A Singaporean In Australia

I seldom realise I have not been updating this blog for a while but normally I will be reminded. Then I'll get my butt working again. I have nothing much to share about migration. All that needs to be written are written. The rest is up to you. I don't think any of you are really that interested in what I do or where I go with my family, what we eat and other what not. I had done a lot of those but those seemed to be a distraction of the main theme of the blog. Thus I hardly update about my life lately, minimizing the irrelevancy.

This post that marks my re-re-re-re-return to writing is about bad advice and percentages. By the rule of thumb, free advice is bad advice. Thus everything you read here may very well be bad advice. That goes the same for the advice given by yet another charlatan who advises you not to heed any advice you get receive here. Equally free advice and probably equally bad.

When I was contemplating my move in 2011, Uncle Lai told Penny to warn us against the move, citing a "white-collar recession." I did not heed his well intended advice because I wanted to move out of Singapore, period. Today, I am 2 months away from my 4th year in Perth. Bad advice or not, the decision was made and never regretted. One may argue that 2015 is worse than 2011 and so it makes the same old advice even more valid. Well, 2011 was indeed worse than 2007 too. So what's your fucking point? If I have a crystal ball and tell you for certainty that 2019 will be worse than 2015, will that halt your move? I believe that depends heavily on your intentions. If you are moving for the money, you should have never considered leaving Singapore in the first place. However if you are leaving for other reasons..... do I need to say more?

Look. They call a 5 or 10 % unemployment high. To me it means 9 out of 10 people are employed. If you happen to be the fucking 1 guy then of course that's truly bad times for you. So it is actually a good idea to shelf your migration because 1 guy out of 9 couldn't find a job? I would have thought you are moving to Greece.

If you are uncomfortable when the odds are against you, I wonder why you bothered to take up driving, since in a country where there are more sheep than humans and cars, the average driving test passing rate is only 60%. If you still went ahead although you had a 4 out of 10 chance to fail, why does a 1 out of 10 unemployment bother you that much?

You exist because you beat 200 to 600 million other sperm to the race to your mother's ovary. That's a feat by itself but don't let that fool you, none of us is special. None. Since everyone is a unique individual or champion, that makes none of us special. We are all dumbfucks who are doomed to fail as long as luck don't come our way. However, I am a strong believer of making our own luck. Where migration is being concerned, you only need 1 job out of the 1000s out there. Imagine if you are a man born in China and the government tells you that there is 5% drop in female births in the country, will you go into panic mode just because there is 6,9 million less females for you to find a partner? It is only mentally viable to have 1 wife. How many wives do you need. How many jobs do you need? 1.

If you are looking for a cushy situation where you are sit down, masturbate and collect cash, you will be better off staying where you are. Else, there is always a place for a fighting spirit somewhere out there in the world.

What do we really mean by bad times anyway? Bad economy, high unemployment, natural disasters or what? Why don't you ask the same people who told you not to move how they live their lives through these bad times and see how terrible their lives must have been. They are probably sipping their drinks by their alfresco while you are still in your office. Or are they so hungry, scouring the fields for tapioca because they have not been working for 5 years? Ironically, for some reasons they refuse to fuck off back to Singapore despite the terrible times here to put their money where their stinking mouths are. You wish they do. Ha.

A tip off by our friend J, who has never been forgotten. It is about a $1 per week rental program.

If I couldn't find a job during my earlier days in Perth and I happened to know the existence of such a project, I would have likely to move deep into the regional areas with my baby. Since I have no income, it makes little financial sense to keep paying hundreds in rental every week bite fingers as savings dwindle.

