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"Mexico is Too Mexican": An Expat's Story · Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences

• 0:00
  Hello everyone and I hope you had a good day so far.
• 0:04
  Thank you for clicking this episode today.
• 0:07
  I'm really excited to introduce you to an incredible person,
• 0:11
  Fatima Martinez. Her story literally jumped out
• 0:15
  at me from one of my usual Reddit rabbit holes.
• 0:20
  A post simply titled Dear Singapore, I miss you made me
• 0:25
  instantly knew that I had to talk to the person behind that
• 0:29
  message. Fatima's journey is an
• 0:32
  adventure. From her routes in Mexico
• 0:36
  through unexpected stops in Italy, London, anyone teaching
• 0:40
  English in mainland China. We'll follow her path to
• 0:44
  Singapore. Explore why she initially hated
• 0:48
  it, how it eventually became her home, and her surprising reasons
• 0:56
  she at the end had to leave. This is a tale of self
• 0:59
  discovery, community and finding belonging across continents.
• 1:04
  You don't want to miss it. I'm Paul and this is whereabouts
• 1:08
  tales. Enjoy good morning on both of
• 1:14
  our sites because luckily we're in the same time.
• 1:16
  So, Fatima, and welcome to our About Stills.
• 1:21
  Thank you for having me, Paul. I like to I would like to make a
• 1:26
  small intro how how we got to how we got in connection because
• 1:30
  I find the story quite interesting.
• 1:32
  I, I'm always searching and digging deep in the in the
• 1:38
  Reddit's rabbit holes on different topic.
• 1:43
  And, and I found an is really, really interesting message on
• 1:48
  one of the experts communities that I am in, in, in, in Reddit.
• 1:52
  And it started with dear Singapore, I miss you.
• 1:56
  And I read through the whole story, through the whole
• 1:58
  message. And I said, oh, I need to talk
• 2:01
  to the person who wrote this message.
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  And luckily you, you replied Fatima.
• 2:06
  But before we go to Singapore and.
• 2:09
  Before I start crying. It's OK, the miss is still
• 2:14
  there. Oh, I'm sorry.
• 2:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry for doing this to you.
• 2:20
  Please tell us where you are born, where you originally
• 2:23
  coming from, Fatima. So I was born in in Mexico, so I
• 2:30
  am from Mexico City, but I don't really like to disclose that
• 2:36
  because I don't know. There's a lot of rivalry within
• 2:41
  Mexico between people from the north and the center and the
• 2:47
  South and I guess everywhere in between.
• 2:50
  So I am, I was born in Mexico City.
• 2:53
  My parents are from the north of the country, from one of the
• 2:58
  border states. So we border the, the US and
• 3:02
  we're in the Pacific, on the Pacific side.
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  So it's north on, on the Northwest.
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  It's a state called Baja California.
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  And so, yeah, my parents are from from a city called
• 3:23
  Mexicali. And then that's where they met.
• 3:27
  But after they got married, they moved to Mexico City, and that's
• 3:31
  where I was born. And I lived in, I mean, Mexico
• 3:37
  City and sort of the periphery until I was 7.
• 3:43
  OK. So you moved early outside the
• 3:46
  outside of the country? Well, no.
• 3:48
  I moved to the north of the country.
• 3:50
  We went back to our instead of our home state.
• 3:54
  So we went to we went back to Bach, California, to a small
• 4:00
  coastal town called Ensenada. Sounds sounds sounds good.
• 4:07
  Sounds like a dream life to to to to Mexico.
• 4:10
  Everyone is going there for holiday.
• 4:11
  I know it's always the demo version of the holiday which is
• 4:15
  happening for everyone, but I want to ask you, Fatima, what
• 4:18
  what, what raised your interest to to move outside of Mexico?
• 4:27
  I guess I don't know I. I wanted to see different
• 4:42
  things. So, I mean, I, I lived in Mexico
• 4:47
  until I was 18 and when I finish high school, sort of finishing
• 4:57
  high school brought to me what I like to call my first
• 5:01
  existential crisis because, well, the, the first sort of
• 5:06
  existential middle age crisis when I was 18, because I, I
• 5:12
  finished high school and it coincided with me up until that
• 5:17
  point, I had been a national level athlete.
• 5:22
  So I was part of the Mexican national triathlon team and I
• 5:26
  was racing internationally. And, you know, my dream was to
• 5:34
  go to the Olympics. And that was kind of my that was
• 5:38
  going to be my life. But that last year of high
• 5:45
  school, a couple of things came to a head.
• 5:47
  I started getting injured constantly, just constantly
• 5:51
  injured, injured, injured. And by that point I wasn't
• 5:55
  living with, with my parents. I had moved away from the family
• 6:00
  home to, to be able to train with the national team.
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  And the national team was back, you know, around Mexico City.
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  So I was living with some friends of my parents and I went
• 6:15
  to high school, but I was training and sort of living my
• 6:21
  own life. I mean, I was responsible for,
• 6:24
  for myself and I started getting injured and I couldn't train
• 6:30
  anymore. And to be honest with you, I, I
• 6:32
  wasn't able to really, I didn't have the drive anymore and I
• 6:37
  didn't really understand it. And, and high school finishes.
• 6:43
  I have to go back home because, I mean, I can't stay there.
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  I'm enrolled at university, I'm going to study medicine.
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  And I was, you know, top of the class.
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  I was kind of like the model student, the model teenager,
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  everything perfect. And all of a sudden I thought,
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  no, I can't do this. I can't, I can't do this.
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  And most of my friends were taking a gap year and I all of a
• 7:15
  sudden realized that I was 18, but I hadn't really had a
• 7:19
  teenage period. I mean, I had never been out and
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  partying or nothing, nothing. For me, it was, you know, 9:00
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  PM bedtime and, you know, 5:00 AM wake up and go swimming, go
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  running. My you know what I eat, what I
• 7:36
  don't eat, my carb load and all this kind of stuff.
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  I, I lived a really kind of regimented life, not because my
• 7:43
  parents were pushy, but because I, I pushed myself.
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  I don't know, I was really a perfectionist.
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  And it was at that moment when I thought, I can't go to
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  university now, I need to take a gap year, I need to go somewhere
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  else. And, and I was having a lot of
• 8:01
  trouble also adjusting to coming back to living with my parents.
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  I mean, I had effectively been since I was what, like 16 1/2?
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  I had been living on my own and all of a sudden I had my parents
• 8:16
  on top of me and I was like, oh, so I think I just went eenie
• 8:22
  meenie. Oh, I, I went on AI, went on
• 8:26
  holiday with a friend. We went on this bus tour around
• 8:32
  Europe and I was like, oh, Italy looks cute.
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  You know, Mom, I want to go to Italy.
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  And I'm almost like, what are you talking about?
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  And I was like, yeah, it's great.
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  I'll, I'll go there. And last minute, we managed to
• 8:48
  piece together this sort of gap year for me.
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  And I went to Italy to study Italian.
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  And once I was in Italy, I thought, I don't want to go back
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  to Mexico. Mexico's too Mexican and and I I
• 9:06
  don't like that. Whatever that means, it's too
• 9:09
  Mexican. I don't like that.
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  I'd like to explore. I like to be.
• 9:21
  I guess there was an element of you could reinvent yourself.
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  I mean, you can be anyone when you're abroad.
