The Orange Ox’s intro

Hey dudes. I’ve been living and working in a little place called Singapore for almost 8 years now. Originally, I was born in Vietnam. Well…I’m not really Vietnamese – I don’t speak Vietnamese, my parents aren’t Vietnamese and I don’t really look like a Vietnamese. I was born there and lived there for a very short time, 4-5 years as a toddler, then my family migrated to Australia. What did I do in Australia? I grew up there, got my Australian Citizenship, picked up the Australian accent, had a lot of mates at school, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of meat pies and sausage rolls, and even managed to get an Australian university degree without studying very hard.

So why did I come to Singapore to work? I’ve been reminded so many times – ‘Working in Australia is so much more relaxed!’ Well at the end of 1999, 6 months after I got married, my wife and I got sick of our jobs. We wanted to go on a holiday so we packed up our bags and headed to Indonesia-Bali to visit the in-laws. Singapore is pretty close to Indonesia, so we decided to check the place out too. We heard that Singapore was a high tech city and there were lots of I.T. jobs. I didn’t know what to expect since I never been out of Australia for more than 20 years (remember – I’m not a native Australian).

Most asked question number 2 – "Why don’t I go back there?". Currently my wife and I don’t have any plans to go back. This doesn’t mean that we are not going back but at this point in time, we have decided to stay in Singapore. Well we are pretty much settled here. We have 2 kids, a full-time nanny, 2 houses, 1 car and, employment. It would be pretty difficult to re-locate at this time in our lives. We would need to sell our assets, find jobs in Australia, find someone to take care of our kids while we are at work! Another reason why we are not going back yet is I guess I want our kids to learn Chinese. This is something that I really want them to be able to do; something that will give them an advantage in life; something that I missed out in.

So being an Australian Vietnamese-born Chinese married to an Indonesian (she is also one quarter Dutch), residing in Singapore means I have a lot interesting stories to tell. Hence this is the reason why Duckling and I are putting this blog together. So stay tuned for more stories, photos, jokes, complaints and any other thing that we find interesting to chat about in this little red dot called Singapore.