So moving to a house under the $1 a week rental program will suit me fine. This is how they describe the program

There are different farmhouses available around Australia for rent at $1 a week. Some farmhouses need renovating in exchange for low rent, some farmhouses need a caretaker to look after the farm, some farmhouses need children to help save the local school bus run, some farmhouses need skilled labour to help during busy harvest and some farmhouses need all the above. Depending on your skills and motivation, everyone is welcome to apply. [link]

This program is started in bid to save some of the dying towns around Australia due to negative growth in population. So this is not strictly a labour-for-accommodation exchange. While some house owner only expect you to renovate his house while staying in it for your $1 rental, some towns might only require you to send your children to the local school to keep the school and the school buses services running. There are options available to your skills and motivations and deals are expected to be highly flexible and negotiable. If I were to consider taking it up, I will check with the representative if there are jobs available that I can take up outside my basic scope of responsibilities so that I can even save some money while I'm there. No matter what, I'm sure my family will not starve to death in an environment where I may be expected to maintain a farm.

Living conditions may not be anything that common Singaporeans have experienced. As such, we call it these conditions "harsh" or "bad", we'll have basically nothing good to say about it. I beg to disagree. This form of living isn't bad. It is just different. Whatever that we may be deprive off in these environment, such as convenience or comfort, will be compensate in another form that we cannot even fathom because we have yet to experience. Life in a farm is not a bed of rose but it isn't as difficult as we think too. However, it takes time for realisation to materialise but Singaporeans rarely have the patience to wait. With only a fixed set of reality in our minds, nowhere else in the world will be good enough. Of course, that is the biggest lie a man can convince himself to believe.

Hi Nix,

First and foremost, thanks for your wonderful blog of ideas and accounts on your stay in Perth. This is my first time to bug you on sound hdb/migration advise (wont be last I'm sure).

My hubby and I (35 and 30 years old respectively) applied for a BTO Punggol waterway 5rm unit back in 2011 when we first got married. Fast forward a kid later in 2013, we secured our skilled occupation visa back in Jan 2013, and have been saving since for the big migration.

The BTO project was slated to complete in Q3'15 but to date no news. Concurrently, we booked our one way tickets to Melbourne (15 Aug) with contemplating thoughts of cancelling the BTO upon our departure. 5% deposit from our CPF has paid up $25k towards the choice unit. If we get the keys to the unit, we have around $150k to wipe off from CPF and the rest $200k on hdb loan - works out to $1.2k per month instalment repayment.

Friends and relatives kept urging us to keep the BTO as a safety net... in case we dont "make it" there, there is a home to come back to. In the meantime, rent out 2 rooms legally till 5 yr Minimum occupation period (MOP), thereafter sell or upgrade to condo. Take it as a sound investment.

Our main concern is, we wont even get to meet the MOP considering we will be out of SG for some time. Furthermore, we will both be unemployed by the time we leave SG, how will HDB recalculate our loan eligibility?

I read on forums that HDB grant discretion on case by case basis. If after 5 yrs i intend to sell the house and do not meet MOP, HDB will repossess and pay 85% of the purchase value.

I am not asking you as a HDB call centre, I have gotten in touch with them and was presented with the facts above. What we look to you for is sound advise and a voice of reason amidst this mayhem of a HDB unit. To keep or not to keep?

Sincerely,

Hi Y,

Firstly, congratulations and good choice of making Melbourne your home. It is certainly not as full as Perth so more Singaporeans should make move to Melbourne.

There is no sound advice to your question unless you to have full clarity of your goals. Ask yourself these questions:

How do you define 'making it' in Australia?

Will you return to Singapore if you 'make it'?

Will you return to Singapore if you do not 'make it'?

Do you foresee a good housing market in the next 30 years in Singapore?

Will your friends and relative take up responsibility if your sound investment go bad?

Your answers to the above will lead you to your decisions.

Now about dead-locking yourself in the scenario you take up the BTO flat. If you return to Singapore once a year for about a month each time, it will take you 60 years to clock a 5-year MOP in order to qualify you as legal sellers, according to HDB's current policy of fatuity. So let's not think of profiting from Say if you decided to sell it at 85% of your purchase price X years later, will your rental collected over X years cover this 15% loss? The equation is simple: HDB will makan $52.5k off you. Say if you plan to sell the place after 4 years, you will need to be able to rent up your rooms for $1093.75 a month in order to break even (not factoring inflation and interest rates). Will you be able to do that? If not, you will need to rent it out for a longer period to break even or get positive returns on your investment. (Note: 4 years in Australia makes you eligible to apply for citizenship = renounce SG citizenship = take out CPF funds) Bad or good investment? You decide.