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  You know, when you go back home and you have all this baggage of
• 9:31
  your family or your state or your city or your, but when
• 9:37
  you're abroad, I mean, you can just be anything.
• 9:39
  And I, and I liked that and I liked that, you know, the, the
• 9:45
  sort of the mix of people. So I, I, I developed some
• 9:54
  friendships and this, a friend was going to go to university in
• 9:59
  London and I thought, oh, I'll go with you.
• 10:02
  Let me you know, let's go. I'll, you know, I'll accompany
• 10:06
  you. And I, we, I did that.
• 10:10
  And when I arrived in the UKI was like, oh, maybe I can study
• 10:14
  here. And for a day or two days, I
• 10:22
  started looking at brochures for universities and I saw
• 10:27
  university that looked nice. And I thought, oh, this is
• 10:31
  perfect for me. I'll go there.
• 10:35
  I I sounds like a complete sort of superficial and very kind of
• 10:42
  clueless way of, of choosing life.
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  I mean, but at that point, what I was 19, it was just whatever I
• 10:51
  mean, I just, I mean potato, potato, whatever I you know, and
• 10:57
  this looks good. Why not?
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  Why? What's more to it?
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  And so I told my parents that I was not going to go to medical
• 11:06
  school. And what was I going to study?
• 11:10
  Yeah. And I mean, to be honest with
• 11:12
  you, I think they thought I was crazy and they were maybe
• 11:17
  indulging me for a bit. And they're like, OK, whatever.
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  I mean, some teenagers do drugs, some teenagers do alcohol.
• 11:27
  She's just moving around. Yes, choosing universities
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  because she likes the facade of the main building and, you know,
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  it's green and yes, let's let's do this.
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  And. And they're like, you're
• 11:43
  absolutely insane, what are you talking about?
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  And I said yeah. And, and I convinced them.
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  I, I still don't know what I did to convince them, but I was
• 11:54
  like, yeah, I think they knew I was mature because I had, I had
• 12:04
  lived on my own for a while already and it had never been a
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  source of trouble. So I guess there was an element
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  of them trusting me. And I think there was also an
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  element of them knowing that. That's it.
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  I mean, there's no discussion. I'm doing this.
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  But I I see, I see. I'm sorry for interrupting you,
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  Fatima. The, the there are two things I
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  see. I see a a pattern quite often in
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  my discussion with the experts. I see two things living alone
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  really early in life, which develops this this wish of you
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  know what? It's OK.
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  I like it. I don't want to.
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  I don't want to go back to my parents place.
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  I don't like it. I just I can do whatever I want.
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  Nobody's on my ass. No, that's the first thing.
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  And second thing is the travelling that you do quite
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  early in your life because like you said, you were travelling
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  internationally for the competition as far as I
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  understood, right. Yes, yes.
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  So I was travelling, I mean I went to Australia on my own I
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  and I was, I think 17. Wow, so cool.
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  I mean. Not really on your own with the
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  team, right? Yes, yes, I mean no, actually I
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  because again, you know this is where we like get into the nitty
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  gritty of it. But yes, I mean, there was a
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  team, but at the same time it was all a little bit do it
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  yourself DIY, you know, so and like sadly, a lot of maybe
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  things in in Mexico's, if you want to go to this competition,
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  sometimes you can go. It's just a question of can you
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  afford to go? You might have qualified, you
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  might, you know, you might be really good.
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  But in terms of, you know, the funds available, there might be,
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  you know, out of, I don't know, 20 people who are eligible to
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  go, Maybe they have money to pay for one ticket and the rest is
• 14:15
  OK, maybe we'll give you food vouchers or whatever.
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  I come from Romania, is the same.
• 14:22
  Yes, yes, yes, exactly so. So in this case, yes, I was on
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  my own at 17 travelling, you know, from Los Angeles to to
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  Sydney to Sydney. And then I, I flew to Perth.
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  So I was actually on the complete other side of
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  Australia. Yeah.
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  And I arrived and. OK, where do I take the taxi?
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  What do I do? And I mean, I, I had been
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  travelling before, even as a child, you know, within the
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  country. And I think being maybe so close
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  to the US had maybe shown me, OK, there's, this is Mexico and
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  things are done this way here. And then you, you have the US
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  where even though I didn't live there, I would go frequently
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  because it's a, you know, it's a, it's a car drive away.
• 15:23
  Yeah, it's A and at that time when I was growing up, that part
• 15:29
  of Mexico felt a little bit remote, removed from the rest of
• 15:35
  the country. So, you know, so there were
• 15:39
  things that you would need to go to the US because that was the,
• 15:43
  the nearest and biggest sort of center to get whatever you
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  needed rather than traveling, you know, inland to Mexico,
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  which might be, you know, a three hour plane away.
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  So you would travel and, and, and, you know, to get things.
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  So there was this constant back and forth and I I guess that
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  exposed me early on to different ways of living, of doing things.
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  A different kind of living for sure.
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  Not the not the Mexican typical style.
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  You are too close to us and you had the influence from there.
• 16:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I guess another element
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  is that, you know, you have Mexican culture, which you could
• 16:29
  say is, I mean, it will have its own flavour within Mexico.
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  But then you have what you would call the stereotypical Mexican
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  culture, which is predominantly you.
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  You, it exists in the centre of the country.
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  The north is a little bit its own, it's a bit of a hybrid
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  because I mean, it's always been kind of a bit far removed from,
• 16:54
  from the centre of the country. So you have different
• 16:56
  traditions, you have different ways of doing things.
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  There's always been, I mean, it's a, it's an immigrant part
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  of the country, at least the Northwest, because it wasn't
• 17:13
  very populated. So you had people from within
• 17:17
  Mexico moving there, but also you had a foreigners moving
• 17:22
  there. So yeah, it, it's, it's a bit of
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  a, it's a bit of a hybrid place. And I think that influenced me
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  one way or another to maybe explore alternatives to that
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  which which maybe was expected. But I mean that everything makes
• 17:49
  sense what you just said, everything because the influence
• 17:52
  from the North, it's interesting that you see the the North is
• 17:56
  separated from the from the, let's say from the rest of the
• 18:00
  country. Is there?
• 18:01
  Yeah. Is there Because I know in the
• 18:04
  at least in the late years, no, in the latest years, we have a
• 18:08
  lot of US guys moving close to the border in Mexico, at least
• 18:12
  that was the case. Was that the case back then as
• 18:15
  well? Yes, yes, yes, you had.
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  You had retired Americans moving moving S to my state.
• 18:26
  But I what I remember the most was definitely this.
• 18:30
  I would say it's a very permeable border and it used to
• 18:34
  be permeable, you know, since my grandparents time, you know, you
• 18:38
  would go, you would it would, you know, you would go to the US
• 18:41
  to, you know, to buy things that maybe you couldn't find in our
• 18:46
  own state, which again, our own state was not considered a
• 18:49
  state. It was a territory for, you
• 18:52
  know, a long period of time. And then you had, you know, you
• 18:59
  had there's a important Chinese influence in, in my mom's
• 19:08
  hometown, there's a big Chinese community.
• 19:10
  So, for example, this is the town is called Mexicali.
• 19:15
  And what do you do in Mexicali on a weekend?
• 19:19
  You go and eat Chinese food and there's tons of Chinese
• 19:23
  restaurants. And again, this Chinese food is
• 19:26
  from most of the, you know, Chinese immigrants come from the
• 19:29
  north of the South of China. So it's a Cantonese style food.
