Diary of an Expat in Singapore

by Jennifer Gargiulo

  Teach academic writing at the university.

  After a quick shower and a review of students’ papers, off to meet the class. All hail the grammar cop. I learn more about Singapore in one 90-minute class with first-year students than if I read a stack of books on Singapore. How else would I have learned that the reason all the boys are exactly two years older than the girls is that they have to do their NS (military service) before they can go to college? Or that none of the students have tattoos because tattoos are associated with convicts? Or that even though technically 19 is the cut-off date, the 20-year-olds still consider themselves teenagers?

  After school

  Kids go down to play in their secret dug-out in the faraway place in the condo. Armed with mosquito patches and water bottles, they meet up with other kids and play until it’s time for dinner.

  Lights out

  Alexander reads ‘Naruto’ and Eliot listens to me read Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’. After I mention my favourite quote by the author, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars,” they rush to the window to look at the stars. Eliot points to the moon and says her first word in Italian: luna. As a parent, expat or not, I can honestly say it doesn’t get any better than this.

  Favourite landmarks in Singapore

  Queensway

  Yesterday, I went to my favourite place in the whole world: the third floor of the Queensway Shopping Centre in Singapore. Those who know me are aware that I avoid shopping malls like the plague; in fact, I only enter Ion Orchard with my husband because I’m convinced it’s been especially designed for me to walk in and never walk out again. And if we go to Takashimaya, he goes shopping and I wait for him in Kinokuniya bookshop.

  So why the Queensway Shopping Centre? I go there about once a year to get invitations printed out and there is something surreal about the people working the printers. Most of the time, they don’t know what I’m asking for. Though I’ve been there at least ten times they never recognize me, and in the past they have even denied that I’ve been there. It’s like stepping into the Twilight Zone. So why do I go back? First of all, I am a creature of habit and I resist change at all costs. But also for sentimental reasons. In fact, it’s like a walk down memory lane. Four years ago, when I first arrived in Singapore, I was finishing my dissertation from the University of Sydney. In what were some of the hairiest hours of my academic life, the ‘layout’ team and printers held my future in their hands as they printed out the hard copies that I would then need to submit and mail for the board to evaluate back at the university. Bated breath doesn’t even begin to describe my feverish state at the time. So now when I go back to print whimsical birthday cards for my kids, no matter how many glitches or how many times I can’t understand their pronunciation of the word layout, it really is just a walk in the park!

  The condo

  Black-and-white houses are an institution in Singapore. A throwback to colonial times. But along with the prestige there are a few things you should know before moving into one, namely snakes. Can’t remember the other ones. I think my mind went blank after I heard the reptile word.

  So give me a high-rise condo any day. Air con, pools, tennis courts, playground. Although: there is something unsettling about the fact that, like on an airplane, where nobody pays the same price for their ticket, rents are bizarrely different. Also, the guards keep changing every year, which is allegedly for security issues. Isn’t that a bit of a contradiction since they’re the ones hired in the first place to protect us? The day after their year is up they suddenly turn… like CIA agents gone rogue?

  Changi Airport

  As I watch my kids grow up in Southeast Asia, I like to think they have opportunities I never dreamed of having as a child growing up in Verona. They are exposed to different cultures and realities, they eat spicy curries and they travel to exotic places. I recall smiling proudly as my son announced at two that his sandcastle was the Great Wall of China, and when my daughter insisted on singing Happy Birthday in Chinese. Which is why I find it vaguely disconcerting to hear my son say on the taxi ride to the airport on a recent trip to Bali: “But I want to go to Hawaii,” and my daughter answering: “Yeah, I want to see the snow.” Am I doing something wrong? Like not hanging a big enough map at home? On the plus side, they now know Bali, unlike the rest of Indonesia, is 85% Hindu, that you can order mee goreng even for breakfast, and that bringing Harry Potter is a good idea at a hotel with no TV and no kids’ club. On a final note, there are no children in Ubud, Bali. This is a good thing… unless, of course, you are travelling with yours.

