Diary of an Expat in Singapore (4 page)

Your parents don’t ground you. They threaten to turn off the air conditioning.

When I first arrived in Singapore, I had a friend who used this method of discipline. No yelling or caning necessary. When her two sons were mucking about at bedtime, the simple threat of turning off the air con would apparently strike the fear of God in them. I knew I had a true expat kid when threatening to turn off the air conditioning had a more immediate effect than not allowing him to go out and play with friends. A true expat kid will always place air con above friendships.

When you meet a friend for the first time, you ask them: “How big is your pool?”

Also known as the expat kid ice-breaker, this question can be a great conversation-opener. All over the world, kids meeting for the first time ask each other what grade they are in. Not in Singapore. The expat kid cuts straight to the chase. This may or may not be intended as a way to gauge the true size of a pool. After all, we are in a country where most condos boast their own pool (an extravagant, unheard-of luxury in cities such as New York or Verona, Italy, where I come from). If you still haven’t broken it to your expat kid that in most places people don’t really discuss the size of their pools (any more than they would the size of their bank accounts), don’t worry, you have time. The departure lounge at Changi Airport might be a good place. In the meantime, let him relish being in hot and tropical Singapore, where most play dates involve a pool, and where a bathing suit is casually tossed inside mom’s handbag. Clearly there is truth to the claim that a pool is an extension of the expat kid. Now, about those swimming lessons.

You complain that there is something you don’t like about the kindergarten class. (It’s the Mandarin.)

This one is dear to my heart. When we first arrived in Singapore, like all expats I had just two priorities: not dying of heat stroke and having my kids become fluent in Chinese. Just kidding (about the heat stroke part).

In my supreme ignorance, I assumed I would sign my son up for soccer or basketball and he would just naturally pick up the local language. Wrong. Singaporean kids do not speak Chinese. Or let me rephrase that: they may indeed speak Chinese with their parents at home, but they don’t speak it amongst themselves. And, even if they do, they most certainly won’t speak it with you, an
angmoh
(literally this term means ‘redhead’, but is used to indicate all expats). After all, they speak English, so why make the extra effort?

Luckily for the Mandarin-hungry expat parent, most schools offer Chinese. The Montessori school that Alexander was accepted to when we first arrived had an unusual session: 12:30 to 3:30 pm. At first, I thought it was a joke since for most Italian mothers of a three-year-old that time is reserved for lunch followed by a nap. Now it meant heading out in the midday heat (no joke in Singapore, where the sun is beating down so hard at that hour you could fry an egg on your head). Two of these days were dedicated to Chinese. The
laoshi
didn’t speak any English, which was amazing… for me. For Alexander, not so much. Unable to articulate at first what was wrong (maybe the jet lag hadn’t passed yet), Alexander would merely say: “I know it’s the same classroom and the same kids… but there’s just something I don’t like about it.” Hmm, the Chinese? I wondered guiltily to myself.

It must be said that learning Chinese is the bane of all expat kids’ existence. Well, it couldn’t be all fun and games now, could it?

A plane ride any shorter than ten hours leaves you disappointed. “That’s all?”

Unlike most children, the expat kid is used to travelling at least yearly to a very faraway place referred to as
home
. The expat kid is not sure why this faraway place is referred to as
home
, since everything commonly denoting a home – his bed, teddy bear, comic book collection – is, as far as he is concerned, already at
home
in Singapore. However, he is not only used to the long plane rides, he craves them. After all, it’s the only place where he can watch six movies back to back, uninterrupted. And, if his mother dozes off, one of those movies can be ‘Runaways’, a rock-and-roll bio of Joan Jett. Appropriate for an eight-year-old? Not really.

Roti prata and seasoned seaweed are your favourite snacks.

Pretty self-explanatory. Expat kids love roti prata – flat bread dipped into fishhead curry. You might want to omit the
fishhead
part when you first introduce it to them. I’ve seen Singaporeans and Indian vendors alike surprised at my kids’ tolerance for hot, spicy curry.

The seaweed I blame on the strong Japanese influence in the snacks department here in Singapore. The wide array of rice crackers, barbecued seaweed, and cute packaging at grocery stores are just
kawaii
(irresistible). At least one of the reasons it’s so nice to have Japanese kids over on playdates: you never know what treat they will bring over. This holds true for kindergarten – once they start Kumon you won’t be seeing them so much.

You think the corner on the sidewalk outside your condo is for hailing taxis.

You mean the corner on the sidewalk in front of your condo isn’t for hailing taxis? Let’s see, if you’re an expat kid who leaves the condo (a.k.a. Mormon compound) only on a school bus, then I can see your quandary. Why else would you go there? You have never actually gone on a walk outside the condo. If your parents don’t own a car, you will indeed be taking a lot of taxis. The expat kid will take to this like a fish takes to water. It will become second nature. And, the prospect of even a five-minute walk will seem daunting and warrant the request: “Shouldn’t we take a taxi? There’s a green one coming now.” Green refers to the green light on top of the taxi’s windshield and theoretically denotes a vacant taxi. I use the term
theoretically
because the driver ultimately has the last word. It is not uncommon for the taxi driver to lower his window, hear where you have to go, shake his head violently no and drive off. Thus leaving you feeling only slightly less rejected than when you used to stand in your middle school cafeteria looking for a place to sit.

The expat kid’s love of the taxi will become more controversial when you’re back ‘home’, where one only takes taxis to airports and hospitals. The fact that the taxi driver ‘home’ is wearing a Rolex should give you a clue as to why that is.

You dream about wearing gloves and sweaters.

The expat kid craves cold weather. At least he thinks he does, having never actually experienced it. He dreams of wind, ice, sleet, and frost. Above all else, he dreams of snow. In the expat kid’s mind, snow is the one thing missing from his life. The reason for this: snowball fights.

When they find a cobra at your school, you reassure your mother: “It was just a little one.”