• 19:33
  Again, it's been, you know, reshaped by Mexican, by a
• 19:39
  Mexican palate. But yeah, you go and eat Chinese
• 19:43
  food and that's that's what you eat.
• 19:45
  And people are like, what are you talking about?
• 19:48
  Chinese? Yes, of course you have Chinese
• 19:51
  food on the weekend. That's that's what you do I.
• 19:54
  Had to guess until now in my podcast that were from US moved
• 19:58
  abroad and I asked them what do you miss the most from US and
• 20:01
  everyone told me Mexican food. How can you eat in Mexico?
• 20:04
  Chinese, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 20:07
  It's Chinese food. And then in my hometown there is
• 20:16
  see, I swallow you have, you know, it's a coastal town, it's
• 20:20
  a big fishing town. So you have a lot of fish and
• 20:24
  seafood and, you know, fish tacos come from my hometown.
• 20:29
  They were developed there. And the special batcher that
• 20:32
  they use comes from my hometown. And then, you know, you had, I
• 20:38
  mean, there's, there's tons of stories that maybe we can leave
• 20:41
  for another podcast, but we have, you know, during
• 20:45
  prohibition, there were casinos that were set up in, in my
• 20:50
  hometown and around. So you had a lot of Americans
• 20:53
  coming in, drinking in Mexico, gambling and then going back
• 20:57
  north. And so it's always, there's
• 20:59
  always been a lot of movement. I mean, when I was there this
• 21:03
  summer, we also saw this, I, I saw this celebration of the
• 21:07
  Japanese community in Mexico in my hometown.
• 21:11
  So interesting. So it's always, like I said,
• 21:14
  it's always been a land of immigrants.
• 21:18
  I mean, whether they be Mexican or now, you know, 3rd, 5th
• 21:23
  generation Mexican bud with a, you know, with a Japanese
• 21:29
  component or with a Russian component.
• 21:32
  I mean, you have this Russian families that moved close to my
• 21:40
  hometown and they were the some of the first ones that started
• 21:43
  the the wine making tradition. Or you go further South and you
• 21:50
  see this missions, religious missions that were founded in
• 21:56
  the 1700s, you know, when, when this territory was really sort
• 22:01
  of being discovered. Extremely interesting.
• 22:04
  I didn't know that Mexico has such a huge history of
• 22:06
  immigration. I have no idea.
• 22:08
  It's crazy. We had a, you know, there was a,
• 22:13
  a priest that that came from, what is it a drastic country,
• 22:20
  Croatia. And he founded in the 1700s a
• 22:25
  mission. He was a priest.
• 22:27
  And I mean. So.
• 22:31
  Anyway, we digress. Yes, Yeah, we digress.
• 22:35
  Honestly, I would, I would like to go into that offer of yours
• 22:39
  and to to make an episode about to talk about the migration in
• 22:42
  Mexico and you're there because I think that's extremely
• 22:44
  interesting. I think nobody knows about that.
• 22:46
  At least this is my feeling. Yeah, Yeah.
• 22:50
  So let's go back to to London. Fatima, you, you went to London,
• 22:54
  you said. OK, I like it here.
• 22:56
  I want to study here. Was the first impression of
• 22:59
  London already good? Yeah, I mean, I just loved it.
• 23:05
  It was not Mexico, you know, you could dress in whatever way you
• 23:08
  wanted and nobody cared. And I, I loved public transport
• 23:14
  because that was, that was not, I mean, public transport, of
• 23:19
  course it existed in my, in my hometown, but it, it wasn't as
• 23:28
  institutionalized. I mean, you had public transport
• 23:31
  in Mexico City or in the big cities down South in my
• 23:35
  hometown. I mean, you had this.
• 23:37
  Buses. This buses and you know, they
• 23:41
  didn't even have a route and they would stop wherever you
• 23:43
  wanted. But here you had the underground
• 23:46
  and you had the double Decker buses and you had the trains and
• 23:51
  you know, I didn't have to rely on a car or enjoyed.
• 23:55
  The small things in life enjoyed the small things in life.
• 23:58
  I could walk everywhere and I loved that.
• 24:02
  And yeah, to me, it was, you know, it was so novel and so
• 24:11
  freeing to to, to an extent. So I said, yeah, I'm, I'm
• 24:18
  staying here. I convinced my parents, you
• 24:20
  know, we did financial calculations and they said, OK,
• 24:27
  I mean, you're going. But now that, you know, we might
• 24:33
  not be able to pay for your final year of university.
• 24:35
  And I said, yeah, that's fine. I'll, you know, we'll figure it
• 24:38
  out. And I went and I was first year,
• 24:43
  I needed to do like a remedial year because the Mexican system
• 24:50
  and the English system, I mean, they're, I guess they're
• 24:54
  compatible. I don't know if they're not
• 24:56
  compatible or they just wanted us to pay more because as
• 24:59
  foreign students, it was very, very expensive.
• 25:04
  This was before university fees were introduced.
• 25:07
  So you had the fees for foreign students and European students
• 25:13
  and local students did not have to pay that much.
• 25:17
  It was it was almost negligible. So my first year I sort of this
• 25:27
  remedial year, I did it with tons of Japanese, Korean,
• 25:32
  Chinese and what else did we have?
• 25:38
  Polish students and yeah, Venezuelan, Argentinian.
• 25:45
  I loved it. I loved it.
• 25:47
  I, you know, I enjoyed it so much and I was great.
• 25:52
  It was great then starting my degree.
• 25:56
  What do I study? I didn't know.
• 25:58
  So again it was 1 of this random choices to study European
• 26:07
  studies. I mean talk about I use the
• 26:13
  degree. I mean, the UK left the EU after
• 26:17
  a couple of oh. My God.
• 26:21
  You know, after about 10 years or so, but yeah, I, I did
• 26:25
  European studies. It, it was a mixture of
• 26:27
  languages and history and politics.
• 26:30
  I, I call it, you know, the degree for the undecided because
• 26:34
  you could do a little bit of everything.
• 26:36
  And that's what I ended up doing.
• 26:39
  And I had my, you know, my English friends and my
• 26:47
  international friends. And, yeah, I loved it.
• 26:52
  And I would invite myself to their countries, like, oh, can I
• 26:57
  visit you? I'm going to go and visit you.
• 26:59
  OK. When shall I go?
• 27:00
  And they're like, OK, this person just like, you know, so.
• 27:10
  So yeah, that that that was that.
• 27:12
  And I realized pretty quickly I didn't want to come back home.
• 27:19
  But you finished university then?
• 27:21
  Yeah, I finished university. You know, at the end my parents
• 27:26
  kind of yeah, they, they weren't able to pay for my final year.
• 27:30
  So it was a mixture of me starting to work part time and
• 27:35
  then, you know, getting bits and bobs from all over to pay for my
• 27:42
  final year and that final year. No, before my final year I did a
• 27:52
  gap year. I did a gap year in Italy.
• 27:55
  Not a gap year, but they used to call it your Erasmus year
• 28:00
  because it was a four year degree.