Say if there is a high possibility of returning to Singapore after encountering some hurdles, it is definitely a good idea to have a safe haven waiting for you by the Waterway. Much will depend on your mindset. If you are taking this option, do your loan assessment before leaving and return after a year or so to collect your keys, do your renovation and rent it out. By that time, they don't give a damn whether you are employed or not as long as you pay your mortgage on time. Alternatively, move your folks into your new cosy house for them to enjoy instead of the tenants and rent out their older HDB flats whole.

Or lose $5k(?) to give it all up and save all the trouble and focus your full energies on living a new life overseas.

I'll choose losing my deposit (btw 5% is downpayment, not deposit). You see, the likes of OSU always claimed that Singapore is working hard lure overseas Singaporeans back to Singapore. The fact that such a HDB policy exist, seemingly as a move to cool down the property market fevered mainly by the sharp influx of Singapore PRs, but does not exempt Singaporeans, tells me otherwise. For Singaporeans who obviously need a house to live in which country we are working overseas at, we are allowed to hold a HDB flat only we do not buy a second property overseas. So they are expecting us to live under the bridge or in caravan parks? Or bite the bullet and rent houses for as long as we are away, which makes no financial sense since we are overseas to earn money in the first place, only to burn them all up in house rental. Policies against the people. Mind blown.

The message that HDB and the Singapore Government is conveying to me is clear, "Cross the bridge and stay put or burn it." There is no middle ground.

So if you have made the decision to leave, fuck them and their fucken policies and leave like you mean it.

Hi Nix,

I'm making the move over next year and am mulling over jobs.

I was thinking of taking up bricklaying but am not sure if it'll feed my family of 4.

I kinda recall you having a friend who is a bricklayer and was wondering if it's be possible to ask him some questions along the lines of;

1) How to go about becoming a bricklayer. I've checked some websites (namely http://www.abbtf.com.au/whats-involved/apprentice-pay-rates-and-conditions/) that talked about a 4 year apprenticeship. That's pretty long.

2) What kind of hourly pay am I looking at?

3) Is work regular or hard to come by?

4) Working hours that I can expect? Would still love to have time for the family.

Thanks in advance.

Curious,

Hi Curious,

I've checked with Stephen and these are what I've gathered.

1) If you are not a PR, you need to take up a 2 year full time course in bricklaying. The student visa allows you to work up to 20 hours per week, in which it is highly recommended to take up a labourer job in a bricklaying team to gain experience as well as building up a good network.

If you are a PR, you can take up a course to learn the trade or you can head straight to the work site and look for someone to employ you as a labourer and work yourself up. If you take up a bricklaying course to learn the basics, unlike international students, you can work more than 20 hours a week outside your course hours if you can time manage yourself that well.

Bear in mind this is a trade and in this field, only your work counts, not your qualifications. If you are able to learn quickly and be proficient in bricklayer, you don't have to go through a bricklaying course. You can get yourself certified as a bricklayer after 4 years of working experience. On the other hand, you may not get a good bricklayer career even if you have attended a 2 year bricklaying course. So it's your call.

An apprenticeship program is usually for teenagers right after they leave high school and their allowances are much lower than a working adult rate. It is probably not the right program to look at.

2) The pay is about $150 a day as a labourer. The wages of a bricklayer ranges from $180 to $400 a day, depending on knowledge and skill.

3) At the moment, there is still a demand for bricklayers, so work will be easy to find for a hardworking and reliable bricklayer.

4) The working hours are normally from 7am to 3.30 or 4pm, subjected to changes according to seasons.

Melbourne good

A very good day to you,

My name is Johnson, a fellow Singaporean still residing in this small country. Firstly, I want to express my gratitude to you for your effort you put into your blog. It's providing me a great deal of information on issues that were not transparent to me.

