A new lease of Life for down trodden Singaporeans ?

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For those who do not look into local newspapers, but prefer to pick-up news from the internet, here is an article from the Sunday Times (28 September 2003) to digest:

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/think/story/0,4386,211924,00.html?

Singaperth
The Singlish accent is heard a lot in one Australian city. Our senior writer spent five days exploring Singapore's southernmost frontier and catching up with the more than 10,000 Singaporeans there

By Susan Long

THE day Mr David Lim was retrenched by his employer of 22 years, Keppel Tatlee Bank, in 1999, spelt the end of life as he knew it.

A man of few words, the 50-year-old went home to his Bedok five-room HDB flat and did his sums. At his age, with only O levels, he had little chance of landing another job. He pared down his options to two: Early retirement, or migration.

He decided: 'Instead of doing nothing, why not try out business?'

He caught the next flight out to Perth to join his eldest daughter, 20, who was at university there. His wife and two younger daughters followed soon after.

Six months later, he opened Chin Chin Eating House in Perth's Chinatown, named after his parents' famous Hainanese eatery in Singapore's Purvis Street.

At first, the reception to his pork chops and mutton soups was lukewarm. Then his restaurant started breaking even, feeding homesick Singaporean students and air force personnel stationed in Perth.

'You cannot make a fortune here. But you can get by,' he says shrugging his reed-thin shoulders.

He stops at the roadside and pats his new Toyota Tarago MPV on its rear. 'How much does this cost in Singapore? S$140,000? Here, only A$53,000 (S$62,500).'

For Mr Lim and an ever increasing number of Singaporean heartlanders, the sheer affordability of Perth has made it the land of second chances and new beginnings.

They flock here to seek the perfect compromise: A different lifestyle, yet one which offers reassuring Singaporean resonances and the familiar comforts of home. Far away yet near enough to rush home in case mother is ill. A place to kick back yet still remain in the game.

In the 1970s, Singaporeans who went were mostly the professional and managerial classes seeking time-out from the corporate world, or an escape from the mother tongue requirement in schools for their children.

But since the late 1980s, when Perth became known as the new London - albeit with better weather, nicer food and cheaper real estate - it has drawn a wider spectrum of Singaporeans, from sole proprietors, taxi-drivers, nurses, hawkers, technicians, insurance agents to policemen.

From hardly any blue-collar clients five years ago, Australian Migration Agents' managing director, Robert Chelliah, 65, said that 80 per cent of his Singaporean clients today are mechanics, cooks and plumbers with National Technical Certificate (NTC) qualifications.

'Thanks to Singapore's extensive technical training schemes, the average Singaporean is skilled enough today to be eligible for migration,' he says.

Some came armed with pink slips, others with freshly-withdrawn Central Provident Fund savings, and went on to invest in motels, mini-marts, yong tau foo stores, food-court stalls, golf courses, property firms, even the export of chicken feet, which is normally thrown away in Australia.

Today, many run franchises throughout Perth such as the Subway sandwich chain, Delifrance outlets and Star Mart convenience stores.

Kangaroo hop

The actual number of Singaporeans is probably double the official figure, because the latter reflects only those who have successfully applied for permanent residency.

Many Singaporeans own holiday homes in Perth and do the Kangaroo Hop (the Perth-Singapore-Perth commute) every few months to avoid immigration hassles.

In fact, in the new Canningvale suburb where Mr Lim lives, several Singaporean families live in the same street.

Other neighbourhoods south of the river, like Winthrop, Attadale, Alfred Cove, Ardross, Booragoon, Bullcreek, South Perth, as well as Churchlands, Floreat, Leeming, Currambine, Connolly, Bentley and Karawara, teem with Singaporeans and other Asians. So much so that Winthrop has of late been nicknamed 'Chinthrop'.

Almost all have Asian supermarkets, which offer a kaleidoscope of satay premixes, prawn paste and other flavours of home. Even the regular green grocers, bowing to popular demand, have extended their repertoire beyond potatoes and cabbage to kales and bok choy.

Reflecting their pent-up aspirations to own land, Singaporeans here typically buy homes in the bigger-than-average range, of around 700 sq m to 800 sq m, in the above A$300,000 price bracket.

Developers say they favour 'modern, grand-looking' bungalows with four bedrooms and an adjoining garage for at least two cars.