• 28:02
  University, yeah. Yeah, so I went to Rome and I
• 28:06
  worked at the Mexican embassy because, you know, European
• 28:09
  studies, international relations and, and yeah, I, I, I did an
• 28:15
  internship there. I was in the communications
• 28:18
  department and I went to the World Food Program for a couple
• 28:24
  of sessions to, you know, go with a, with a Mexican
• 28:30
  representative. And yeah, it, I mean, it was
• 28:35
  great. I, you know, moving myself in
• 28:37
  Rome, taking the bus metro, I don't know.
• 28:41
  I I found it. Public transportation again.
• 28:43
  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I found it.
• 28:46
  So I don't know, I guess. Yeah, Coming from my little
• 28:55
  hometown, to me this was, yeah, such an achievement.
• 29:01
  Like, you know, I can move, I can Orient myself anywhere.
• 29:05
  I come from this little town and I can do these things anywhere.
• 29:09
  And. And you soon realize you can do
• 29:12
  that anywhere in in in the world, right.
• 29:15
  Public transport or no public transport.
• 29:18
  You, I I think there's a degree of self-reliance and
• 29:22
  independence that. Sky is the limit.
• 29:26
  Yeah, that you that you start to value or you start to appreciate
• 29:30
  in yourself. I, I have to say, but I come
• 29:33
  also from a small village, not even a city, from a small
• 29:36
  village in Romania. And after my visit in after I
• 29:40
  was I think 2 times already in New York.
• 29:42
  But after the first time when I was there with my wife, we were
• 29:45
  there for four days for a like a city break first trip alone
• 29:50
  without a kid after he was born. And when I came back, I talked
• 29:54
  with a friend and said, what do you enjoy the most?
• 29:57
  I think the metro and he didn't understood.
• 30:01
  And now I think it makes sense like like that, that possibility
• 30:04
  to that the metro in New York is a is a different world, of
• 30:08
  course, because it's it's it's crazy by itself.
• 30:12
  But the fact that you could like be everywhere, like we don't
• 30:16
  needing everything. It was impressive for me, even
• 30:18
  though I was a fully grown up and it was four or five years
• 30:22
  ago, but still, it's impressive. It's unbelievable.
• 30:25
  Yeah, yeah, I I agree. I agree.
• 30:29
  OK, so London, then again in Italy, second time in Italy.
• 30:35
  See second time in Italy. Yes, in, in in Rome and then
• 30:41
  going back for my final year at this point, by the end of the
• 30:47
  second year at university, I met the man that is now my husband,
• 30:54
  Norwegian man that was very mysterious.
• 31:03
  It's not that he's, he's, it's not that he's mysterious.
• 31:07
  It's just that he's an introvert, right?
• 31:09
  So I would arrive with my sort of style and I think it would be
• 31:19
  a little bit too much. But yeah, we, we became good
• 31:23
  friends. We, we, we, you know, we studied
• 31:28
  together and then, and then, yeah, we started dating and, and
• 31:42
  yeah, we got married on our final year of university.
• 31:48
  Oh my God, how was that news for your parents?
• 31:51
  Yeah. So we call.
• 31:52
  I called them. I don't know.
• 31:57
  I, I, I, I told my parents, OK, I'm getting married.
• 32:05
  They're like, isn't he going to ask for your hand?
• 32:08
  And I was like, who is he going to ask for my hand?
• 32:10
  He asked me, why does he have to ask you?
• 32:13
  Like what are you talking? About all the traditions and the
• 32:17
  habits. Yes, yes, yes.
• 32:20
  I think that there was an element of, of, of that as well
• 32:23
  that I, I maybe didn't really fit in with this maybe
• 32:35
  stereotypical gender roles or, or ideas.
• 32:43
  Not. Not in any, you know, Not in any
• 32:46
  way, that is. No, but you, you come as well
• 32:50
  from a patriarchal society, which is mainly, I think it's as
• 32:55
  far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but
• 32:57
  it's mainly guided by religion. And you have, you have the man
• 33:00
  who's the boss of the house and he's the head and the woman has,
• 33:06
  is there. Of course, she's, it's, I'm not
• 33:08
  saying that she doesn't have a job, but she, he's the deciding
• 33:11
  he has to go to the your father to ask for the hand and so on.
• 33:14
  So I think all these things. I think maybe I mean I I came
• 33:18
  from on my mom's side, very strong women.
• 33:23
  Maybe out of necessity, my grandmother became a a widow
• 33:29
  when she was very young and she had seven kids and she yeah, so
• 33:35
  she became a very young widow. She never remarried 7 kids, one
• 33:40
  of them disabled. And she they had a travel
• 33:43
  agency. So my grandfather had set up the
• 33:46
  first travel agency in the country in not in the country,
• 33:49
  sorry, in this, in the, in the state.
• 33:52
  So it was the first travel agency in the state, and my
• 33:57
  grandmother kept it up. And, you know, it was a heyday
• 34:02
  of what did you call it, like group travel, that you would get
• 34:05
  loads of people together and then, OK, we're going to Europe
• 34:09
  and, you know, we're going to Hawaii or whatever.
• 34:14
  And the travel agent would go with you and accompany you and,
• 34:19
  you know, be your travel guide. So.
• 34:25
  So yeah, my, my grandmother kept that business and then the whole
• 34:29
  family went into that business. And yeah, I mean, quite strong
• 34:38
  personalities, I would say. And my dad was a fairly, I don't
• 34:46
  know, liberal, philosophical, relaxed guy.
• 34:52
  I mean, I think he wasn't too hung up on gender stereotypes or
• 35:03
  maybe he wasn't too hung up on imposing that on me.
• 35:08
  I or maybe I don't know I mean. But that makes sense.
• 35:12
  What you're seeing makes sense because that's why, that's why
• 35:14
  you decided to be different, because you got that from home
• 35:18
  already. Yeah, maybe.
• 35:20
  I mean, again, I mean, my mom was a, you know, she was for
• 35:24
  most of her life, at least when I was growing up, she was at
• 35:29
  home and. But I don't know, I just never
• 35:38
  believed that. I mean, I don't know.
• 35:43
  I yeah, I, I always liked running and I liked, you know,
• 35:48
  playing rough sports and I want to play football and, you know,
• 35:54
  don't you dare tell me that I'm not the fastest, you know,
• 35:59
  running because I'm going to show you, be it man, you know,
• 36:03
  boy or girl, whatever. I don't know.
• 36:05
  I, I just I, I, I, I didn't really buy into that.
• 36:11
  And if I did see that, I would question it a lot and get very
• 36:21
  upset because to me it didn't seem, it seemed very unfair.
• 36:32
  Yeah. So I don't know.
• 36:36
  So he asked officially for your hand, Not so you.
• 36:43
  You got married in the last year?
• 36:44
  In the last year? Yes, yes.
• 36:46
  So we told our parents and I think we told them you didn't, I
• 36:53
  mean we needed to get permission, right.
• 36:56
  So I sorry. You did met his parents before.
• 36:59
  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I had been on holiday to Norway,
• 37:04
  one of this like, oh, OK, so when shall I come to Oslo?
• 37:08
  We weren't even dating. And I was just like, let me just
• 37:12
  let me discover this, you know, new place.
• 37:15
  And yeah. And then he had been to Mexico
• 37:24
  also because he also likes travelling.
• 37:29
  He had done his own sort of adventures and yeah, and we told
• 37:37
  our parents, not that, I mean, we didn't give them a lot of
• 37:41
  time to prepare. I think it was like 4 months
• 37:48
  because at the time, I mean, I don't, I don't know what the
• 37:51
  rules are, but to get married in the UK, he has he's Norwegian
• 37:58
  British. His dad is British and his mom
• 38:00
  is Norwegian and he grew up in Norway.
