Ascend 2012

I mentioned the at the very start of this blog that I was in Chicago for a conference.  Ascend is a professional assocation of Pan-Asians.  I was fortunate enough to attend their National Convention this year!

I've been a (not very active) member of Ascend for a few years now.  Living in Nashville, the community of Asian professionals is pretty small, and the drive to Atlanta to attend a one hour meeting, speaker, or session is hard to justify.  As such, I hadn't gotten a ton out of Ascend yet - until now!

The convention had a ton of people from all over the country - mostly the cities that have large Asian populations like New York, San Francisco, Houston, etc.  People were at various stages in their careers, from students all the way through C-suite executives.  There were also people of all types of backgrounds - not just Asians.

The days in Chicago were filled mostly with keynote speakers, sessions on things like the power of non-verbal communications, and tons of networking.  It was a great way to get used to seeing all Asian people, all the time (hahaha), but perhaps the best way Ascend prepared me for my move to Singapore was by getting a chance to talk to all the people that I met who had worked internationally.  Hearing the stories of so many colleagues that had spent time working abroad really helped calm my nerves and make me feel at ease.  After all, if a guy from Buffalo, New York could go on secondment in Moscow for SIX years, I certainly felt like I would be fine in Singapore :)

Getting to meet and connect with so many people from other offices was also really great.  One thing that I do miss from my childhood is the strong bonds we had with other Taiwanese families in Tampa.  Like I mentioned, I didn't really know any other Asians in Nashville, so it was nice to just spend some time with people who may have had a similar cultural background as me.  

I ended a great weekend and my last few hours in the US with a nice run in Chicago with some new friends. It was perfect!

Starting work

This week, I had my first day of work.  I am lucky that I had a chance to work in our Singapore office for a few weeks back in the spring, so I wasn't completely disoriented this week.  However, I still had to attend an orientation session!

Orientation had a mixed crowd of people - new joiners and secondees from all groups.  There were about 7 other secondees in our group of 15 or 20 people, and three others were Americans.  For those of us who had our first day of work (orientation is given once a month), we received our new laptops and badges.  I ended Monday night with dinner with a few American secondees and a partner from the New York office who happened to be visiting Singapore.

Secondees only had to attend the first day of orientation, so on Tuesday, I started some real work!  (Hahaha at the fact that I used an exclamation point at the end of that sentence.)  I had a good sit-down with one of my managers to just take stock, talk about expectations, and get going on some things.  I also went down to the Ministry of Manpower to apply for my Employment Pass and ID card - the most efficient government office I have ever encountered!

It is Wednesday morning now, and I'm hoping to get some administrative things done today, including (more) apartment hunting.  It is actually a public holiday tomorrow (National Day), so I have an extra long weekend coming up!

Groceries...

So, whoever (if anyone) is reading this blog has probably already heard me complain about the price of groceries here in Singapore.  I feel like my eating habits will probably change significantly during my time here, simply because many of my staple foods in the US are either unavailable or grossly overpriced.  Let's take a look.

This breaks my heart.  S$15 for a carton of almond milk.  I love almond milk, and I put it in everything.. coffee, spinach smoothies, oatmeal, etc.  The outrageous cost of almond milk is particularly painful because apparently regular milk in Singapore tastes a little different than American milk.  The dairy is all from Australian cows, and I guess they have a different diet than California cows?

I don't know if you can see that or not, but that price tag says S$9.90 for a three pack of organic romaine hearts.  That is about $8 USD, which is outrageous.  Even for organic!

My beloved Greek yogurt.  A single cup for S$4.70.  I just can't stomach that.

Morningstar fake chicken strips for S$10.65.  There was a time when I literally lived on these.

Here is a non-grocery, obviously, but its worth a little mention!

This cracks me up for multiple reasons.  First of all, S$14 is way too much money for a bottle of Pantene.  But secondly, and even more hilarious, is the fact that it is "Hair Fall Control" shampoo!  I had a good laugh about this, but then noticed that a lot of other American brands, including Dove and Garnier, also had fall control products for sale.  Maybe this is an Asian epidemic?  I've always noticed that I shed a ridiculous amount of hair on my bathroom floor.  Maybe it has always been in my genes?

Other things that I have noticed at grocery stores in Singapore:

a)  They don't refrigerate their eggs here

b)  There are way more British and Aussie food choices than American food choices.  Does anyone have any experience with Marmite?

c)  Nutella is a worldwide phenomenon

d)  Most of the produce is from Malaysia

e)  There are tons of products that I don't recognize at all 

The one grocery item I have actually bought so far is a jar of peanut butter.  Jif is apparently a luxury brand, as it costs about S$9 a jar, but I bought a jar of Planter's peanut butter (the cheapest option) for a little less than S$5.  People tell me that you just get used to the prices, and you end up buying what you want to eat, so I guess that will happen to me at some point.  We'll see I guess.  

