Who Moved My Singapore Cheese

First day has passed.

I touched down to the strangely familiar cold yet sunny winter of Sydney this morning at 630am. People were friendly in the way everyone dealt with each other, even on the simplest things like asking how you are, asking if you need help with this and that...I totally felt the sensation of having arrived in a non-asian culture environment. Grass is greener, literally, sun is shinier, heck even the air smells more invigorating.

Yet somehow, the lens through which I now assess my new habitat is different than that of a 20 odd years old student, or a tourist, or any other forms of a temporary resident; I took on the lens of someone intent on making this place my home for the next many many years to come. And it had an effect.

It's the first time I have ever experienced the sensation of everything feeling right superficially and yet wrong on a spiritual level. Scorn, laugh, critic all you want, but this is truely how I felt throughout the course of the day. I actually felt like the nice feeling was not deserving. I see my dad and my mum's and my in-law's faces a lot as I coursed through the day. Family somehow became something that I couldn't shake off my mind. Shirley, yes, but that I can discern the whys and hows.

This is not the way I pictured it to turn out and I already feel like a mega-self-sabotaguer on the first day. I hope the next few days will somehow bring about a more crystalized conclusion for me on the whys, hows and whats.

A friend asked this question early this morning, "Is the racism still bad in syd?".
Being highly concerned with this question myself, I have done a bit of snooping prior and found that there has been a recent increase in racism across various countries which primarily stems from the unemployment and a sudden spike in Asian immigrants, most of which are from China and India due to their rise in spending power. Indians, in particular, have been having a really bad time in Australia in the past months, culminating in public protests and undue tension.

Not unlike what we have in Singapore, there is a growing disgruntle to Kevin Rudd's continued policy of leveraging skilled immigration to bolster the economy, one that was really the works of John Howard. Australia is more multicultural than Singapore, and has been so for a long period of time. Kevin Rudd made headlines with his 2008 public apology made to the aboriginals. There is no denying that racism exists in Australia just like anywhere else but how much it affects you in your quality of life as a migrant is going to be for yours truly to find out. One interesting statistic I found though, is that 60% of Sydneysiders are not born in Australia.

On a personal note, I feel that as long as Australia's immigration laws do not veer to the extremes of that like we have in Singapore, balance and harmony will be achieved, without incurring too much wrath on the ground. Why? If you have ever tried your hand at figuring out your migration eligibility to Australia, you will find that the biggest impediment at the end of the day is in securing a job there, which is no easy feat if you do not first secure a permanent residency. Now try reading this article to compare the difference with our system here in Singapore.

My Australian student visa has arrived! Despite all the hesitations and hem-hawings in the past months, I can now feel the first drips of adrenalin and excitement about all the possible events that will take shape in the next few years.

Suffering from yet another bout of self-induced doubt and panic yesterday, I went back to the drawing block and re-examined my choice; which is to study IT in Australia, as opposed to a Finance Masters in Chicago, as opposed to a, till-now non-existent, job offer to go work in Hongkong. For my own benefit of not having to go through another round of panic I've decided to list down my findings this time...

Jobs

I spent a few hours poring through job websites in both Chicago and Sydney. I spoke to a pal in Chicago who alerted me to the dire employment situation there; he forwarded me the USCIS link to see how the 65000 H1B visa annual quota in USA used to be 'over-subscribed' on the very first day of release on the 1st of April every year and yet up till now (3rd July, 2009) there has only been about 45000 filings.

That thereabout dashed all naive hopes of thinking Shirley (my spouse) can land a visa sponsorship for a job there on goodwill, good faith, good connections or good whatever; and the high possibilities of myself failing to do so after my program (despite the constant thought that Chicago should be the natural career destination given its status as the mecca of capital markets and the birthplace of futures).

Looking to the job market in Sydney, using http://www.seek.com.au/ , I found a great deal of interesting jobs in the finance + IT hybrid domain. On top of that, Shirley will have the legal rights to seek full and meaningful employment in Sydney, a land where bakers, office administrative workers, lawyers, accountants and all the rest all start on rather equal footing.