• 38:04
  To get as a foreigner, to get married to a British person, you
• 38:08
  need to ask permission and you need to submit all this evidence
• 38:12
  that it's not a. Scam.
• 38:14
  Marriage. So we didn't want to tell our
• 38:19
  parents until we got got the approval because we thought, OK,
• 38:23
  what if we tell them and then it doesn't get approved?
• 38:27
  Like, no, no, no, let's just get everything ready.
• 38:32
  And then we let them know. So we let them know And.
• 38:40
  And that was that. And we got married the same week
• 38:44
  that our official graduation took place.
• 38:48
  So my husband's dad, so my father-in-law is in the hotel
• 38:57
  business. So he organized the wedding
• 39:00
  because. I mean, I don't really care
• 39:03
  about this stuff. I mean, I just wanted, you know,
• 39:05
  I wanted important people to be there.
• 39:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I just wanted the
• 39:09
  important people to be there, but I wasn't really into this
• 39:14
  like huge ceremony or, you know, dressed in white or blah, blah,
• 39:19
  blah. No, no, no, no.
• 39:21
  And he organized everything and I was very happy with that.
• 39:28
  And yeah, we we had a civil ceremony and that was it.
• 39:38
  With the intention to stay in London to stay in UK further.
• 39:42
  I'm not sure, no. But that point, I think we had
• 39:45
  both agreed we were going to go to China, so we did.
• 39:51
  So we finished university and we enrolled on one of these teach
• 39:57
  English abroad. Ourselves.
• 40:02
  And yeah, we had both enrolled in that.
• 40:06
  So that was kind of the next thing for us to do after we
• 40:12
  graduated from university. OK, that means directly after
• 40:16
  university you went you went abroad again.
• 40:19
  Yes, yes, yes, yes. OK.
• 40:21
  And this time you choose the country like a bit more
• 40:26
  thorough. Was it, was it Singapore
• 40:28
  directly or was? It No, no, no.
• 40:29
  We went to China, went to mainland China.
• 40:31
  Yes, yes, yes. Yes, we went to Fatima.
• 40:34
  Oh my God, I didn't know I was for this adventure in.
• 40:41
  Yeah. So we went to China, we went to
• 40:44
  Shandong Province. This was in 2000 and 7, No 2007.
• 40:54
  Yes, because the Olympics were 2008.
• 40:56
  So it was a year before the Olympics.
• 40:59
  We went to Shandong Province, we went to a university.
• 41:05
  It was, it's called Shandong Kojidaswe.
• 41:11
  I mean, my tones are completely off, but but yeah, we arrived in
• 41:18
  in this sort of provincial university.
• 41:21
  It was on the edge of the countryside and we were teaching
• 41:27
  master's students English. So they were about my age and it
• 41:35
  was such a, it was such an amazing experience.
• 41:40
  I the first, I would say the first four months were very
• 41:46
  hard, but then I really started enjoying it and I realized just,
• 42:00
  I don't know you. How can I say this?
• 42:11
  I started realizing just how generous Chinese people can be
• 42:17
  once you get to know them and once you, you know, once they
• 42:22
  let you in and, and maybe they are, they will always be very
• 42:29
  polite, but maybe they won't let you in immediately just because
• 42:33
  there's so many people. And the minute you know, they
• 42:36
  are born, it's a competition for everything.
• 42:39
  It's a competition for a spot in the kindergarten, it's a spot in
• 42:44
  the primary school. It's a competition for, you
• 42:46
  know, to get on the bus because there's so many people that want
• 42:49
  to. And, and I just realized, of
• 42:51
  course, you need to kind of like, you know, put some
• 42:54
  blinders on because otherwise you go crazy, right?
• 42:59
  But once they let you in, I, I realized that they were so
• 43:05
  selfless and so generous with their time, with their
• 43:10
  knowledge, with, with everything.
• 43:13
  And I really loved that. Yeah, that was.
• 43:17
  Amazing. You were in a you were in an
• 43:19
  area of China that didn't spoke much English, right?
• 43:21
  No, no, no, no, no. They they didn't.
• 43:25
  And I mean, I think, and I didn't speak Chinese, but I
• 43:33
  pretended and I think they appreciated the effort.
• 43:37
  And I would just, you know, pull out everything from my
• 43:44
  everything from my repertoire of make yourself understood, sign
• 43:50
  language, miming. And I think again, being in a
• 43:55
  place where nobody knows you, you don't care if you're look
• 43:59
  ridiculous or not, or, you know, there's again, there's this
• 44:03
  element of freedom to just maybe do things you would not do
• 44:13
  elsewhere. And one of the funny stories I,
• 44:16
  I have about that was that there was a bus that would depart from
• 44:22
  the university, I think once every hour.
• 44:25
  And this bus, I mean, I don't know how it kept going.
• 44:30
  I think it was inertia. But then when you got to a hill,
• 44:33
  it struggled and you probably could walk faster than that bus
• 44:37
  would go up that little hill. And it took about an hour to get
• 44:42
  to the city because I was, we were really out.
• 44:46
  So sometimes you would get a taxi.
• 44:48
  And this taxi was probably a man who just had a, a car and they
• 44:52
  would take you around. So after a, after a while, I
• 44:58
  would go with a, with a regular driver and we would speak in, in
• 45:06
  Mandarin. I don't know how, but it turned
• 45:09
  out that he was a huge fan of Mexican soap operas.
• 45:15
  And he started telling, he started telling me about, you
• 45:24
  know, this huge soap opera called Jessenia, which I think
• 45:31
  was a massive thing in the 80s or something like that.
• 45:35
  And I was like, how is it possible?
• 45:37
  How surreal is this that I am? Out of the chances?
• 45:42
  Yes, out of the chances. But I I think it was one of
• 45:48
  Mexico's greatest exports because you go anywhere in the
• 45:52
  world. So look, I woke up to today in
• 45:55
  the morning. I knew we had the recording I in
• 45:57
  my head was a song come build the Lord barely say that, you
• 46:02
  know, I don't know if you know it, but.
• 46:05
  No, no, no, no. Because OK, in Mexico, yes,
• 46:08
  people would watch. Yeah.
• 46:09
  But SOAP operas up until I think my mom's generation and
• 46:14
  afterwards it started becoming a bit like you don't do that, but.
• 46:19
  You have no idea. So we had, during the my
• 46:22
  upbringing, there were two TV stations in Romania broadcasting
• 46:26
  nothing else except telenovelas. Nothing else.
• 46:30
  It's no, it was a phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:35
  And they were completely legit because they were, you know,
• 46:39
  fantastical, aspirational. They were very clean.
• 46:45
  The bad were pantomime bad. And the good were, you know, you
• 46:55
  know, the eyes. It was all about the eyes and
• 46:57
  the looks like, you know, all this music, the music.
• 47:03
  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, I mean.
• 47:07
  You know, they created huge stars that are surviving also
• 47:11
  now. So I mean, if we talk about
• 47:12
  Talia, if we talk about Natalia Guerrero, if we talk about I
• 47:15
  don't know. Even before that, Veronica
• 47:18
  Castro and all this kind of like the golden age of the of the
• 47:21
  telenovela stars. And they are laughing all the
• 47:24
  way to the bank, I mean. Absolutely.
