Ill-Treated Expat

It's like the saying 'You can take the girl out of the city but you can't take the city out of the girl. Except that in my case it's more like 'You can take the girl out of China but you can't take the Chinese out of the girl'.... okay it doesn't quite make sense. I don't even come from China.

Anyways, my point is, I feel rather cheated as an expat working out here. Having never been an expat before, getting the big salary, relocation expenses and the yearly ticket 'back' to the UK seemed like a good deal. Until I found out about the package my mate was offered for pretty much the same job, except on the construction rather than the commercial side.

I was put up in a hotel for 2 weeks when I first moved here and pretty much had to beg for an extra week when I couldn't move into my apartment. My mate gets 4 weeks in a hotel AND daily living expenses. Not to mention the the 2 weeks extra pay for 'settling allowance'. Where the hell was my settling allowance???

Back in the UK, my wage was a good 50% more than his for the jobs that we do. OK, my position was more senior than his. But now that he's moved here, and we're doing virtually the same jobs as we did in the UK and the pay gap has closed in too much for my own comfort.

I guess there is only one explanation for all this - he is a white male and I am a chinese female. No matter how 'expat' I am, the colour of my skin still gives me a slight disadvantage.

But then again, the definition of an expatriate is .... to banish (a person) from his or her native country. I guess I was never banished from my native country, I have actually come back closer to my native country.... and reaped the benefits he he he :)

A Month Full of Excitement

It's June. I've been in Singapore nearly five months now. Time has certainly flown by. I don't miss London as much as I did when I first got here. Time heals, it's true. But I still miss the ease of getting a Starbucks Venti Latte in the morning. Nowadays, I have to settle for a Teh-C. For those who don't know, it's very strong tea drunk with evaporated milk and sugar. I used to love it when I was in Brunei. I still love it now.

So, things have moved on a little. I no longer moan about my job as much. I think I've now found my feet and my way. I discovered an area (facades) where my boss hardly pays any attention and have selfishly grabbed as many packages as I can. So much so that I've built my own little 'territory' by introducing one of my ex-colleagues to the company to do one of these facades packages. Plus, I think I've been ear-marked by my boss for a promotion. But how close I am to getting it, I don't know. So do watch this space.

Aside from that, now that most people know how I work, I've been giving it a bit of attitude at work as well. Mainly towards my boss, mainly because I don't actually care if he sacks me. None of the other girls dare do any backchatting. I do it all the time. My sister thinks I have too much attitude. But I think a bit of fire between the subordinate and the boss is required sometimes to take them off their own pedestal. Plus, I can afford to give it some. What's the worse that can happen? I'll go back to UK or even go to Vancouver and take up that job offer for a more challenging Project Manager's role.

So, this is a month full of excitement. Knowing that I'm ear-marked for a possible promotion. Knowing that I can finally give a bit of attitude at work and talk to most 'senior' people like equals rather than someone who works 'for' them.

On top of that, I've just been to the Grasshopper concert, which was my teenage dream come true. Gawd, I love them!

Then there's the dive trip at the end of the month. My second trip, really excited, really looking forward to it.

Then there's the fitness finally coming together. Doing loads of swimming, playing loads of tennis. I can finally see the biceps forming and finally feeling strong again.

And finally.... there's someone from the UK coming over to work with us. I introduced him to the company three months ago and I can't believe in two weeks' time he will physically be here. I'm excited. Not only does he bring me closer to my life in the UK, I finally have a drinking buddy who can possibly match me drink for drink.

So I'm thankful I'm well into June, the month of endless excitements!

Forever Grasshopper.... Indeed!

This has been a concert nearly 20 years in waiting for me. Grasshopper, possibly the greatest boy band Hong Kong has ever produced for Asia, were the ONLY boy band whom I was completely and utterly smitten with through my teens. When I went to the UK, they kinda fell by the wayside but everytime I was back in Brunei and notice that there was a new Grasshopper album on sale, I would not think twice about buying it.

When I moved to Singapore and unpacked my boxes, I found one or two Grasshopper Greatest Hits album. And I thought, hmmm.... I'm in Asia... ok, they're really old, but you never know. So I googled them and found that they had staged a comeback with a concert in Singapore in 2007. I was pretty gutted. But a couple of months ago, whilst surfing the net to see what concerts are on in Singapore, I found out that Grasshopper were touring in Genting Highlands in Malaysia. I never hesitated, got myself a VIP ticket, no less, booked my flight and hotel and sat in excited anticipation until yesterday when I took the flight out and finally got to see Grasshopper LIVE!!!

