts we share with the other branch offices of our lovable, multi-national corporation to notice two construction workers drilling green leaves into the wall. Yes, you read correctly, they were drilling holes in a newly added facade wall in the lobby and plugging a ranging selection of grasses and ferns into each hole.
According to the rumors circulating through the oddly always crowded and bustling lobby, it is our corporation's desire to go green and add some life to our always open air office.
Considering my last two offices were so sterile they could have doubles as surgical theaters, this was a sudden change of sorts.
I have to say without a doubt... I love urban gardening and quickly noticed I was spending too long staring at the construction workers as they went about their duties... earning a few perplexed stares back before I head back to my desk after my bit too long bathroom break.
This is one rising trend that is certainly not a fad or theme running through Singapore at the height of the laughably obvious global warming debate (seriously, if you don't think Human activity is not effecting our world, play a game called count the extinct animals for just the last decade... it stop's being a game real quick). Singapore is one the country is actively making an effort to incorporate the ideals and designs of urban gardening into itself.
Every day I head out in the plaza that lays before our office, I get a glance up at the oddest skyscraper you'd ever see. It has to be at least 50-stories but its missing chunks, like someone cut entire floors and cubes out of the structure. From down on the street you can't miss these sudden voids of space, where you can clearly see the sky beyond and long concrete stilts holding up an amazingly immense portion of the structure above it.
You can also see the tops of trees growing up and out of those voids.
Yep, from down on the ground I can clearly see the green of leaves swaying in the wind and from some of the better angles I can definitively see those are tree branches, not bushes. There is literally a forest of green several hundred feet in the air.
And it doesn't stop there, the floors that do have continuous domain over their section of the structure actually have balconies and even pods hanging off of them, each with a fully grown tree or garden to support it.
On the ground it is about the same, any space that is open seems to be bursting with plant-life. Buildings are covered in creeping vines, tall palms cluster every patch of ground and special care is used to maintain them, to make it appear during your ride down the highway that you've suddenly driven into the rainforest.
When polled, almost 80% of Singaporeans voted for more urban gardens, more parks, less restrictions on community gardens and more buildings that actively incorporated a common area dominated by nature.
In fact, the idea is so popular the new EDITT Tower being built in the heart of the city will be the first of its kind, a paragon of “Ecological Design In The Tropics”. Read more here.
I will also admit I've noticed the animal life is missing and tragically I know that even these tiny patches of green are not enough to sustain Singapore's larger fauna. Birds are prevalent, a particular black bird with yellow cheeks seems to fill the niche of Pigeons or Red-Breasted Robins out here... the little buggers also squawk, not sing, so they're all the more noticeable.
But still, anyone who has lived in New York City will note the only real place where you can be considered in a forest is in Central Park, out in Brooklyn's Prospect Park or lost in the horrifying suburban twilight zone that is Staten Island. But these are all finely kept, with lawns that never grow thick and always look like they have been trampled flat into artificial astro-turf. Even the lakes and waterfalls in Central Park are fake, maintained by complex pipes and pumps that keep the waters nearly clear and always flowing.
Yet take one hour to walk around Singapore and you'll notice the residences themselves will install gardens anywhere they can, they will literally cast aside the well manicured lawns in some areas to establish gardens entirely planted in clay pots sitting on the aforementioned lawns, expanding these all the way up to the open air walk-ways in the HBD apartments you'll find the corridors lined with fruit plants and ferns. Plastic trash-cans are left out to collect rain water, which falls amply, and none are ever fenced in or vandalized. Most carry a greater variety of fruits and vegetables than any normal supermarket could conceivably hold either.
There are actually dangers to this type of gardening, as it adds some clutter to the hallway, making movements a restrictive when you stumble in from work or God forbid fire-fighters must rush in to put out a blaze. It can be fatal too, as reports of heavy clay pots absently placed on window ledges, balconies or too close to stairs have fallen, in one case a 12-year old girl was tragically killed instantly while walking home when a clay pot slipped from the window it sat in and struck her in the head.