Luxury-class migrants with more spending power go house-hunting in the 'District 10' Dalkeith, Nedlands, City Beach and Applecross areas, where they build palatial homes in the A$1 million to A$3 million range.

Some of Perth's public schools, like Rossmoyne Senior High School, are now among Australia's top schools because of their high concentration of Asians, in particular studious Singaporeans.

At Perth's five universities, business degree courses, a Singaporean favourite, boast about a quarter Singaporean enrolment in each class. About 3,000 Singaporeans are now studying there.

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Education has played a major role in drawing Singaporeans to Perth. Mr Steven Choo, a 38-year-old Singaporean-turned-Australian citizen, first went to Perth in 1992 to study for his Bachelor of Commerce degree, then stayed on to complete his master's and his PhD.

Today, he is head of entrepreneurship at Curtin University of Technology's school of management and is married to Perth's celebrity newscaster, Tina Altieri.

His is a familiar rite of passage.

'Most Singaporean youths tend to lead sheltered lives. After coming here and tasting the fruits of democracy, they find the confidence to break out of the mould.

'In their first year, they say that life here is boring. But by their third year, most don't want to go home. Anecdotally, in each graduating class, six out of 10 try to convert their visas to work here,' he said.

Love and money

WHAT Perth has going for it is its 'first love' nostalgia factor.

Because it is affordable and less than five hours' flight from Singapore, Western Australia Tourist Commission's executive director Rick Thomas notes, it is frequently the first Western holiday experience for many Singaporeans.

They leave besotted with the blue skies, the languid lifestyle, the nearness and the cheapness. Years later, feeling overworked and trapped in their office cubicles, they think back wistfully of their first taste of utopia.

Take Mr Mohamed Yunos. The 40-year-old was tired of working 18 hours running a Muslim eatery in Geylang Serai. So eight years ago, he sold his executive flat in Pasir Ris and moved to Perth to 'explore another lifestyle' with his wife and two children, aged eight and 10.

But he learnt that while you can take the Singaporean out of Singapore, you cannot wrench the Singapore work ethic from him. After three years of relaxing, travelling and doing some casual trading in fruits and vegetables, he ditched his romantic notion of retiring from the rat race and got back into the nasi biryani business.

Today, he runs the bustling Karache Cafe in downtown Perth, which serves a stream of Singaporean emigres and vacationers.

According to Mr Thomas, 80 per cent of the 70,000 Singaporeans who visit Western Australia each year, and pump A$152 million into the economy, are repeat visitors.

A Singapore travel agent who did not want to be named, says: 'Frankly, we don't bother to sell Perth anymore. The margins are razor-thin. So many Singaporeans now have homes there, they don't even need accommodation.'

The median Perth home, set on 600 sq m of land, costs about A$200,000 - half of what it would cost in the more developed eastern states like Sydney and Melbourne.

According to Mr Simon Johnson, director of Western Australia's department of industry and resources, affordability is why the state attracts the highest rate of business migration within Australia.

And Singaporeans have wasted no time taking advantage of Perth's low start-up costs. Already, many of the city's landmarks, from the Sheraton Hotel to Joondalup Golf Resort are Singaporean-owned.

Unjudgmental

BUT while most flock to Perth because they can live like millionaire without being one, others like well-known musician Siva Choy chose it for its pristine appeal.

The 56-year-old moved here in 1989. 'I love the physical freedom. I can get into my car, drive for half an hour and I'm standing on the edge of the ocean. Half an hour in the opposite direction and I'm among hills and valleys. At night, you see stars like you've never seen before. There is such pristine beauty - so much of it untouched.'

He finances his simple, spartan lifestyle by playing with a band at gigs and doing freelance writing. When money gets tight, he dons a hard hat and mounts a fork-lift to do stock-taking at an industrial park. It pays a decent A$150 a day.

A friend, a former senior civil servant with a passion for horticulture, delivers potted plants 'for the exercise and the extra cash'.

That is what he enjoys most about living in Perth: The people's friendly, unhurried banter and open, unjudgmental attitudes. 'Whenever you enter a shop, they go 'Hi, how are you?' and chat with you whether you're a A$1 or A$100 customer,' he observes.

That night, as Mr Lim takes me on a walking tour around his restaurant in Northbridge, two Chinese men in their 70s amble across our path. One is dressed like an old English gentleman in tweeds. The other sports gelled grey dreadlocks and a loud Mambo T-shirt.