Any ideas on what is worth buying?  Or what else I should think about eating besides peanut butter?

House Hunter International

Everyone talks about this television show like its so much fun.  Disagree.  Apartment hunting kind of sucks.  Everything that is within the price range I want is not somewhere that I want to live, and everywhere I want to live seems to be a bit higher than I want to pay.  Although, to be fair, I don't really know what I'm basing my price range on.  It seems as if I may need to make some adjustments to my expectations?

I'm pretty indifferent to space, but I definitely care about location.  The other thing I've noticed that I need to be picky about is kitchen.  In the US, I probably wouldn't have even thought to pay attention to that since pretty much everywhere has a decent enough kitchen.  But not here.  Even though they say that people on Singapore eat out a lot, I still would like to live in a place where I feel comfortable cooking a meal for myself.  (But unfortunately, I think I have to put my love for baking on hold.)

This place didn't have a cooking surface at all. There is an electric burner stored on top of the fridge.  Probably the tiniest "kitchen" I've ever seen.  This makes my last apartment's kitchen look enormous!

This is typically what I saw. Tiny space with two burners, no oven, and a washer/dryer smack dab in the middle of it.  Clearly I didn't even consider wanting a dishwasher!

Total luxury. Four burners and an oven!  This was not in my price range :(

I saw 15 apartments in two days. I'm making an offer on one today (everything in Singapore is negotiable).  It's a really lovely apartment, one MRT stop from the office.  The price I'm offering is a little steep for me, but I think it's a great deal for the place, and I don't think it's going to make me go broke. At least I hope not.  That's the thing - I really have no idea how much I can afford because I don't really know how much it costs to live here.  But Chrissy advised me that "you're in a foreign country - the last thing you want when you are homesick is to come home to  an apartment you don't like only because it saved you a few bucks." So we'll see.  Who knows if the landlord will even accept my offer.

Weekend!

One day of apartment hunting done.  Of the 6 places I saw, I only liked one of them enough to really consider, but I want to keep looking because I think it's probably too expensive for where it is.  I think it's in a decent part of town that is fairly central, but there isn't an MRT stop close by. I'm going to go look again today. Hopefully with better results!

One thing that I'm already struggling with is figuring out a budget. When I think about how much rent I want to spend a month, it's hard for me to estimate how much disposable income I need to have each month. I have no idea how much my Singaporean lifestyle is going to cost.

For example, I met up with some future co-workers for dinner last night at a Brazilian steakhouse (this irony is not lost on me haha). Dinner and two drinks put me back S$85. I couldn't even tell you the last time I went to an $85 dinner on a random Friday night in the US!

But I will say that I feel so lucky to have a few contacts here already! And the diversity of this place is really astounding.  Last night, I was invited to dinner by a fellow American, but I was able to meet ex-pats from Switzerland, Brazil, England, and New Zealand.  All of them seem to love it here in Singapore, so that is promising!

Side note - I just read a preview of this post and noticed that I ended three out of four paragraphs with an !  I find this to be hilarious.

Day one

So I had three things I wanted to get done on day one, but I only managed two.  Power adapter and bank account, done! Cell phone.. not so much :(

Friday morning, I bought an MRT card and headed over two stops to Plaza Singapura. Side note - there is a lot of tourism advertising here, as seen in the MRT station.

Represent.

Some wandering and an unsuccessful attempt at getting a phone (they said my employment pass was not enough, I also need my ID card) later, it was lunch time!  Singapore has some incredibly cheap and tasty local food. 

My first meal back in Singapore - this big bowl of noodle soup was S$4.  My afternoon latte was S$6 haha.

While I was waiting for my appointment at the bank, I did some grocery browsing. I've heard that many people in Singapore don't cook very often because it is just as cheap to go out than it is to prepare a meal at home! I am planning to do a separate post with some pictures from the grocery store. Suffice it to say that I'm missing Publix already.

Today I'm going to go look at an apartment!

I made it!

After a long day of travel, I'm finally here in Singapore!  I got in around 1am local time last night, so I just came to my temporary apartment and crashed.

I'm heading out to explore my new city and hopefully get some errands done today. On the list: a phone, a bank account, and the proper plug adapter.

I'm still trying to figure out how to blog without a computer... So no pictures and only a few words for now.