But this is act of gardening in an urban landscape is a necessity I believe, Singapore's population continues to swell daily but the amount of land is less than New York City and more or less consumed by concrete. Atop this is the fact that Singapore is a single country by itself, New York has the whole of the United States to turn to for economy, work force, population overflow, disaster support and military/police protection. While economically successful, commercial agriculture is near impossible on this island, which hit almost completely urban only a decade or so ago, now speeding on to become a mega-metropolis.
You can really understand why Singaporeans make an effort to grow their own food, to return as much nature as they can when they have to build housing units, to keep their plants maintained with care and to avoid harm when possible, why they try to be as conservative as possible when they use water (Seriously if you shower longer than 15-minutes they start knocking to see that you are okay!). They are a nation that has to import so much from the outside world, including a far chunk of their workforce, while actively trying to be as independent as possible from the same world.
It certainly is a concentrated effort to maintain the semblance of nature in this otherwise city island, one that I wish every single American city would take seriously and begin to encourage their citizens to undertake. Support solar and wind energy, support community or personal gardens, support the usual of local plants in landscaping and to avoid plants that only grow to be beautiful for one season before they wilt in winter.
Be like Singapore, where a forest can be grown on a skyscraper, where a lobby wall can become a pasture, where even the hallway of an apartment can be a garden.
So its my first official day in Singapore and what trouble have I gotten into in this new land you may ask?
First things first, all those warnings about the humidity were lies... bold face lies I tell you... cause the reality is far... far... far worse than you could image.
Within 20-minutes of arriving at our new home in Tampines, 10-minutes drive from Changi Airport, I had sweated through my t-shirt, jeans and everything underneath. I looked as if I had been out in the morning storm and it wasn't that comfortable kind of wetness that you get after jumping into a pool with all your clothes on. Its that sticky kind of feeling, where your clothes feel like the weigh a ton and are clinging to you like chain-mail.
A quick remedy to this, take the coldest shower of your life and that causes all your sweaty pores to close right up. By the time you've dried and gotten into a nice t-shirt and shorts, the unbearable heat actually feels as if it drops to a more acceptable range. I would definitely recommend avoiding heavy fabrics like knits, denim or wool, they are fashionable death traps! If you are not going to be inside and air conditioned, completely abandon socks unless totally necessary! Believe me, your nose will thank you at the end of the first hour in Singapore!
Next up after unpacking all our clothes was setting up some of our electronics. Now this is the one thing I should mention with EXTREME WARMING! Never plug a surge protector from North America into an outlet in Asia. Even with a voltage converter it will not work! A surge protector is literally designed to dissipate sudden spikes of electricity and it completely bypasses the converter.
The end result is your boyfriend suddenly jumping back from a sparking surge protector, a whine of an electronic origin and then smoke rising from the eight power outlets on the surge protectors face... and then you have one very dead surge protector that will never work again! Just go buy a local one and a few more converters, it will save you from having to toss out a melted piece of smoking plastic.
About two-hours after arriving and one 'almost' fire it was off to the stores for a new SIM phone card, a key to be made and grocery shopping. Driving on the other-side of the road wasn't too much of a surprise, I've been in Europe before and even driven a bit so its not that odd to me. But in Singapore, the traffic is so much faster and more congested that your mind that has been trained to drive on the right side of the street keeps screaming every car is going to collide with you head on! It was like ducking in and out in a crowd and I quickly declared mentally to myself I would never... and I mean NEVER drive in this country.
However watching the motor bikes and scooters snake in and out of the traffic congestion was fun, they were like fish in those Shark Week documentaries, darting around those much bigger bodies without fear of being crushed and seeming to know where every short cut existed on these ever changing streets.
I quickly announced that the moment I had a job and enough money to afford an apartment, I would love to drive one of those bikes. My boyfriend was quick to point out the last time I had just a regular street bike in Philadelphia during college I had been hit by cars no less than three times in a year, with a motor bike he felt as if I was just going to double that number. I was quick to point out that only one of those impacts was with a moving car, the other two had been a parked car and a pedestrian... but that didn't help my case one bit and I conceded... for now.