Life

I'm already established by all that know me well to be a fairly materialistic being. And so I went looking in http://www.property.com.au/ , zoomed in on a few decent, fairly close to CBD suburb neighbourhoods and started looking for housing under $500k; loved the sunny, bright, well-sized apartments/townhouses/houses I found.

I also checked with many many forums of people who lived in both cities/countries and were making comparisons. Sydneysiders really had a lot of good things being said about them. Something about people not caring for what you earned, or that you work to live not live to work etc...Racism is still something I keep thinking about, but according to my Chicago pal, its pretty much the same over his side of the world...and I thought about it, yeah it's true, caucasians have it better even in Singapore! So there really isn't much of a change to adapt to there.

All in all, I'm getting incrementally psyched about the big move!

2 days ago, I accompanied a good friend to an emigration agency in Havelock road (Singapore) for a first session of consultancy. It was an interesting first encounter and I'll like to share with the readers of this blog some of my revelations.

1)
They charge $6500 to assist my friend with applications, which is not inclusive of around $3000 in fees paid to the Australian official bodies.

2)
There has been a rising trend of "first generation Singaporeans (FGS)" (e.g. PRC Chinese, India Indians, Philipinos etc) in Singapore seeking consultation to move on to Australia.

3)
"Original Singaporeans (OS)" seeking migration to Australia has been the agency's bread and butter source of revenue for many years.

Have you wondered how many of your fellow Singaporean friends are thinking of becoming a "quitter"? Having openly declared to his colleagues his quest to leave Singapore citing several reasons such as the rat race lifestyle/mentality, the high cost of living, and last but certainly not least on his list, the overcrowdedness, many of them gave him comparison rebuttals such as "Japan is more crowded!".

I admit my friend gets easily exasperated when his views are not shared by the majority of his audience, as if his views should hold universal logic and hence uniform consensus. Out of pure curiosity, I've started what might not be a very original, but certainly up-to-date, poll that will run from today up to this year's National day, 9th August 2009. Please do forward this link to more of your Singaporean friends and visit back in a couple of months for results!

Do you think you are a good person? Think about it. From the time you developed any form of cognitive ability, in how many instances have you truly and utterly felt guilty without a shred of doubt and without the need to seek redress from your inner voice because even that voice is experiencing the same guilt. Of late, in a rather strange and unfamiliar way, I have been becoming increasingly aware of my flawed and self-centered character.

My plans to pursue a postgraduate degree in the States was kickstarted by what some might deem as lofty career goals, and then driven on by my selfish wanderlust, my dream of living a more "full" life. The little bits of preparation like getting my GRE done and pulling together application material such as recommendation letters has come full circle and I may be able to leave for Chicago soon.

My family has been supportive of my endeavours, but their very same act gnaw away at me. If their kindness gnaws, my fiancee's imminent sacrifice in this next episode of my life tears my conscience to shreds. Maybe Singapore's family campaign ad, Funeral, is getting to me subconsciously.

I am not the world's most decisive man, she will tell you. I will attempt at making life changing decisions only to change my mind again before she can even finish ridiculing me out of mock fun for the last stupid call I made. Her funny and light-hearted takes on our big decisions (which are going to inadvertently affect her with the strongest impact) is the reason my guilt is crystalizing. You see, she cannot work in USA with a spouse visa, not even after I have moved from school to the workplace. She is to remain economically redundant as an individual for several years till we receive a green card. Why have I not thought of all these before? Why the guilt now? Maybe it is fear, I don't know. I knew she was screaming out in silence and yet I pushed on with it till it is this close to D-day.

Today, I am close to another major change of decision and this time, I realized a couple of things. First of all, one should not feel obligated to stick to bad decisions, instead one should strive to avert bad decisions even at the last minute. Our lives can be defined equally by good decisions made as bad decisions pulled. Second, I realized the source and weight of my guilt from finally lifting it - my solution is Australia, a country where she is not restricted for work as a spouse, a country where she can maybe toy with her baking ambitions and come out happier for it.

As the Australian tourism TVC so fittingly puts it, "sometimes you have to get lost to find yourself".