Business Times - 21 Mar 2009
A tropical wharenui
New Zealand High Commissioner Martin Harvey and his wife Sarah consider their residence here to be a second home for fellow Kiwis living in Singapore. By Geoffrey Eu
A DIPLOMATIC post-ing isn't always about representing your country, interacting with other civil servants and conducting high-powered negotiations on delicate matters of state. Sometimes, it's just about making fellow citizens feel at home in a foreign land - and that's where a nice house comes in especially handy.
New Zealand High Commissioner to Singapore Martin Harvey and his wife Sarah consider their residence here - in a highly desirable neighbourhood littered with landed properties and lush gardens - to be a second home for fellow Kiwis living in Singapore.
The two-storey, four-bedroom house, built from the ground up about 12 years ago on a property that has belonged to the New Zealand government since 1955, is in keeping with the informal nature of New Zealanders. Being human scale, pleasant and inviting rather than opulent or imposing, it serves not only as a home to the Harveys and their three teenage children, but also as the first point of reference for people who may not know much about New Zealand culture.
Despite the generally unassuming nature of the home and its official residents, there are a couple of giveaways - apart from the security guard at the gate and the flagpole in the driveway - that the building might have been designed to accommodate an official event or two.
First, there is a double height living room that gives the impression of space, and then there is a patio area with its own roof and a floor space that is perhaps twice the size of the adjoining living room - ideal for cocktail parties and casual gatherings.
A typical event at the home might involve a tasting of New Zealand wines, accompanied by a degustation menu prepared by a Kiwi chef flown in for the occasion, or perhaps a dinner to commemorate World Environment Day.
'It's good to do these events in your own space rather than in a hotel,' says Mr Harvey. 'You have your minister, visiting dignitaries and you're asking people into an essentially New Zealand environment.' The house, he adds, 'has indoor-outdoor flow to the max - it has a wonderful feel to it.'
On one end of the living room, there is a dining room that can comfortably seat a dozen or more guests, while at the other end, the living room extends to a cozy reading area that can be closed off if necessary. A large kitchen and one of the four bedrooms takes up the rest of the ground floor.
Upstairs is primarily about the private family quarters, with three bedrooms and ample space to move around in, plus views over the swimming pool in the rear garden and the rest of the neighbourhood in the distance. Says Mr Harvey: 'It's more like a spacious three-bedroom apartment with a patio.'
Mr Harvey, who is about a year into his three-year posting, is a specialist in trade negotiations - New Zealand's free trade agreement with Singapore, signed in 2001, was the country's second, after Australia - and he is closely involved with ongoing free trade discussions with Asean and topics such as climate change policy.
When he's relaxing at home on a weekend in the tropical version of a wharenui (the Maori term for traditional carved meeting house), which literally means 'the big house', high-level trade talks are seemingly a world away.
Yet there are several decorative details around the house that evoke the essence of New Zealand, in much the same way that a wharenui embodies the spirit of a Maori clan and its ancestors.
For example, there are sculptures of a pair of native Kiwi birds strategically placed at the entrance to the house. Inside, on the living room walls, some artworks show well-known New Zealand landscapes, others evoke a sense of the sea, while one or more depicts the blending of Western and Maori cultures.
'This is a very easy house to live in,' says Sarah Harvey, who met her husband when both were early in their careers at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Wellington. 'The family lives a relatively normal life upstairs, and children are very much a part of what the house is about - also, the private and public parts of the house are separate yet integrated.'
She adds: 'New Zealanders don't tend to have very opulent houses. The house enables us to feel sheltered from the busy-ness of Singapore - this is a place where people can feel relaxed and comfortable. Being able to entertain both inside and outside gives us a lot of flexibility.
'When we first walked in and noticed the high ceiling, the lightness - I thought it was like a church. My immediate concern was, 'How do we make this feel like home?'
'In New Zealand, we take open spaces for granted, yet this property doesn't feel like it's in a densely populated neighbourhood. We love the proximity to Holland Village, which is full of people having a lovely time - then being able to walk back to the tranquillity here.'
Living in the tropics, she adds, allows the family to feel the drama of the thunderstorms that roll through on a regular basis.
A long ladder lies atop a flat lower portion of the roof, ready to be used to rescue Mandalay, or Mannie, a Burmese cat and family pet who has a habit of climbing to the top of the roof and getting stuck up there. It's just one of the many reassuringly ordinary features of life in the Harvey residence - a home away from home for one Kiwi family and their many overseas friends.
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