• 47:28
  I mean, I mean, I, I, I think it was, I don't know.
• 47:33
  And, and here you have to correct me because I know, I
• 47:35
  don't know for sure, but there was this famous band which was
• 47:38
  called, it was the famous soap opera, which was called the
• 47:40
  Rebel De And they made out of it this band which is called airbed
• 47:45
  de. They went, they after they were
• 47:48
  not that famous anymore, they went for a concert in Romania.
• 47:50
  Oh my God. Oh my God, it was.
• 47:56
  Yeah, phenomenon. Absolutely yes.
• 47:59
  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, sorry for moving out but
• 48:02
  to. Digress.
• 48:03
  To meet a taxi driver in China. In rural, you know, rural China
• 48:10
  who was in total novelas. And I was like, OK, that's all I
• 48:13
  need to know about you, and that's all you need to know
• 48:15
  about me. The minute I said Mexico, Oh,
• 48:19
  Mashika and I don't know what else he said.
• 48:24
  And then he said Jessenia and I was like, of course Jessenia.
• 48:28
  And we both started to laugh. And then, you know, we were best
• 48:31
  buddies after that. Oh my God, how long were you in
• 48:36
  in China? So I was there about a year.
• 48:41
  I was there about a year. And yeah, I loved it.
• 48:45
  We went to Shanghai because I had, you know, some of the
• 48:49
  friends I had met at university that had been doing the remedial
• 48:53
  course. They were now back and in China.
• 48:57
  So we met there. And yeah, it was, it was
• 49:05
  wonderful. I loved it.
• 49:06
  I loved it, loved it. Yeah, it was great.
• 49:14
  And then we went back to London. We went back to London after
• 49:21
  that year, and my husband went on to do a master's and I was,
• 49:28
  you know, twiddling my thumbs. I didn't know what to do.
• 49:34
  And this of course was, you know, we came almost back at
• 49:45
  2008 financial crisis and it was really hard to get a job.
• 49:52
  It was really hard. You know, there were loads of
• 49:55
  layoffs, loads of there was a lot of unemployment.
• 50:04
  And I think I was from that generation where at least in the
• 50:09
  UK, you did a degree and you were almost, you know, the idea
• 50:15
  was you'll get a job immediately, it's not a problem.
• 50:18
  You know, you can, it was almost, it was expected, it was
• 50:22
  demanded. It was a sense of, I don't know,
• 50:26
  entitlement that you finish your degree and you get a job.
• 50:30
  And, and that came crushing down for me.
• 50:36
  So I did what I had done the in the past, which was, you know,
• 50:45
  when I was at university, I had worked and I had worked in sales
• 50:50
  and clothes shops. So I thought, OK, well I guess
• 50:53
  that's what I have to do. I have to, you know, put on a
• 50:59
  suit, print my CV and just go to all the different shops and hand
• 51:03
  out my CV. And, and I was, and I was called
• 51:09
  back by one shop who had a maternity cover.
• 51:13
  And yes. And it turned out that I knew
• 51:19
  everything about this, about the product in the shop, because in,
• 51:26
  in China, I had made myself very well acquainted with fakes,
• 51:36
  particularly the fakes of this company.
• 51:41
  And you know, I, I had, you know, seen it was jewelry.
• 51:45
  So I had seen the fakes of this jewelry company and I was like,
• 51:48
  Oh my God, that's so cool. And the design, it's innovative.
• 51:53
  And then I had researched it. And so I knew everything about
• 52:00
  the product. And they were very impressed.
• 52:02
  What they didn't know it was that I had hands on experience
• 52:09
  from my, from my year of, you know, throttling the, the, the
• 52:17
  markets in China. And so I started working there
• 52:21
  and yeah, I, I, I stayed there for about 5 years, you know,
• 52:29
  sales. And then I did, I started doing
• 52:35
  marketing and organizing events for them.
• 52:38
  And yeah, it kind of progressed. Was it the job that you wanted
• 52:49
  to do or you just went with the flow?
• 52:52
  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean that there was, I guess
• 52:57
  there was an element of frustration and maybe this is
• 53:02
  where, you know, there's a bit of cultural baggage that I, I
• 53:06
  carried in the sense that in Mech, maybe in the UK you, you
• 53:14
  know, you do a degree and then you go into sales and it's no
• 53:19
  big deal. But for me, it was, I think I
• 53:23
  saw it as a bit of a failure because in Mexico as a
• 53:27
  university degree, you don't go and work in a shop.
• 53:31
  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you're expected
• 53:34
  to do much more. So it, it was a little bit
• 53:40
  frustrating, but at the same time, I didn't know what I
• 53:45
  wanted to do. And maybe all those, you know,
• 53:49
  all those job applications that I had been doing, I, I didn't
• 53:55
  call, get called back. Yeah, maybe because there was a
• 53:57
  financial crisis or or maybe because I was very unsuited to
• 54:02
  do that. So, you know, it took me a while
• 54:06
  to get over my whatever associations I I had.
• 54:19
  And I realized, OK, this is a job as good as any.
• 54:22
  And actually I'm learning a lot and I am jewellery and gemstones
• 54:29
  and all that is something that I've always loved.
• 54:31
  And you know, instead of being frustrated because this is what
• 54:35
  I'm doing, just within what you're doing, see, there's more
• 54:39
  you can do. And that's how I started to sort
• 54:42
  of progress within. And yeah, I, I really, I really
• 54:48
  enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun.
• 54:52
  It was again a very international team, Danish,
• 54:57
  Italian, Russian, Bulgarian and yeah, Malaysian as well.
• 55:07
  And yeah, we, we had a, we had a great time.
• 55:10
  It was a good team and I really enjoyed what I was doing.
• 55:17
  So you went. You went up the corporate
• 55:19
  letter. Yeah, within, you know, within
• 55:23
  reason because it's it it, Yeah, within reason.
• 55:26
  Yeah. I, I really enjoyed it.
• 55:29
  Then I got a bit bored, so I, I, I left and I did a yoga training
• 55:37
  course. But within that, I mean, we
• 55:42
  also, you know, within the the group, I started a film club, I
• 55:48
  was fundraising for UNICEF. I was, you know, I started to
• 55:52
  realize that, you know, you can have your job and you can have a
• 55:56
  side hustle or you can do, you know, extra things.
• 56:00
  So we, together with a team at work, we organized a big event
• 56:05
  to fundraise for UNICEF and that was so much fun.
• 56:11
  Then I started a film club because I loved film and I loved
• 56:16
  independent film. And this was before Netflix.
• 56:21
  And you know, I, I found up a partner who helped me set up
• 56:31
  the, the film club and we had a lot of fun.
• 56:34
  But after a bit, I, I got a little bit tired.
• 56:37
  I needed a break. So I did this yoga training
• 56:39
  course. I went back to London and I
• 56:42
  started doing consultancy work and then after a year I went
• 56:47
  back to my old job. OK, that's, you know, I, I'm
• 56:55
  still looking for Singapore to come in discussion.
• 56:57
  But yeah, so Singapore. Comes coming.
• 56:59
  It comes. It's so interesting.
• 57:02
  After Brexit, so after Brexit, so you.
• 57:06
  Went back, you went. You went back to your old job
• 57:08
  and you stood there. To my old job and again I I
• 57:13
  wanted a new challenge, I wanted to new something new to do, but
• 57:19
  I. Guess have you ever seen
• 57:21
  yourself of of staying forever in London?