Living in Singapore for the past 25 years, I've come to realize that Singapore might not be where my de facto partner and I truly wish to settle down at. We have been looking for opinions and reviews all over the web and, have the decision narrowed down to Australia.

May I request for your time to read our current situation below and I would really appreciate any comments from you.

Plan: To get a PR in Singapore before flying over to work. However we are unsure of which visa to apply for. Visa 189 seems to fit the bill better in comparison.

- Location: Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth (Dependent on Career opportunities)

- I am 25 YO. Partner 22 YO.

- Our family supports our decision.

- We specialized in Information Technology industry. (Might put us more qualified for Skilled Migrant Scheme, Visa 189)

- No close relatives and friends who stays in A. (No sponsership)

- I've worked in industry for > 3 years. Partner: 1 year

- I have no issue working as a blue collar. (Macdonalds etcetera)

- Have not taken our IELTS. (We should be able to secure 7.0)

- Have around Sgd 25 grands for this BIG step.

We wish to change our living environment but we are unsure many things. In a case if I have my Visa 189 approved, can I start working as a blue collar while still in search for my IT related jobs? How long is the validity period for Visa 189?

I sincerely apologize for my lack of knowledge and I greatly appreciate any kind advise you can provide us.

Thank you so much.

Yours Sincerely,

Johnson Tan

Hi Johnson,

You should be looking at Subclass 189. First, go to a migration agent (or read up at immi.gov.au) and find out how many years of working experience will you be required to obtain before your skills can be successfully assessed and recognised by the relevant body in Australia.

Say if the current requirement is 4 years of working experience, you will be qualified to apply after one more year of employment, provided if your nominated vocation is on the SOL. (Pls check the new SOL, which was updated recently) Just search for "Aust immi SOL 2015" if you don't know what is SOL.

Bear in mind if the above example is accurate, your partner will not be able to apply until she chalks up the required number of years, since she is in the same industry as you revealed. That will set you back for a few more years, unless you plan to move separately. Otherwise, you may have to apply as a family (by marrying her) and include her in your application. (Please search for "Subclass 309" in this blog for more info). Your 25 grand may or may not be burn out flat in accordance to the wedding arrangement of your choices. Alternatively, you can apply based on a de facto relationship. However, you may have a harder time convincing the case officer that you relationship is genuine.

Visa 189 is a resident visa, which gives you the privilege of unlimited entry to Australia and the right

to work. It can be renewed every 5 years if you fulfill the requirements of staying at least 2 years out of 5 in Australia, whether or not you have been employed during the period. As the visa does not involved a state sponsorship, it does not limit you to locations nor specific jobs. You can be a farmer if you want to.

Melbourne is a good choice. Despite what you may have read, it is definitely not as full as Perth at the moment.

asingaporeanson

I am thankful to know someone like L. She was a Singaporean lady married to an Englishman and moved to Australia because of her son. She lives in Temora, a small town about 400km away from the capital city of Sydney. She tends to her crops, poultry, pets and children by day, living a life very few Singaporeans will relish, due to our city-loving nature. For me, she is living my dream lifestyle. A lifestyle like that is no piece of cake. It involves plenty of toiling, more than most of us will ever imagine until we step right into it. However, at least we get to work for ourselves to a larger extent. I am keeping the dream alive.

It was great to hear from L again.

Hi Nix,

Just want to share some pictures with you. Helped out with 'moving stock' today. 'Moving stock' means moving livestock across land. So today I helped a friend moved 100 cows from Wagga to Temora (92km). There were 8 of us, we took turns in cars (to direct the road traffic) and on horses (to direct the cows).

By the way, please send me your address. Would like to send you a surplus of olives and some relish and jam we made.

Cheers,
L

This is real shit. Would you imagine there are Singaporean ladies doing this somewhere out there in the world? Why not? With more than 100,000 of us outside Singapore, why will you be surprised to find that a good portion of us don't work as bankers, accountants, engineers or doctors for our living.