  My house

  Especially when the kids have their whopping three-week (you’ve got to be kidding me) Chinese New Year school holiday. During the 100 hours of non-stop rain that occurred in Singapore, we stayed indoors sorting through old papers, making our own comic books, and watching movies. Lots of them, like ‘Annie’, ‘Cinema Paradiso’, ‘Billy Elliot’, and ‘Bend It Like Beckham’. Alexander’s first movie at three was ‘Amelie’ so he’s no problem and will watch absolutely any movie: ‘Volver’, ‘The Bicycle Thief’, you name it. With five-year-old Eliot we have to occasionally resort to sophisticated tactics to get her to sit through an entire movie. I mean, what were the chances of there really being a princess or a witch coming up soon in ‘Bend It Like Beckham’?

  After the movie, I crank up the music and the kids dance all over the house. Our idea of fun. The music is quite eclectic too and can go quickly from musicals to hip hop to classic rock (I wonder what this will do to them?). Then, we all sit on the sofa and they ask me to tell them stories about Josie and Milly, my great-aunts who moved to America from Italy when they were little (back in the days when expats were called immigrants). We usually end up with mugs of hot chocolate and books scattered all over the sofa, reading next to each other. Now, that’s my kind of play date.

  The university library

  Sitting in the sleek and modern surroundings of one of the most esteemed universities in Singapore, surrounded by students working on their laptops, I read the Herald Tribune, prepare my lesson, and look forward to hearing their comments, which are always more honest and relevant than the evening news. There have been many libraries in my life. My primary school library, where I attempted reading all the books in alphabetical order, and the gorgeous library at Vassar College, where I spent most of my free time during college. I remember one rainy Sunday afternoon, walking in with Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ and only walking out after I finished the entire book.

  Kitchenette cafe at Goldhill Plaza

  After dropping off my kids at school, watching them wave goodbye, I go to this local cafe, where the waitress knows my name and asks me if I want the usual. As I drink my coffee and write in my notebook, I realize that this was my dream all along. These are the days I will one day remember. If only they had brown sugar.

  Botanic Gardens

  Lately, it seems like many of my friends are having family come to visit them from abroad. When that happens I usually get visitor envy (a common complaint among expats who live halfway across the world from their loved ones). You get to hear all about the delicious champagne brunches they’re planning or the family villas in Thailand they are renting. But I shouldn’t complain too much. I’ve gotten to see my entire family this year. Even Julian, my concert pianist bro all the way from New York City! When he comes to Singapore, even the barista at our local coffee shop gets excited and hand-crafts cappuccinos for us. It’s like everybody is waiting for the virtuoso performances he gives. At the last open-air gig he did at the Botanic Gardens (the Central Park of Singapore), the audience kept asking for encores and not even the sudden rain made people leave… beautiful music or impossibility of getting a taxi, who’s to say?

  Signs your kids need a Chinese tutor

  Your son no longer wants to go to school.

  Alexander didn’t want to go to school today. Actually it was the first time ever. He was scared ab
out not remembering a Chinese poem he needed to recite by heart. Seems the teacher yelled at him yesterday, threatened to cane him, and had him stand outside the door for the duration of the class. Did I mention my first-born can be melodramatic at times? Probably the fact that he was more interested in reading ‘Eragon’ yesterday than doing his Chinese homework had something to do with it. Having gone through the Italian school system as a kid, I wasn’t overly sympathetic and just answered: “But did you see a cane?”

  By this morning he had learned all of it. I was quite impressed and asked him what it meant. “Not really sure… something about the moon?”

  Over the weekend, he got me quite angry, so much that I told him I would be looking up boarding schools on the computer. The fact that a few moments later Eliot wondered out loud, “Is Alezander going to an orphanage?” didn’t really help.