Ok, these people aren't exactly young. They're in their 40's now. I feel old.... and probably the rest of the audience. I struggled to find anyone in theirearly 20's! And the age does show too. Their dance moves were still there, but it wasn't quite as crisp and punching as they were about 15 years ago. But I still loved them.

Opening act, as always, cool hip hop chinese dance music and loads of prancing about for the three in extremely flamboyant outfits:

Followed by mellow slow romantic love songs. I don't listen much to their slow tunes anymore, but preformed live, I was completely in love with them!

This is Remus Choy, one of the two brothers, the best looking of the bunch. But also the gay one. But he was never my favourite anyway (my gaydar must have been well refined from a very young age!!)

This is Edmund So. He was my least favourite. Nothing special about him really.

And.... presenting MY FAVOURITE of the bunch.... Calvin Choy. He's the eldest of the bunch, a bloke with 11 fingers - freak - but I still like (love) him!!

I managed to get right up to the barrier and saw them real close. I'd never been to a concert whereby I could make out the person's face without the help of a screen. The VIP ticket was definitely worth it. I realised even after all these years, I could still sing along to at least 75% of their songs. I have never been to a concert where I can sing along to more than 3 songs. Their fast little medley was the best. Everyone was on their feet dancing to the tunes.

Sad but true, I think I'm in love. I LOVE GRASSHOPPER!!!!

Perv!

So, I've been doing LOADS of swimming lately in an effort to get much much fitter. Well... more like I've a bet with a mate to lose a stone in 6 weeks. Feeling much fitter and heathier, I was more than up for the challenge. Whoever wins gets a new swimsuit from the other. And I'm pretty confident I'll be the recipient of said swimsuit.

I try and fit a swim it whether it's 10 or 40 laps almost everyday with Fridays as rest days... for the drinking session obviously. OK, in a bid to be healthier, maybe I should stop drinking for a while. But there's gotta be a balance in life. This is mine.

Anyways, I was in a bit of a rush one day last week. My only free night and I wanted to do 40 laps in the pool. But I had to go to the doctor's to have my diving wounds looked at as they weren't the fastest at healing. On top of that, I had to try and get some dinner cooked before my sister complains to my parents that I hadn't been feeding her and she's wasting away. By the time I got everything done, I had about an hour before the pool shut so I figured I could probably get about 30 laps in.

So off I went, doing my laps up and down the pool. By about 8.40pm, the pool was quietening. There were about 6 people left in the pool. I was sharing a lane with this bloke and now there's more space, I thought I'd move onto the next lane.

Let's just describe this bloke for a minute. Who, or rather, what guy, in their right mind would wear a bright yellow swimming cap in the pool??? Not only that, he had white (white?) swimming trunks on. And he didn't appear to know how to swim in a straight line either.

I moved to the next lane to give myself more space and swam down the pool. When I swam back up, I saw Blokey swimming down in my lane. I was thinking 'You f**king d**khead, it's a 50m f**king pool with about 4 people and you have to swim in my f**king lane even though I had moved to give myself more space' I was mentally thinking all sorts of expletives. But as I got closer and tried to swim to the other lane, I noticed something rather odd.

Despite the white swimming trunks, there appear to be something else.... black.... and then I realised what it was. The dude's trunks must have been a bit big for him and they were flapping in the water. What I saw was a black mound of pubic hair!!!!! EEUGGGHHHHH....

So i just finished my lap and jumped off the pool.

What a f**king perv!

My First Dive Trip

So, it had been 3 months in the planning and I had finally done it. I am a certified PADI diver although it didn't come without a bit of pain. Ok, maybe not 3 months. Couple of weeks before we were due to go out on the boat trip, I thought I was not going to be diving as I had run out of weekends to do the course before the trip and the instructor still hadn't told us when we were doing our pool and theory session. We ended up doing this in the week we were due out on the boat. Best way I guess, that way we would still remember what we had to do once in the sea.

It was a painful week as we had a book AND a DVD to get through on top of a busy week at work and the pool sessions and all other lifey stuffy. The theory bit was a murder. Life's too busy to be sitting down reading and learning from a book. The DVD was even worse, I kept falling asleep everytime I turn it on and it's a good 3-hr DVD!

So, after all our pool sessions over and done with, Friday came and we're all set to leave work on the dot at 5.30pm. There were about 15 of us. Needless to say the drinking spirits were on a high! As soon as we got on the boat we got our beers from our special cooler and got on the sun deck to lounge. It's a pretty big boat and suprisingly spacey for the number of people on the boat.

