Although I'm happy to be immersed in a different culture - and where I live it's a totally different culture... we even have the older men playing checkers at the hawkers stands downstairs - meeting others with similar experiences definitely makes you feel more normal. Last night I attended an expat job seeking event (in a great pub with beer and snacks - after months of very limited western foods, deep fried calamari and chicken strips are food for the soul!). A couple of guys spoke about their job search experiences. Simply put... it resonated.
These guys were 'trailing spouses' - one spouse gets a contract (usually big bucks) and the other spouse follows and is coined the trailing spouse. Most trailing spouses I've met are women. It was refreshing to see male trailing spouses. Anyway, they spoke of their trying times when they first arrived... months of endless job searching... interviews that went horribly... comments from interviewers like, "you must not be searching hard enough for a job if you're applying for this low level position"... the list goes on. So one guy ended up back in school after 30 years experience. The other guy took a much lower level job after working with an international company in management for many years.
Both guys talked about their days of sitting in front of the computer... not talking to other adults (except their spouse) for days... and then... voila! They met each other. They had weekly coffee to keep each other's spirits up. And two years later they are both working and happy.
Some advice given was to lower your expectations so you can get a job and learn the culture. Work is very process oriented here. You get task lists each week and you're expected to complete the tasks. My work friends are now raising their eyebrows wondering how on earth I'm going to survive! It's true... it might be tough... yes, yes... it WILL be tough. But I came here to learn new ways of doing things. I might be fired! My mind doesn't stop creating and finding ways of improvement (well, I think so... it doesn't mean something is actually going to improve:) and keeping my ideas to myself will be a challenge in itself. Self restraint is a good lesson.
All in all, a good evening and very good to know I'm not the only one progressing slowly in the job search.
So today I met with another kind of expat - a group of female trailing spouses, most of which have no intention of working while living here and some of which are retired. Work was not the topic of conversation - at all. We talked about running and swimming and biking and reading and traveling and yoga and things to do in Singapore... and teenagers.
One of the ladies moved here when her daughter was my daughter's age. It was a year of hell - sobbing night after night missing friends and not making new ones. (Thank goodness my daughter is not nearly as bad as that!) The second year was magnificent. And now that the daugher has moved back to Canada for university, she wants to move back to Singapore! Another lady said her son, who was around the same age as my daughter when they moved to Europe, took a long time to meet friends, but once he met them, they were very good friends. Another lady gave me the number of another lady who has a daughter who is a social butterfly and a year younger than my daughter and said we should try to introduce them. Phew! I know, I know.... gotta read that a couple of times... the point is that we're only here 2 1/2 months and it's completely normal for a 16 year old to not have made close friends yet. And there's huge hope for my daughter to develop her social side normally!! Yippee!
I'm going to that morning coffee thing again in a couple of weeks. Geez, I hope I don't have a job by then!
All sounds positive!!
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