Back to the shops, malls here are not like the one's back home, where going from one to another to shop means driving in the car for a few miles. In Singapore, its walking across the street! The only distinction between one to another is the fact they lay only a few hundred feet apart, the stores in each are different enough you won't even notice the transition.
We had lunch in a food court like place called East Link. This was no hawker center that I have heard all about, more like something you'd find back home with row table seating. The only difference was that they served only Asian food and my stomach was desperately hankering for a hoagie... for you none East Coast natives that a cold, lunch meat sandwich.
I do not recommend eating duck in front of people, yes the salted and roasted meat is among the most delicious thing I have ever had the chance to sink my teeth into but the bones... that is my one complaint about duck, the bones are browned to the point its almost unnoticeable from the meat and biting into it means chewing about to get rid of them. Don't even think of ordering this dish if you want to present yourself as an articulate and savvy Human being because eating this dish is going to make you look like a dog with a chew toy, all teeth, gnawing and gross, pained faces. Best tip, use a fork to hold down your slice of juicy meat and spoon to tear the bone free. Oh and there are no dinner knives! Cooking knives yes for slicing and dicing, meal-time knives are a nope as far as I saw in this place.
I adore a nice roasted duck with some white rice below it... but never will I again eat it in public!
Once we were done our meal it was back into the crowds of the mall. Now if the streets of Singapore are congested and crowded, the crowds in the malls were worse. But instead here the people were like the motor bikes, the fish darting in and out between the sharks, minus the sharks. In three hours walking about I only bumped into two people, emphasis on bumped, no epic impacts, no landing on my butt, nothing. I even apologized for the hits, they were my fault after all because I kept trying to read every sign but not a person paid it any attention. In NYC, you'd be cursed at, called an idiot, something unsavory about your mother would be uttered and then with a flip of the middle finger before the stranger would disappear down the street. In Singapore, it didn't even register as worth a glance back.
I attempted to buy a SIM card, in order to get a number in Singapore to use in my job hunting. SingTel is the one I'd recommend, they are the most numerous I've seen so far (I've only been around the airport and the east side of Singapore so take my words with a grain of salt) but you can top off your phone card at any drug store like 7-Eleven... Yes, they have those here too! Overall you can get around a card for S$30 (Singaporean Dollars) and every minute costs around S$0.16. Number one thing to bring is your passport. All disposable phones, data plans and/or calling cards have to be registered with the government and a United States drivers license is not enough. Took 30-minutes of hashing out the best phone plan for me only to find out I couldn't even buy it. Well now we have an new errand to run tomorrow!
The last activity of the day was some grocery shopping. Now other than a few things, the grocery store in Singapore is mostly the same as it is at home. Produce section, deli counter, heck most of the items save a few Asian additions is almost the same. There are even a lot of Western brands among the items, I even got a nice slab of Virginia Peppered Ham for lunch sandwiches tomorrow! Of course the one aspect to take quick note of it that some of the prices really swing from the high to low points. A lot of the meats in the deli section seemed very cheap compared to at home... but the confectionary treats... like Ben & Jerry's ice cream... was outright highway robbery!
S$23.00 for one pint... a PINT of ice cream. Don't believe me, here's a picture to back up my outlandish claims!
And now for what you've all been waiting for, I have met the boyfriend's Singaporean parents and they seemed to have welcomed me. I know the concept of two men being in a relationship in this country is probably new verging on alien. Singapore is just around where the USA was in the 1980s and 1990s when people were just starting to come to the conclusion that homosexuality wasn't truly a mental condition or a life choice but something your born with. Now Singapore is a bit of a conservative society and has a long way to go but they have embraced the world of modern media and information with a zeal that would make some people's head spin and they know for a fact the LGBT community exists. I honestly do expect they will go through the evolution of LGBT rights a lot fast than most of Asia, almost certainly at a rate that will make the United States feel some degree of shame over how it's dragged it feet on the issue. Change and evolution is coming and Singapore definitely is a place where it seems to be the fabric of the very society itself.
