How The Hell Did I End Up Here? Scotland To Singapore.

Recently I made the decision to leave Scotland, where I've lived my entire life, to move to Singapore. “What a daring and bold decision!” you must be telling yourself. You’d be sort of right. Singapore isn't completely foreign to me.

Welcome to Singapore

My mother is Singaporean born (she is ethnically Indian/Malay), and grew up there for 12 or so years. She was sent to England for boarding school then moved to Scotland for university, where she eventually met my dad (Scottish Caucasian). That’s the deeply moving story of how my parents met (typical white guy gets Asian fever) in a sentence. Due to my Singapore roots I've visited Singapore about half a dozen times in my 23 years, most recently being 2008 when I visited twice.

In a way I've felt of Singapore as my home and while growing up in Scotland I had an idealised view of Singapore.  I've always wanted to spend a long period of time here and see if expectations matched reality. So when I graduated and wanted to leave Scotland, it wasn't a hard decision to choose Singapore. So I got myself a Work Holiday Pass, granting me 6 months stay to live and work. This was a big boon since under normal conditions you can only work in Singapore as a foreigner if your employer sponsors you for a work pass. Additionally you only get 90 days stay as a tourist, so 90 days to 180 days was fantastic. The Work Holiday Pass was a perfect starting point in enabling me to live long term in Singapore.

So I got on a plane to Singapore (with a brief 4 day stay in Poland), and arrived at the beginning of June. So far I'm pretty happy here and life has been eventful. I have a girlfriend and semi active social life. I've found a job, great food, luscious greenery and a good Muay Thai gym. Some of my experiences in the last 2 months I’ll write about as well as events in days to come.

My plan is to be in Singapore for a while, find out what I value in life and career while travelling the hell out of Asia. Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong and China are all on my hit list. Countries like Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Korea are also going to be worth visiting. I may go to New Zealand since it seems like a cool country and its in Australasia (Oceania), which I've never been to. Australia looks pretty boring really, hot place full of culture-less white people. Hopefully I’ll find someone who shares my love of travel.

So that’s the long and short of it.

Life is good.