Hey someone up in Cootamundra, 40 mins from Temora is selling 24 Acres land for 245k. already has a paddock of oats, and trees and electric fencing to mark the perimeters of the property, about a herd of 50 sheeps, a small house with a 22k litre water connection. 4km outside of the town of cootamundra and about 3 hours to Canberra. Lowest -6 in winter and highest about 40 in summer. Sufficient rainfal too

Just to give you an idea on pricing here. :-) Cheers

Meanwhile, some folks are buying a Toyota for $229,000 [link] at another part of the world. Why not spend it on the above and get the owner to throw in a tractor you can drive around your 24 acres of land. At least you can live off the land and the lease doesn't expire after 10 years. I heard some people from the same part of the world are buying apartments with a 1.7m wide common corridors for as much as $700,000. If one really have so much mnoey, I wonder if buying a cheaper place for $400,000, rent it out fully - and spend the rest of the $300,000 on a 24 acres (can probably get a much better deal in other places or other country too) with a house and a herd to start off with, be a better idea. If only I have that $700,000 like some people do.

wah lau! It took FOREVER!!!!! We started at 9am....we reached just before sun down...It would be faster if they just move and not stop and eat or cross to the other side of the road, or try to sniff the oncoming cars or shit or slip because they step on each other's shit. It was an experience anyway. My second time moving stock, not exactly fun, but it was still some money in the pocket. :-) 3 jobs I don't find endearing- moving stock, drenching herd and shearing sheep.

Life may be hard as a farmer. Hard beyond our imagination. For some, it seems a better idea to service customers at a counter or over the phone at the comfort of our safe, tiny cubicle. Or a no-frills sales job that doesn't require us to be at the mercy of the weather. Or even a beauty consultant who will never have to deal with uninvited guests like snakes or wild kangaroos. For the rare few, this is living and working at its best. Living by our own rules.

Foodie requested to remain anonymous and even gave me her preferred moniker, "Desperate Mum," if I ever felt like writing about her. I decided not to use it. There were too many mums floating about in this site. Mum M, Mum C, Mum D, Nervous Mum, Loving Mum, whatever mum. It can be confusing after a while.

There is no need to use a moniker really. Besides, there shouldn't be any shame to let the others know if you have an intention to move overseas. In fact, telling the others of your goal is a powerful form of affirmation. It also acts as the first form of acceptance. I once communicated with somebody who was unwilling to let a single person know of his migration intention. He had plenty of worries, such as reducing his chances of promotion at work if his boss knew, harsh criticisms from friends or family etc. Needless to say, he eventually changed his mind and extinguish the idea of moving out of Singapore ever, like how I saw it coming. Foodie should be proud of her intent and shouldn't feel shy to share it. Even if her move fails to happen eventually due to technicalities, she can be proud of her courageous attempt.

My friend Patrick shared his observations on Singaporean couples in Perth. He cited good examples of husbands who took to Perth like a fish to water. Their wives weren't so well adjusted and some took a long time before they felt it was a good idea to live in Australia. Patrick had statistics to back him so that remained legit for a while. As time goes by, I am not so sure anymore, after getting into contact with an increasing number of Singaporean mothers who want their families out of Singapore. What has changed, that drove our Singaporean daughters to put aside their shopping paradise and force their spouses to consider a daunting uprooting process? In my personal opinion, Singapore is one of the best country in the world to be a woman. That's a debate for the next time, if anyone is game. Thus it is interesting, to me at least, why I am seeing a changing trend of women taking up men's instinctive role as the scout, roamer and hunter? I guess I will never know.

Foodie loves Perth for some reasons unclear to me. You have to really like the place if you make several return trips to Boringville. Last month Foodie was nice enough to drop by our place with her husband and two young daughters, with pies. Her parting shot was, "I wish I can migrate here but till then, we can only make these trips," before disappearing into the night. She was yet another woman I met who convinced her husband of the ridiculous idea of moving to another country with her passion.