'See, those two are Singaporeans who have lived in Perth all their lives,' Mr Lim remarks.

They strike a peculiar contrast but no one stares. 'No one cares. People here don't care what car you drive or what job you do. No one looks down on you, even if you're a road sweeper.'

And suddenly, it becomes obvious, that what the new Singaporean migrant travels all this way in search of is not so much cheap land or spectacular sunsets but really, respect.

Next week: The downside of moving to Perth

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Big dreamer now walks tall

MR RICHARD TAY (left) felt small in Singapore. In halting English laced with Hokkien, he tells of how he left school at 14 to work in his family's textile shop in Upper Serangoon.

Then it was on to running a supermarket in Boon Lay and importing exotic cars.

But despite working seven days a week, his dream of owning 'a nice big house' never got any nearer and he wondered what kind of life he had signed up for.

In 1985, he took his first holiday in Perth. There, he discovered the liberatingly low cost of living.

'Everything was within my means. At that time, a piece of land about 700 sq m, in a prime area of downtown Perth, cost A$10,000,' the 52-year-old recalls, his eyes saucer-wide.

Over the next three years, he began divesting his businesses in Singapore and jetting to Perth every other month to 'mix around and do market research'.

The ease he enjoyed in broaching business ideas with the local government departments, won him over.

'You can just walk in. They listen to you. They are very sincere in helping small businesses set up. No need to fax in long applications,' he says.

In 1989, he incorporated his first property investment firm in Perth, moved his family over and cut his teeth building medical centres and industrial buildings.

Then he progressed to hotels. Two years ago, he successfully built and managed the 94-room Acacia Hotel in Northbridge, before selling it to Maldivian investors for A$2-million (S$2.3 million) profit.

Today, sipping a foaming latte in the hotel's foyer cafe, he is percolating even grander plans.

There is an aqua farming research facility and service apartment complex in Fremantle, a A$10-million residential project in Wattle Grove, even a Love Bites apple strudel shop on William Street.

His proudest achievement is a A$150-million, 1,416ha resort and residential project next to the Kalbarri National Park, seven hours' drive from Perth.

It has made him a folk hero. His face beams from newspapers such as The West Australian because his Port Kalbarri project, when ready in 2005, will create hundreds of jobs.

'For me to do something like this in Singapore would be impossible. We just don't have this kind of land and only the very big boys in Singapore can play the property game,' he says.

After 15 years in Perth, he and his wife, Mary, have five daughters, including two sets of twins. They have also recruited over 50 of their extended family members to join them in the leafy Melville suburb.

In between fatherhood, frequent Tay-tribe gatherings and building a dream township, he no longer feels small.

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Mrs Wee, the accidental hotelier

PERTH transformed Mrs Cecilia Wee (left) from being the socialite wife of retired Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin into an accidental hotelier and doyenne of the Singaporean business community there.

She started building her Perth investment portfolio more than 30 years ago when she sent three of her children to Western Australia to spare them the 'stressful' rigours of the Singapore education system.

Artlessly, she says she 'could not resist' picking up a few properties over the years because they were 'so cheap'. Today, at 72, she has amassed four historical hotels and heritage resorts across Western Australia.

For many upper crust Singaporean families like the Wees, Perth is the perfect parking place for spare change.

'Shares are too volatile. It's better to buy land, if you can't sell it, you can use it,' she advises.

What propelled her into the hospitality industry was the 1992 purchase of the 107-year-old Ascot Inn, a picturesque property by the Swan River, which she intended to turn into a holiday home for the family.

But they were not keen on vacationing there, so she let it continue as a hotel to save the employees' jobs. That was how she landed her first proper job as a hotelier at the grand old age of 60.

Many acquisitions later, she is now president of the Western Australian Singapore Business Council. Over the past four years, she has grown her business lobby group's membership base from 10 to 100 Singaporeans.

Beavering away in Perth, then recuperating in Singapore may not be everyone's Perthfect retirement plan but it is hers. 'Running a hotel is just like running my own household but on a bigger scale,' she maintains.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/think/story/0,4386,212000,00.html?