  But later on, he bought me some flowers. “Not purple even though they are your favourites because they were too expensive.” He even bought his sister some princess stickers with his tooth fairy money. Still, boarding school is always an option.

  Your daughter doesn’t like characters.

  There are, after all, only 80,000. Now that Eliot no longer gets to use glitter glue to trace the character for the word bunny, things have gotten a lot less fun in Chinese class. Spelling tests, short essays… learning characters has lost much of its allure. You may have studied Spanish in college or spent your summer in Paris learning French… not the same thing.

  She no longer sings the cute songs in Mandarin she sang last year.

  All those songs she sang that impressed your friends and relatives back home? Nada. Kiss them goodbye. They’ve exited the premises. And way before fairies and unicorns, I might add.

  She cries because she doesn’t understand what’s going on in class.

  Well, they do speak Chinese after all. On the plus side, she still hugs her laoshi on the way into class. On the downside, she doesn’t hug her on the way out. This could be a telling sign.

  You dread asking your kids if they have any Chinese homework.

  It’s 5 pm, they’ve had their snack, they’ve even watched their favourite show on TV. They don’t have math, they finished English… maybe they have Chinese? You know you can’t help them even if they do. Suddenly, you become one of those moms who doesn’t believe in homework. And not because you don’t want your child to do homework but because you don’t want to be the one who makes them do it. Life is short and you’re not getting any younger.

  You find out all the kids in your daughter’s class have a Chinese tutor.

  It’s only taken you one whole semester but at last you’ve found out the dirty little secret of the first grade: every single person has private tuition in Chinese. After your I knew it moment, you proceed to book a tutor. Tip: Do not employ the same laoshi who is already teaching her at school. This idea, which at first might appear genius, will backfire if your child takes a sudden dislike to the tutoring and has a new reason for not liking Chinese and for not wanting to go to school.

  She looks at you and says: “I wish you were Chinese.” She is not joking.

  There will come a moment in the life of every expat kid forced to study Mandarin when they will turn to their parent and with eyes full of longing utter the words that parent has been waiting her whole life to hear: “I wish you were Chinese.”

  Things my mom told the kids (which she didn’t really have to)

  “You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

  It’s Mother’s Day and my own mother is far away. And sometimes it’s the thing I hate most about living in Singapore. Wish we could have a cup of coffee together and go look for houses that I can’t afford. Ancient-looking houses in the centro storico (historical part) of Verona, with frescoes, Venetian marbled floors, and a view. The good old days.

  True, she wasn’t always great at boosting my self-confidence: “You’re going to be beautiful when you’re 16… What’s that you say? You are 16. Well, that’s strange. Then 17, you’ll see…”

  And true, she did provide me with slightly odd presents to bring over to my friends when I was little, “Wait, here you go, a nice package of frozen corn, you’ll see, they’ll love it.”

  But when it really mattered, when I became a mom (even though I was an expat by then, living in Singapore and far away from the familiar comfort of home), she never once made me feel insecure. “Chamomile suppositories to help the baby sleep? Sounds totally reasonable.”

  However, when she comes to visit, she is always full of totally uncensored surprises. Is that a good thing? When it comes to kids, not always.

  “The thunder was so loud last night I thought the window over your bed was going to break – and crack your head open!”

  I’m not sure if she intentionally wants to scare my already anxiety-prone children to death but I do wonder.

  The only time I truly realize the disparities between my upbringing and my children’s is when my parents come to visit. Supposedly they were these lax and super-lenient parents who never forced us to go to sleep early, never asked us about homework, and apparently never even made us go to school. Right. How do you spell amnesia? My own memories are more reminiscent of life in a nunnery: no boyfriends, no sleepovers, and no dances.

  And, whereas my admonishments to the kids sound like this: “Be careful, children, you could hurt yourself,” my mother is far more direct (and gritty): “Do you want to kill yourself? Look, he almost cut off his finger and she almost got her eye poked out.” It’s like a Hilary Mantel novel about Henry VIII… only with more gore and drama.

