STI: Rolling with the punches

March 15, 2009

THE EX-PAT FILES

Rolling with the punches

By Linda Collins

 

Expats are exiting Changi at quite a rate, now that the recession is biting. It's scary, the number of familiar faces who are suddenly no longer in Singapore due to job losses.

 

What makes this latest wave of goodbye waves different than the usual expat comings and goings is not just the large numbers affected and the abruptness of their departures.

 

It's the fact that even when people have gone, their friendship is now never-ending, thanks to technology.

 

In the old days - all of 10 years ago - I would really miss it when my expat friends left. There would be no more meet-ups for coffee and the sort of face-to face supportive whinge about nothing in particular. Such harmless venting does wonders for coping with life in a foreign land.

 

But nowadays, no sooner have you said your goodbyes and deleted their number from your mobile phone than you've got an e-mail message from them saying a perky, 'Hi, you'll never believe what I heard so-and-so said over coffee at Holland V.'

 

They don't even live here anymore, and they know more gossip than I do.

 

It seems like I now spend more time with friends online talking about Singapore life than I ever did face to face when they lived here.

 

In Singapore itself, the recession has stirred up actual human - as opposed to electronic - contact, to a level I have not experienced before.

 

My inbox now receives a host of invites for lunches and get-togethers - and it is not just people being savvy and networking like crazy in case they need a new job in a hurry.

 

I think people feel vulnerable and look for mutual emotional support in these troubled times.

 

They are also showing defiance in the face of layoffs, by being upbeat and seeing the funny side of things.

 

The other month, a friend with a great sense of humour held an 'At-least-I-don't-go-to-work-on-the-back-of-a-truck...yet!' party. Her e-mail flier even listed the Dress Code as: Last year's designer gear.

 

When I RSVP'd, my friend replied she had just chosen the music for the party: Its theme song was Money, Money, Money.

 

Other expats keep up a constant flow of e-mail jokes making fun about how the world ended up in this financial mess.

 

Another expat friend had a great idea - a Supper Club.

 

She sends out a group e-mail message to masses of people with a date, time and venue. If people want to go, they book their own tables, and then everyone just turns up. There was a Supper Club outing last Tuesday at the trendy New Majestic Hotel in Chinatown, for example.

 

Others earn my admiration for the way they roll with the punches when life really does deliver the dreaded pink slip.

 

Take a guy I play tennis with. He is a European in his late 40s, a managerial type with vast experience and expertise. Recently, he told me he had been retrenched, but was being positive, and had moved into another field, managing property.

 

Last weekend, when we were playing doubles tennis, he interrupted a game to take a phone call. When he finished, he told us it was a tenant calling him about replacing a toilet roll holder.

 

He was able to see the funny side, saying: 'Ah, being an expat has come to this - changing other people's toilet roll holders.'

 

Someone joked about talent going down the drain, and the game resumed, my friend smashing a volley shot with a particularly aggressive punch.

 

The writer is a copy editor with the Life! section of The Straits Times. She has been in Singapore for 15 years.