Neither of them could have come via the standard EOI because of mismatches of nominated occupations as well as age running against them. Still, Foodie will not give up and told me she will come to Perth sometime next year to take up a Baking Course, leaving her two young daughters behind with her husband in Singapore, and hopes that she will be able to find an employer sponsor upon her certification. That can be done, although chances are slim and much depends on her luck but Foodie knows that - and appears to be going ahead anyway. You can call her reckless, idealistic or even foolish. From a parent's perspective, if a mother is willing to part with her young children to pursue a goal for her family, it isn't some masak masak plan. She emphasized that moving to Australia is not a vanity project but a carefully considered long term vision for the future of her family.

Foodie even offered to rent a room from us when she come next year. I'm not sure if she is serious about the renting part but coming to take the course, I little doubts. Over the weekend, V, my lovely friend who migrated temporarily back to Singapore for her daughter's studies, told me she met up with "Uncle" of the Old Chang Kee outlet in Karawara here and found that he is looking to hire a staff on "80 hours a week." I referred a newly arrived Singaporean ex-semi conductor engineer to the lead, since he told me he was "open to anything." It is unfortunate that I have never met "Uncle" before, much less on good terms with him to be able to introduce people I wish to help when he needs a new staff in future. I know, I know. Retail baking and Old Chang Kee is quite a big difference. But a job is a job.

Let's see if Foodie really comes next year and what whether any Singaporeans here is kind enough to help her a bit in finding employment when she eventually needs it. I can't guarantee this lady anything but a rental room arrangement is viable.

ST's pic of our most popular comedian

“…it was possible only if the country was willing to accept a higher goods and services tax of 20 per cent to fund the policies.”

- PM Lee, on whether Singapore could emulate the higher TFR of the Scandinavians by spending on parent support.

This type of response is what makes me detest our government officials. If this is meant to be a joke, it wasn't funny and neither was it an occasion to crack one at. We are paying millions to a man to solve difficult problems, not to perform stand up comedy. I knew the crowd laughed. I wonder if they were laughing at themselves for electing him as their Prime Minister.

The TFR is probably the root of our social problems in Singapore, directly or indirectly. Not that I expect the PM to lose sleep over it, not at all - not when there is such a convenient workaround solution by taking in cheaper and hungrier foreigners. Believe it, I will actually not begrudge PM Lee if he told Singaporeans that night that he did not believe going socialist will spark an upward trend in our TFR, and that is probably not far from the truth. I will even forgive him if he admit that he has long given up tackling the TFR issues. After all, what else can he try that our previous two PMs had, in vain?

That is why plucking off numbers from the air in bid to humor the Singapore public seems to imply we are all running on AI. How does the PM come out with this percentage within seconds? Have the government done their research and this is the conclusive figure? Tough call between a joke and lie. The last time a Minister pulled off the stunt like that, he was subsequently uninvited to return to another term of service in the next GE. Back then, the ex-Minister of Transport said this at a public forum,

“The money still must come from somewhere, right? It is about 1.5 percentage point increase in your GST. So now it’s 7 (per cent), you want it to be free? You want the GST to go up to 8.5 per cent, to run a completely free bus and MRT system?”

- ex Minister of Transport Raymond Lim on providing

I hate it that none of the Singaporeans attending stood up and exclaim,"Then do it!" I bet many of you, including those who drives and do not use public transport, wouldn't mind that happening. It isn't that I believe that Singaporeans who do not plan to be parents at any time of their lives are willing to pay GST of 20% to subsidize the others who do. PM Lee knew exactly that when he made his strawman statement. In reality, if the PM think it is a viable idea, it will be well within his capabilities to kick start it with our yearly budget surplus without increasing GST at all, or raising it up to anywhere close to 20%. Suggesting otherwise will be an insult to the almighty PM Lee, whom I believe is a living deity who achieved amazing feats such as learning how to drive when he was 3 years old.

One good thing about having a stable government (that will never be changed despite, in spite of, regardless) is that we can get a good general outlook of our futures in Singapore. When I started working some 10 years ago, I began to listen hard to our leaders. Albeit our stand up comedians appear not to take their crowds very seriously, the messages behind their jokes have been accurate to reflect their intent. With that, I made my move. That is the reason why I am still listening to jokes I cannot muster a laugh to.

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