Shovel digs…one foot in Singapore. The learning of a new arrival to the Lion City in the year of the tiger.
Having just moved to Singapore, this is a chance to exercise my traveller instincts, observations and vocabulary gained from the last few years of seeing the world. Singapore’s a magnetic place for me; it holds a distant personal history and then late in 2009 it offered a professional future in a manner that you normally read about in mid-tier pool-side novels or in mid-afternoon American TV dramas. But, novels and dramas aside, here I find myself, with my wonderful wife, shipping our well travelled furniture through one of the busiest ports in the world (Port of Singapore, second busiest in 2005), to take up residence on this small but energetic city-state that is bigger than either Monaco or the Vatican City but also the second-most densely populated independent country in the world after Monaco. Interesting to note that Singapore is in the process of opening two super-casinos. Free to foreign passport holders, S$100 entry to locals.
When I was offered the role out here, Lady and I had been in the UK for three years and four months. Looking back on our recent countries of residence, that’s the longest we’ve stayed in a country for a while and we were ready for a change. Not that it’s itchy feet, as we were very happy where we were, but ready for a new challenge. It just so happened that this challenge was sitting just one degree or so from the equator and not really anywhere in relation to either of our notional homes; whatever home is any more. Answers on a postcard please.
Thinking it through, a role in Asia could be located in several places when the global economy is thrown into the mix: Shanghai or Beijing, Tokyo, Bangalore, Singapore. Any one could suit a multinational centre of expertise, but with operations in all of these places, Singapore wins from a geographical superiority. It’s right in the centre of things, 8hrs to China, Australia, 5hrs to India (although I am yet to test this one out) and a hop to anywhere in South East Asia. The decision itself was not too difficult; Singapore is a great place to live and, by extension, to work. The English language is so rigorously implemented (except for maybe the most local of wet-markets) that it makes day one easy to navigate, an effective administration and a direct and forward focussed government makes for logical and constant planning and execution.
All that said, I happily accepted the move.
No comments:
Post a Comment