• 57:25
  Yes, at the time, definitely yes, yes.
• 57:28
  I mean, I loved London. I, I would walk to work, I would
• 57:33
  cycle because after a while it was like, OK, I'm so done with
• 57:38
  public transport. It's just my own transport, my
• 57:42
  own 2 legs. And you know, I can, I'm so
• 57:47
  beyond that. And, and I think, yeah, I guess,
• 57:57
  you know, since the days of, since my sporting days, I love
• 58:02
  to walk and I also loved to, I love cycling.
• 58:07
  I love, really loved cycling. And you know, if you're a bit
• 58:11
  bored and you need a bit of an adrenaline high, you know,
• 58:16
  nothing more than cycling through London.
• 58:23
  And I would, you know, my little game was to, you know, be next
• 58:28
  to a, you know, a big sports car and be like, I can accelerate
• 58:32
  faster than you can and just ridiculous things like that, you
• 58:39
  know, oh, you know, you might be in a sports car, but you're
• 58:41
  stuck in traffic and I can. Just go, yeah.
• 58:44
  Yeah, yeah, things like that that I don't know, kept me
• 58:47
  entertained. So I would walk to work.
• 58:53
  Sometimes it would take me an hour, but I really enjoyed that
• 58:58
  extra hour to walk through London.
• 59:02
  I loved it. I loved it.
• 59:03
  I loved it. And but yeah, I mean, I guess
• 59:10
  after a while I wanted a challenge at work.
• 59:13
  It wasn't coming. The company was not big enough.
• 59:17
  You know, sometimes it can be, yeah.
• 59:22
  I mean, sometimes you can have someone with a lot of ideas and
• 59:26
  it can be a little bit difficult to position them somewhere,
• 59:30
  right, because maybe the structure does not allow for it
• 59:37
  or, I don't know. And then Netflix, Netflix.
• 59:43
  And then Brexit happened. And then also my my film club, I
• 59:48
  mean, was running. It's it's natural course was
• 59:51
  coming to an end. My husband was he was happy at
• 59:58
  work, but he also wanted a new challenge.
• 1:00:00
  And we thought, you know what, doors seem to be closing in
• 1:00:04
  London and maybe it's time we look abroad.
• 1:00:11
  And he asked me, OK, do you mind if I apply?
• 1:00:16
  For a job abroad. And I said no, not at all.
• 1:00:19
  I mean, just go for it and we'll see what happens.
• 1:00:22
  And yeah, it happened. So he applied.
• 1:00:26
  He chose Singapore then. Yes, he did.
• 1:00:29
  He did choose Singapore. So on my husband's side, his mom
• 1:00:35
  is in a region and his dad is English, but his dad was
• 1:00:40
  actually born in Malaysia and his grandfather was born in
• 1:00:46
  Singapore. OK, so there is a history there.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, OK, that that makes so, so
• 1:00:55
  he was somehow connected or he felt connected to Singapore?
• 1:00:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I said yeah, sure.
• 1:01:02
  I didn't know anything about Singapore.
• 1:01:04
  That was my next question. What did you know about
• 1:01:06
  Singapore before? Nothing, nothing, nothing at
• 1:01:09
  all. At that point I was pregnant.
• 1:01:13
  So I had been pregnant before, but I had a miscarriage.
• 1:01:20
  And that also, you know, it makes you, it puts into
• 1:01:23
  perspective a lot of things. You know, I was maybe placing
• 1:01:26
  too much emphasis on work above everything else and the career
• 1:01:30
  ladder ladder and professional development and and I realized
• 1:01:38
  that, OK, maybe that's not that. That's not everything in life.
• 1:01:45
  We had been married at this point for 10 year.
• 1:01:47
  Well, well, almost 10 years. And I had thought, oh, OK, you
• 1:01:55
  know, well, if I want to have a child, maybe this is now the
• 1:01:58
  time. And, and yeah, so I, I got
• 1:02:03
  pregnant and then almost, you know, a week later, my husband
• 1:02:08
  said, yes, we're going to Singapore.
• 1:02:11
  And I was like, OK. Scared.
• 1:02:19
  You know what, I underestimate things so much, or I
• 1:02:24
  disassociate or I just don't think things through.
• 1:02:28
  But I didn't realize how hard it would be to move to a completely
• 1:02:37
  new country whilst pregnant and to leave what had been.
• 1:02:46
  Yeah, I mean, I had been working for a long time at that point.
• 1:02:53
  And it was that, that, you know, moving to Singapore pregnant.
• 1:03:01
  It was, it was hard. It was very hard.
• 1:03:05
  And I mean, if there's a place to to do that, it's Singapore
• 1:03:11
  because everything is set up and you don't have to worry about
• 1:03:16
  anything. But still, I think mentally it
• 1:03:21
  was a huge kind of, I really felt like the rug had been
• 1:03:25
  pulled under me and I really struggled.
• 1:03:31
  I struggled with the heat, I struggled with the I felt very
• 1:03:36
  alone because obviously we didn't.
• 1:03:37
  I didn't know anyone for better or worse.
• 1:03:44
  I had AI mean. I knew London, I could Orient
• 1:03:49
  myself in London. I was, you know, one of the
• 1:03:56
  things I was very proud of was I knew which, which carriage of
• 1:04:01
  the Underground I would take that would be closest to the
• 1:04:06
  exit that nobody really knew about. 1:00 Not that nobody
• 1:04:10
  knows, but there's like little shortcuts that you find in the
• 1:04:13
  London Underground and I knew them.
• 1:04:15
  I was very proud of that. Or I could navigate around, you
• 1:04:19
  know, the tiny streets in the West End or London or whatever.
• 1:04:26
  Yes, yes, yes. And I, you knew, you know, you
• 1:04:29
  have your designated toilet stops, you know, where you can
• 1:04:33
  find a good clean toilet and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:04:36
  And I was, I, I, I, I really, you know, could I, I felt, yeah.
• 1:04:44
  I, I felt like I knew the place and I could Orient myself.
• 1:04:48
  And in Singapore, all of a sudden I couldn't.
• 1:04:51
  And I, I was hot and I was pregnant and I didn't know what
• 1:04:57
  was going on. Yeah.
• 1:05:01
  You, because your husband had the job, I do guess that you had
• 1:05:04
  the company helping you find a place to live and so on in
• 1:05:08
  Singapore. Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:05:09
  I mean, we were taken care of, you know, we, we, we had a,
• 1:05:17
  yeah, we had a good network in terms of supporting us to move
• 1:05:21
  in. We had like an orientation day
• 1:05:23
  in Singapore. And then we had someone who had
• 1:05:27
  been, who was helping us, an estate agent who was helping us
• 1:05:32
  look for places. And yeah, we found a great place
• 1:05:39
  to to live. And then I became a mom.
• 1:05:44
  So it was again, you know, like you move country, you leave your
• 1:05:48
  job, you leave everything and then you become a mom.
• 1:05:51
  That was a huge identity crisis for me.
• 1:05:58
  And was it, you said everything is is ready in Singapore?
• 1:06:05
  That was good. What do you mean by everything
• 1:06:08
  is set up, everything is ready? Anything.