We set off at about 8pm after waiting for a few late-comers. Tsk tsk! Dinner was served and we were away. After dinner we were asked to check our equipment and make sure everything fits. Here's my equipment - and my beer!! :P

By about 9pm, we had already set up home next to our beer cooler and the party had begun. The vodkas and JD's all came out and everyone were on a high.

By about 11pm I was well and truly pissed. The pic says it all....

From here until my third dive, there were no pics on my camera. I had gone to bed about 2am on the first night, having drunk half a litre of vodka and a few beers. My first dive ever was at 10am the next day. I thought I would be alright. Boy, was I wrong! Hangovers are normally pretty mild for me. But put me on a boat, I was rotten as hell. I threw up rather comically before the first dive. Although it was comical at the time. My instructor was nagging me 'I told you not to drink so much' What is he, my dad?!?!

But the first dive went pretty well. We were in the Tioman Marine Park. Not a lot to see, sandy bottom and a fake wreck. We had to concentrate on doing our skills right. I was ok in the water. As soon as I surfaced I was feeling ill and seasick again. Needless to say I threw up before my second dive. All of my breakfast and lunch. Second dive was also all sorts of skills testing which went well. I was feeling fine by dinner but learnt my lesson and stayed off anything alcoholic!

Our third dive was a leisure dive as there was a mild current so we wouldn't have been able to stay still long enough to do any skills. We went to the dive site on a rubber dinghy and I must say, trying to get back on the rubber dinghy is no glamour school stuff. They literally yank you onto the boat and you fall flat on your face! But the water was beautiful and visibility was a good 10m. I should've read up on the fishes we might see. Saw a few things but didn't really know what I was looking at. My instructor shone his torch on a moray eel hiding in the rocks and I didn't even know I was looking at one!! I cut my legs on the corals pretty badly though, still learning to control the buoyancy and stuff.

Our last dive was the most fun although visibility was only about 1m and we had a few final skills to get through. At one point my dive buddy lost me and there I was in the middle of the ocean not being able to see beyond a metre and wondering what I should do. All I can think of was how to do the 3min safety sto without a watch on me if I had to ascend on my own. Luckily after about 5mins my instructor found me and we were away.

I thought I'd done pretty well to get the certificate considering I was feeling pretty rotten on the first day. OK, self-inflicted, I know. Thank god they didn't stop me from getting into the water and just got on with it.

So here I am, now officially a diver. Before this trip I had planned to doing some travelling once a month. Now I think I'll just do my travelling in the water. Diving is just so much fun and I felt very comfortable indeed in the water... probably until I see a shark one day. But for now, the next trip will have to be at the end of June. Don't think I can leave it for much longer than that. But I've heard that we may have enough people to charter the whole boat to ourselves in September. Now that's gonna be a trip not to be missed! I shall certainly have a fresh bottle of vodka on the boat with me!! ;p

Hair Raising Bangkok

Bangkok Trip

It's be a while since I blogged, so I've got a bit to catch up on for the past month.

Firstly, I went to Bangkok for the first time for a long weekend back in early May. I think I've been to Bangkok and Pattaya with my parents before, when I was 10 or something. But I hardly remember anything about the trip other than falling off a swing and banging my head. Oh, and of course, my dad making me take a picture with a ladyboy which confused the hell out of me. Lady? Boy?

Anyways, this trip round, I went with my sis and stayed with my nephew, R, in Sathon, about a 10 minute taxi ride to Siam Square. When we first got there, the taxi ride to my R's was not too scary. The taxi driver couldn't really speak English, I had my R on the phone to give him directions in Thai but he point blank refused to talk on the phone. I just let it go cos I thought he knew where he was going. Then I realise he was getting lost when he kept going round the block about three times. I asked if he wanted to speak to my R then, and he said 'Phone, phone, phone' Stupid taxi driver, he could've said that earlier. We got to my R's, eventually, not before getting lost again. I just told the taxi driver to dop us where I could see a clear sign as a reference point. Reason why we got lost was he didn't go far enough down the road. So that was our first adventure.

Went out for a bit of dinner and R took us around the Phat Pong with it's night market and bars. They all look the same. Same girls (or boys?) dancing on the bar top. Just a different colour bikini for each bar I guess.

The next day we went to Siam Square. Too bright and too early, no shops were open! We were a bit keen. As we tried to figure out exactly where we were on the map, a Bangkok police pointed to where we were on the map and proceeded to tell us a bit more about the sights in Bangkok. He managed to get us on a tuk-tuk to the Lucky Buddha temple about 20 mins away and back to Pratunam market for about 20 baht (SGD1/GBP0.40.... yeah I know 40p!!). The tuk-tuk ride was rather interesting and scary. They weave in and out of the traffic real close. We were stuck in the traffic once and a car came just a little bit too close, albeit really slow, and bumped into us.