I will admit I was anticipating some reservation on the parent's part, maybe not outright confrontation or fighting but more of uncertainty at entering into a new situation you have no previous experience with. After all our level of interaction over the last three-years has been limited to a few sporadic Skype video sessions and one totally unplanned encounter in Macy's two-years ago (don't ask, just know irony and confusion were the themes of that meeting).
Perhaps I'll save our interactions for a later post, I want to spend some time getting to know them, to integrate into the family as much as I can before I allow any opinions to formulate.
Well jet lag is setting in and it is probably best I pass out soon, I'm going 38-hours no sleep and must be presentable to the family.
Good night and best wishes from the Ang Moh newly arrived in the Far East!
I'm from New England, no matter where I've lived or worked I've always felt an affinity for the weather of north eastern coast of the United States. And like a parting wave, New England has decided to bid me farewell with its usual sweet nostalgic grace... and for those that are not native to this area such grace appears as freezing rain coupled with howling wind that can make trees snap like toothpicks and flood warnings inundating the nightly news.
Its my last weekend in Philadelphia, trapped inside due to the storm and left with my family, which leaves me with a twinge of sorrow coupled with a growing desire to throttle my younger siblings. Now I know, that's a terrible thing to say about one's siblings but all in all their attempts to understand my move to another country are often colored by the usual American preconceptions.
My brother asks me "So is Singapore a democracy or is it like China?" So I answer that "Yep, just like America", Singapore is a democracy with a Parliament, President and Prime Minster. But when I get to the fact that for most of its history independent of the United Kingdom it has been dominated by a single large party, the People's Action Party, his response is that knowing smirk that so many Americans love to gleam when they suddenly come to their own conclusion that their country is better than someone else's. "So its not really a 'democracy' then."
You can hear my growl of frustration, can't you?
My sister on the other hand, she's more hung up on the fact that gum is technically illegal in Singapore. We've told her about the culture, the food, the history and even though she's a teacher herself, she keeps erupting with new schemes to smuggle in tons or the sticky, bubble blowing goodness with startling originality and my growing concern.
My father treats it a bit like an adventure, he listens and says he wants to visit which is a good thing. My mother... she tends to get weepy as our flight date arrives and shamefully I try to change the subject to anything but us leaving when she's in the room.
But the one person that actually surprised me, who really made an effort that while carrying a tiny twinkle of disapproval but a startling interest to learn everything she could about my future home was my grandmother. When I arrived last Thursday for lunch at her house with vegetable lasagna on the table (I gag, I hate the stuff but will never tell her that!) and instead of giving me the usual topics of conversation most of my family has brought up when I tell them we are moving... "Do they have cell phones and the internet?"... "Can they speak English?"... "Is the food weird?"... she actually had spent the day at the local library (Yes, they still have those) finding every book she could on Singapore. Well a local town library only had three books but by God she had read them all and prepared talking points and questions she wanted to ask me. We ended up spending nearly three hours Googling pictures and videos of Singapore so she could see the island as much as possible without having to leave her warm, well lived in town house and garden she swears that without here attention daily just seems to fall apart.
Too say I was proud of the woman is a absolute failure of words to describe what I felt at that point.
But that about sums up my two weeks home in Philadelphia with my family, running left and right trying to convince them that Singapore is no different than here, that yes it is thousands of miles away but I have always been fascinated by the number of similarities, paralleled and quirks our two countries share.
I guess right now, as I've laid out my travel books the same way I did with my text books in college, with biggest in the middle, smallest on the outside, highlighter in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, I've been trying hour over hour... fine its been 20-minutes... to immerse myself in all things Singapore before I leave.
One of those in particular I've found to be the most informative is not the travel books, the reports I read on the US Embassy website for Singapore. It actually was a children's book my boyfriend and I got in a care bag during the 2012 Singapore Day in New York.
Yes it is a little on the heavy-handed side trying to entice people to come back to Singapore (the country has a concerning brain-drain going on against a influx of foreign immigrants) but seriously, it was the easy book a found that detailed out some really interesting facts about the history and culture of Singapore.