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This article was printed in the Sunday Times, 5 October 2003, and is a follow-up of last Sunday's presentation of "New Lease of Life in Perth". The following article will tell of the difficulties and hardship of being a migrant:

Not so Perthfect after all In this space last week, we featured the allure Perth has for the 10,000-plus Singaporeans there. This week, the downside of 'paradise'.
By Susan Long

WHEN Wayne Teo was first sent to school in Perth at age 14, it was hate at first sight.

He resented the city's parochial, comatose feel. Shops shut 5pm. City lights were out by 10pm. On weekends, he says, it felt 'like a bomb had exploded' and emptied out the city centre, leaving eerie, silent streets.

Freshly plucked from pulsating Singapore, Perth was teen purgatory for the Nan Hua Secondary boy.

Eighteen years later, the Singaporean-turned-Australian property scion is doing his best to shake up the sleepy city before his two children grow up into teenagers.

The 32-year-old is the brains behind the new cutting-edge fashion mall, The Colonnade, in Perth's stylish Subiaco area.

But underneath the gloss of shiny new malls, chic cafes and cosmopolitan new citizens, he says Perth remains 'a big country town' at heart.

Geographically, it is the most isolated capital city in the world. Cut off from the rest of Australia, it is actually closer to Singapore than to Sydney.

Even though Western Australia is Australia's biggest state and 4,000 times larger than Singapore, its population is only half that of the city-state.

The city of Perth itself is the size of Ang Mo Kio New Town. You can zip through its Central Business District, which boasts all of two towering skyscrapers, Bankwest Tower and Central Park Building, in five minutes flat. Traffic jams? Unheard of.

The other bright side of being tucked away is less competition.

'There are fewer big boys here because of the smaller population and slower progress. Even if bigger property developers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane come down to look at a Perth project, they have to get here first. It will take them at least five hours,' he says.

But Perth's compact assets are also its liability.

With only 1.3 million inhabitants, the city lacks the critical mass to support many businesses.

'The quota for both demand and supply is finite. Your timing has to be spot on. Because of the small population, niches are very few and far in between,' he says.

'You have to acclimatise quickly to the fact that people's needs and lifestyles are very different here. Shopping hours are terribly regulated. Weekends are sacred to employees. People are not that commercially orientated. The business environment is just more difficult.'

The paradox is that despite the vastness of the land, the scale of things is smaller. Indeed, Singaporean businessmen who have been there, done that and been burnt offer this unequivocal advice: Forget about big bucks or get-rich-quick schemes.

Think slow, think steady, think sustainable.

Oh, and factor in corporate tax rates of 32 per cent, if you make it.

Resident moaners

HEREIN lies the rub for most Singaporeans who come to Perth, not out of lack but of plenty.

Statistics show they are Australia's most highly-educated and affluent newcomers.

Known as 'luxury-class immigrants', they speak the best English, are Westernised, law-abiding and able to blend almost seamlessly into Perth society.

They come primarily to stretch their retirement dollar and to live it up - not to pare down their lives.

Hence, the lifestyle they have in mind will inevitably jar with the keep-it-simple, more lackadaisical operating philosophy Down Under.

According to lawyer Anthony Quahe, who has been living in Perth for 15 years, this is where the Singapore immigrant is the stark exception to the norm.

The latter often comes with the intention of taking advantage of the many good things that Australia has to offer, and not with the dream to make something of themselves and of the place.

'But the native attitude in WA is rugged and 'can do'. It's not one of coming here and saying: 'Why haven't they done it yet?',' he notes.

And so, some Singaperthians have these days become the new resident moaners, cynical about all manner of things from the perceived lower level of law and order and the inefficient government, to lower standards in schools, smaller scale of profits, higher taxes and the unavailability of maids.

In short, grumbling as a pastime.

'They consume all that Australia has to offer, but produce little in the exercise of weaving the tapestry of the future of their adopted country,' Mr Quahe says.

Today, stories abound of how the fabled land of overflowing milk and honey has become a wasteland for some Singaporeans.

Mr Roland Tan, 64, a Perth-based property consultant with Davey Real Estate, notes that some get duped because of a lack of local knowledge and appreciation for price differentials.

Their only reference point - and a fallacious one - is Singapore prices.

They 'pay through their nose' for far-flung plots in the Gosnells and Thornlie areas, more than 45 minutes away from the city centre, only to find out later that the 600 sq m, four-bedroom bungalow, which they bought for 'a steal' at A$150,000 (S$175,500), is worth half of that.