In our tuk-tuk

Look at that traffic - miles of it!

The city is so polluted, most of the tuk-tuk drivers have a mask on

This is our tuk-tuk

The Lucky Buddha Temple

As we were too early, we didn't go to Pratunam market as it doesn't get going til 1pm, we got the tuk tuk back to Siam Square, had our lunch and took a sky train to our 2pm spa appointment. The spa was great. 3.5 hrs of pure luxury and relaxation. We got a bit hungry towards the end when the put oatmeal facial stuff on our face. My stomach was rumbling and it was time to eat!!


Then we went towards the Chao Phraya river. I saw some touristy boat trip taking us to the Snake Farm, Crocodile Farm and the floating market. I thought it'd be a good way to see a few things at once. Except that when we got on the boat it was about 5.30pm and it gets dark around 6pm. Not only did we not see much, all the places were shut! Conned!! But for 800 baht (SGD40/GBP15) for the two of us on a boat on our own. It weren't too bad to spend an hour. Getting a taxi back to R's was interesting. We tried to get on a tuk-tuk again but the driver was gonna charge us 200baht. It costs less than 100baht in a taxi. So we jumped into a taxi instead. Another hair raising ride. I don't think it's possible not to have a hair raising ride in any form of transport in Bangkok. Other than the skytrain I suppose.

Our little boat

Loads of pretty boats in the river

Random street stalls. They're everywhere.

Next day, our last day, we were off to Chatuchak market bright and early. It's a huge market with all sorts of bargain on wholesale price. I'd say the stuff are the same in about 4-5 of the stalls but basic T-shirt, work clothes and slippers are dirt cheap. Two hours of that and the hot sun, we've had enough. Back to R's, pack and get ready for the night flight back to Singapore. But not before yet another scary ride in the taxi to the airport. I guess the taxi drivers know exactly what they're doing as everyone drives like a lunatic. I was told never to tell a taxi driver that getting to the airport was 'urgent' - you'd be shitting your pants if you did!

Chatuchak market, cramped with LOADS of stalls

I Hate My Job

Oh no.... here I go again. Moaning about my job. Truth of the matter is, there is absolutely nothing wrong or boring about my job. It's the environment I am in. This is going to sound very similar to my earlier posts about what I miss about London.

1. I miss my old boss. Rather than bitch and moan about my present boss and get fired (although that won't be a bad thing), I'll just talk about my old boss a little. The guy who has made me into what I am today and has supported me in every career decision I have made. I don't think I can find another boss like that. I want my old job back.... but, let's get my priorities right. Get the travelling over and done with first.

2. Sharing of information through normal office banter. People in the same team don't really talk or share information. We're all doing our own little bit, we don't really talk to one another and if questions are asked about out team's work, we can't actually answer beyond what we do. In my last job, we all knew what each other was doing and what was actually going on in the job. God knows how we're gonna build this god damn thing.

3. Gossips!!! God I miss the usual harmless gossips and rumours about fellow colleagues. There's hardly anything here. As if everyone's a bit of an angel or a saint. I guess alcohol has a lot to answer for the rumours milling about in my old work place. This has got to be healthier right? (Not for my sanity!)

4. Drinks, drinks, drinks. Ok, I've gotta first clarify that I am NOT an alcoholic. I never needed a drink everyday after work to wind down when I was in London, and I certainly do not need it right now. But what I crave most is the social scene lingering around a couple of beers after work on a Thursday or a Friday. Doesn't seem to happen much here. Or am I being an outcast again? Belonging neither to the expats or the locals group. Hmmm....

5. Stimulation of the mind. What I am doing is always the same thing over and over again for each package and I will end up with about 15 packages to look after. Worse than that, people keep changing their minds and I have to do the same thing about 20 times. Imagine doing the same thing 20 x 15 = 300 times!!! Whilst the stuff out here is on a much bigger scale and I'm learning stuff I've never done before, there isn't really the opportunity the expand beyond your job description. Oh well... at least I really know what I want to do now (not this job!)

Have I moaned enough yet? At least I know I am not the only person who's doing all this moaning. There is actually a bunch of us who think the same about work. But we're all on the same boat. With the money out here and the opportunities to explore Asia, we've all gotta remind ourselves - PAID HOLIDAY!!!