  “Who wants to watch ‘Key Largo’?”

  That movie with Humphrey Bogart, or any murder mystery (as long as it’s set in a quaint English village). My mother isn’t a huge fan of Korean drama; give her Jimmy Cagney with a gun and she’s happy. And she can be very territorial when it comes to watching classics on television. Don’t even think of prying the remote control from her tight grip.

  “Your parents throw everything away.”

  This coming from the woman who actually owns a closet which you have to open slowly because stuff will literally come flying out and hit you on the head. Of course, the kids love it and nicknamed it the Closet of Death.

  “That shelf your dad put up nearly broke my head.”

  My husband and my mother share an identical passion for interior design. Trouble is, their tastes differ hugely. She’s all about frescoes and chandeliers, and he’s all about modern decor. Italian Renaissance meets minimalism. And they both have strong opinions when it comes to the fundamental issues in life, you know, fabric and what not. It can get ugly. Those casual discussions on upholstery? Not so casual.

  I, on the other hand, do not have the renovation gene at all. When I went to inspect the new empty house we had just bought and much to my amazement discovered an entire new kitchen had been installed, my first thought was: “My God, we’ve been robbed!” Closely followed by: “Wait, we were robbed and before the thieves left they installed a new kitchen? One with Italian appliances and a Nespresso machine?”

  “If your mother had brought you to us at Christmas, you would have seen the snow.”

  Hats and gloves in Singapore… who knew it was possible? Or desirable?

  It’s day three of the kids’ three-week winter holiday from school and I’m utterly knackered (a word I picked up during my years in Dublin that perfectly illustrates my state of mental exhaustion). There are only so many times I can edit a letter to Santa. A puppy under the tree? I don’t think so – more like a dictionary.

  It can be fun as long as your mother doesn’t tell them about all the snow that is falling where she lives. Or the snowmen they could be building and snowball fights they could be having if only you had brought them there.

  “Don’t forget I’m in touch with the Easter Bunny.”

  It is especially helpful that your mother (though travelling around 13 hours – counting only the p
lane ride, much more if you clock the hours needed to get to and from the airport) brings those huge chocolate eggs for your children that you used to get as a child in Verona and which are nowhere to be found in Singapore.

  “Your mother is just like her father.”

  I recently realized just how much I really am my father’s daughter. And it’s not just my love of quotes, Russian literature, lists, punctuality, dislike for the phone, morning moodiness, editing prowess, or even desire to read the weekend edition of the Financial Times (undisturbed and in front of a cup of coffee). Well, that too. But it was something more abstract. When my mother came to visit she watched me with marvel as I tried for the tenth time to get through to a travel agent on the phone, finally resorting to the military alphabet: “I said I-T-A-L-Y. India Tango Alpha Lima Yankee.” Wow, you really are like your father.

  Being the only daughter of a Special Forces Green Beret was not always easy (push-ups were at a premium in my house). I recently saw a documentary on the strict upbringing of Mormon teenage girls. The similarities with my own childhood were uncanny. Even though it is almost a requirement for all expats to live far away from their parents, on Father’s Day I remember my father as the only dad who came to every ballet performance when I was a little kid dancing in the Arena, for buying all my fellow ballerinas their own can of Pringles (that makes 18) because I mentioned they liked them, for not getting mad at me when he saw me riding on a girlfriend’s motorcycle, for not laughing when I suggested I could possibly get a PhD, instead finding it an excellent idea and supporting me 100% (that would be monetary, yes, but not only), for always picking me up at the airport, for helping me take my first walk after I had a caesarean, but most of all, for being an amazing grandfather to my two devilish expat kids! So now I embrace the Pa in me, I listen to Johnny Cash, I ask the kids capitals of random countries on our morning rides to school, and sing to them the words he sang to me as a child: “One hundred men will test today. But only three win the Green Beret.” Adding, “You know, like your Nonno Mario.”