Some end up nursing paper losses or selling at huge discounts because Australian law requires that certain property can be sold only to citizens or permanent residents.

Perth is certainly not a place for those seeking glamour and the high life.

People entertain mostly at home over a casual pot-luck meal by the poolside or barbecue pit.

There is also a strong second-hand culture for everything from clothes to electronic goods to golf clubs that helps contain costs.

Australia is DIY land, says Mr George Favacho, in his 70s.

'You either Do-It-Yourself or pad next door to ask your neighbour for help. If you call in a plumber, the call-up fee alone will give you a heart attack,' says the former Singaporean TV producer, who has lived in Perth for two decades.

He now runs a car-rental company, www.executive.com.au, which rents out Porsches and other fast cars to holiday-makers, many of whom are Singaporean.

Whenever they ask him how he spends his weekends, imagining rustic afternoons spent cruising the country in his convertibles, his answer invariably disappoints. He says: 'I do my amah duties. Ironing, vacuuming, washing, scrubbing. No such thing as maids here.'

Occasionally, he even gets to do a spot of shopping, but 'only for spades, manure, cement or washers'.

Mr Siva Choy, a Singaporean musician and freelance writer, adds: 'The culture here is: Spend only what you need to spend. Unlike in Singapore where we like to pay to be entertained, here, we make our own music.'

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Continuation:

Skin-deep

HEADING back from the suburban Garden City mall after a spot of shopping one night, I met taxi-driver Ben.

The jovial 40-year-old Australian lives in Winthrop, a suburb so popular with Singaporean and other Asian immigrants that it has been nicknamed Chinthrop.

He confides that he personally has never 'minded' his Asian neighbours. He only wonders why 'they are so big on school work and never allow their children out to play'.

But before dropping me off, he adds with a wink: 'You know what, most Australians would rather live next to an Asian than an aborigine any day.'

That, perhaps, is the unvarnished truth of Perth's state of race relations.

Multiculturalism remains skin-deep and impression-based. A small-town insularity lingers. The official view of the city's growing Asianisation, as expressed by Perth's Lord Mayor, Dr Peter Nattrass, seems also, disturbingly, to be one of denial.

He insists there is 'no influx, no infusion, not even a trickle' of Singaporeans, or Asians, to Perth.

The number of incoming Singaporeans remains small and they simply blend into Perth's melting pot of other nationalities such as Italians, Greeks and Indonesians.

Asked to elaborate on Perth's 'classical model of multiculturalism', which he refers to often, he is able to point only to the city's growing stable of multi-ethnic restaurants.

What about his own personal experience of that multiculturalism?

After a pregnant pause, he reveals that he just sold his family home of 58 years to a Singaporean family. His regret seems palpable. The interview comes to an uncomfortable close.

Many Perth-based Singaporeans say an amorphous glass ceiling still exists in the upper echelons of the professions and the business world.

Mr Steven Choo, 38, a lecturer at Curtin University of Technology, is candid. 'Look at the top strata of CEOs, right at the top of the pyramid. It is still largely an Anglo-Saxon old boys' club.'

The discrimination is not overt or premised on racial grounds, because of Australia's strict employment laws. 'But if you look below the surface, there is discrimination in that all your prior working experience in Singapore does not count. You have to start from scratch,' he notes.

'In Australia, there are very successful Asians. You are given equal opportunity but only if your language is proficient, your qualification is recognised here and you are able to fit in socially.'

As such, many say that the entrenched Australian 'Fair Go' ethos, which is the belief that everyone deserves a chance to do well in life, has too many strings attached.

But Mr Choy, who has lived in Perth for 14 years, counters such allegations of racism. 'Some people use that as a crutch. Sometimes, you don't get the job because you are not good enough, not because of the colour of your skin or your accent.'

Ultimately, it really depends on how determined you are to assimilate. 'I always start talking with a friendly smile. Once in a while, I do meet someone who doesn't like me and goes out of his way to be rude, but it is very rare,' he recounts.

So, yes, Perth may be the byword for paradise, blue skies and all things nice. But that is just the scenery.

'You take yourself with you wherever you go. If you're hard to get along with at home, you'll be hard to get along with here.

'People who want to emigrate often think all will be fine once they get to Australia. But you take your problems along with you,' he says.

Indeed, as Mr Favacho sums up: 'There's no nirvana, my dear.'

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