Did you know the Samsui women of China held a special place in the history of the construction, largely coming from China in the late 1930s to work in construction and were best known for the distinctive red hats and black scarfs they always wore. A woman construction worker, that was unheard of in that era and the Samsui ladies actually had to take a vow never to marry in order to work abroad and almost all of them actually kept it! Could you image having to leave your homeland to work abroad in order to support your family at home, but the catch was you could never marry or even fall in love. You can see the ironic parallels in my own reason to move to Singapore, leaving to follow the the guy I love but with the hope of a job to accompany that once I arrive.
So first things first, the one question that everyone from my best friend to my mother to that odd hobo who rides the subway in only a blanket (okay that last one is made up) has been asking me is "Why can't your Singaporean boyfriend stay in the United States? You're American and gay marriage is legal in New York state, just get married!"
If it was that simple you'd instead be asking, "Why is he running down the street screaming and ripping his shirt off? Is he happy?".
Time for a little lesson on the long and loving relationship between the LGBT community and the quirky federal government of the United States of 'Merica (as my best broster Phinn calls our great nation).
In 1993, Baehr v. Miike came before the Supreme Court of Hawaii, and the court, being fair minded, logical and even possibly a decent group of human beings, declared that unless the state government could find a compelling reason to declare same-sex marriage illegal, they couldn't block it. Of course the knee-jerk reaction from the government followed, if Hawaii could find the legal high-ground to allow same sex marriage, then it would set a precedence and allow other people in other states to bring their own cases, opening the door for a legal push for marriage equality.
Of course, the always kind and caring Republican Party decided that it was in everyone's best interest to moderate societal development and in 1996 enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), setting into federal law that "...no State, territory, or possession of the United States or Indian tribe shall be required to give effect to any marriage between persons of the same sex under the laws of any other such jurisdiction or to any right or claim arising from such relationship."
In summary, this became the founding bedrock by which the federal government can and still does legally refuse to recognize the marriage/union of same-sex couples who wed in states where same-sex marriage is legal in cases of taxation, property ownership, adoption, medical decisions and yes, the one that affects us and 36,000 other bi-national couples, sponsorship by an American spouse of their foreign born significant other. Even if we've been together for three years, been living together for almost two years, have toyed with the ideas of marriage and children like every couple does as they progress through the stages of any healthy relationship, it doesn't matter where the federal government is concerned. Yes, the Obama administration has declared that they will no longer defend the law if challenged, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will "pause/freeze" deportation proceedings on married same-sex couples when one spouse is American, and the Supreme Court of the United States has said as of March 27, 2013 that they will start hearing cases against DOMA, we are still faced with the a terrible situation of legal discrimination. A law on the books is still a law that can be enforced even if most everyone is not enforcing it. Now we run into the question that my mother brings up in that worried, motherly way that is vaguely unnerving and concerning at the same time. "Is Singapore a better place for you two to live in?" Yes Singapore is not a mecca for the rights of the LGBT-community, there are still laws on the books that make job, civil-service and military discrimination legal, the culture is still a few years behind understanding that gay men don't solicit every man they see for sex or are campy, effeminate prissy queens. But it is more welcoming to international immigrants than the United States and let's face it, when it comes down to it, financial security is one of those major bedrocks that help long-term relationships survive into senile bliss. America can not provide us with jobs and a source of income to sustain us despite our level of education. Singapore however openly welcome those from abroad, but like many Asian countries, there is an older generation where the idea of two men/women together is something that is best treated with averted eyes and fervent gossiping behind closed doors, coupled with a younger generation of open-minded individual who are a wonderful mix of acceptance and live-and-let-live mentality. And let's face it, I've only made it as far into the Pacific as Hawaii, so the idea of travel and adventure is helping to temper most of my fears. So there we have it, the history behind the reason why in the land of the free we are still not equal, and why we must leave to find a chance for opportunity and security, in another country that has less rights but potentially a better chance of living our lives.