• 1:06:15
  I mean, what do you want? You know, mummy groups,
• 1:06:21
  lactation consultants, you know, Eastern medicine theory for
• 1:06:29
  pregnant women of you know, what to eat, what not to eat,
• 1:06:33
  massages supporting the mother as after, you know, birth,
• 1:06:42
  before birth again. I mean, it's a very privileged
• 1:06:51
  position to be in, right? I mean, we, I think we moved to
• 1:06:54
  Singapore and you still had a relatively open market for
• 1:07:03
  foreigners. Foreigners were in relatively
• 1:07:08
  high number were still coming in.
• 1:07:11
  And I mean, as long as you could, I guess, afford it to an
• 1:07:18
  extent, you could, you know, you had access to a lot of, of
• 1:07:24
  services that would have been impossible elsewhere or, or, or
• 1:07:29
  would have been very difficult to have access to.
• 1:07:33
  So, but even Even so, I started, you know, we arrive and we're in
• 1:07:40
  a temporary accommodation. And I thought, OK, what, what do
• 1:07:43
  I do? And the, I started researching
• 1:07:46
  and I found there was a yoga studio close by and I went to
• 1:07:50
  this yoga studio. They have like pregnancy yoga.
• 1:07:54
  And I mean, what else do I do? It's super hot.
• 1:07:58
  I'm pregnant. I'm not used to this heat.
• 1:08:00
  I don't know anyone. My husband goes to work all day
• 1:08:06
  OK, and for the first time I was actually afraid to explore
• 1:08:13
  around. Maybe because I was.
• 1:08:14
  Pregnant. Yeah, because.
• 1:08:17
  I think you start becoming a little bit more, I don't know,
• 1:08:24
  aware, but also, you know, I had lost the first pregnant, you
• 1:08:29
  know, the first pregnancy, the first child.
• 1:08:32
  So I was a lot more. I wasn't willing to experiment
• 1:08:36
  as much. You said in the post that you
• 1:08:40
  you hated Singapore in the first year.
• 1:08:42
  Yes, I hated it. What was the unique turning
• 1:08:46
  point that switch it from hating it to loving it?
• 1:08:51
  I think one thing is I probably, I probably became very depressed
• 1:08:59
  during my last last months of, of pregnancy and then definitely
• 1:09:04
  I had postpartum depression. So that made it very difficult.
• 1:09:10
  I had a very difficult delivery for, you know, again, different
• 1:09:16
  reasons. Some of them were, you know, I
• 1:09:21
  lost the first child and it was going to be all medicalized.
• 1:09:25
  So I said, OK, I'm going to the other extreme, which is I'm
• 1:09:30
  giving birth in a water tub. Yeah, yeah, yeah, almost,
• 1:09:35
  almost, you know. Sorry for the joke, but I.
• 1:09:37
  Yes, yes, yes, in the forest and the spirit of Mother Earth.
• 1:09:42
  Exactly, Yeah. You know, support me and I ended
• 1:09:46
  up with like a, you know, emergency C-section at 42 weeks
• 1:09:51
  pregnant, you know, after being induced and blah, blah, blah,
• 1:09:56
  blah, blah. So it went completely the
• 1:09:58
  opposite way. So that in itself had been, you
• 1:10:02
  know, it was a a massive kind of trauma for me.
• 1:10:07
  And and then from there on, yeah, I had AI think, yeah, I
• 1:10:12
  was definitely, I definitely had postpartum depression.
• 1:10:15
  And I started idolizing London and thinking, you know, I
• 1:10:20
  wouldn't be so hot. I wouldn't be this London.
• 1:10:24
  I could just walk out with a child and, you know, at least I
• 1:10:28
  would have friends. And even though, you know, these
• 1:10:30
  yoga teachers, I, I mentioned, they were the first people I
• 1:10:33
  met. They were so nice to me and they
• 1:10:36
  were my first friends and genuinely caring and so
• 1:10:41
  supportive of me. I don't know, I, I couldn't, I
• 1:10:44
  couldn't see that I was just romanticizing London.
• 1:10:49
  And then I went back to London and I realized, Oh my God, no,
• 1:10:54
  London with a small baby is not a place to be.
• 1:11:00
  The Underground, you know, so many Underground stations don't
• 1:11:04
  have a lift. And if you have a pram.
• 1:11:07
  And I was one of those horrible women that would rush in the
• 1:11:13
  morning to work and would see a woman, like blocking the stairs
• 1:11:17
  with her pram. And I'd be like, and no, I was
• 1:11:22
  like, how could I have done that?
• 1:11:26
  And, you know, you have toilets, there's no toilets around.
• 1:11:30
  You know, there's like, yeah, different designated stops, but
• 1:11:33
  with some of them don't have changing stations for kids in
• 1:11:38
  Singapore. You have the changing station,
• 1:11:40
  the breastfeeding room, the hot water in case you needed to
• 1:11:45
  prepare formula. Most of the of the most of the
• 1:11:56
  MRT stations have a lift and if they don't have a lift, people
• 1:12:01
  are so helpful and so accommodating and just so
• 1:12:09
  polite. In Singapore at least.
• 1:12:13
  Again, that was my experience, yes.
• 1:12:19
  I mean, yeah, the lactation consultant that I had who
• 1:12:26
  supported me with my breastfeeding journey then you
• 1:12:31
  know, I had AI had a doula who's like a did they support is a
• 1:12:38
  woman who supports you during the the birth and then
• 1:12:42
  afterwards because you don't know how to be a mom.
• 1:12:47
  There is, there is this results, it's not.
• 1:12:49
  A midwife, yeah, it's not like a it's like a midwife, but they
• 1:12:53
  call them doulas because there's midwives.
• 1:12:57
  But there's also this woman who I think the term means something
• 1:13:01
  like slave because they really do everything for you.
• 1:13:06
  They help you and you know, from massage to, you know, helping.
• 1:13:13
  You no. No, no, no, no, no, no,
• 1:13:17
  absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:13:20
  But but then you know, you do have this, for example, this
• 1:13:24
  goes into Eastern medical theory.
• 1:13:29
  You have this confinement nannies or who can be doulas or
• 1:13:34
  not doulas and you know it, it there's a lot of mix of of
• 1:13:39
  again, you know, Singapore is a melting pot, but you have the
• 1:13:42
  Western medical establishment and then you have a very strong
• 1:13:47
  Eastern medicinal approach, traditional approaches Indian,
• 1:13:54
  you know, Ayurvedic approach. So you have this ladies called
• 1:13:59
  confinement nannies who are with you for the 1st 28 days.
• 1:14:03
  I mean, you can, they can be with you for say 2 weeks a week,
• 1:14:08
  whatever you pay for the service, obviously, but they are
• 1:14:12
  there to help you with the baby as you settle in.
• 1:14:16
  But they also cook for you the food that you need to eat to
• 1:14:20
  replenish your energy and your whatever you, you know, whatever
• 1:14:30
  traditional approach you want to have.
• 1:14:34
  And it was something that, I mean, I didn't have parents, I
• 1:14:37
  didn't have family, I didn't have anything.
• 1:14:39
  It was my husband. And I was like, OK, yes, I'm not
• 1:14:42
  going to be here alone talking to a plant and to a baby.
• 1:14:46
  I need help. And, you know, we hired this
• 1:14:53
  nanny and they make teas for you, so your blood energy
• 1:14:57
  increases and you produce milk. And, you know, you don't get so
• 1:15:01
  many wrinkles or what? And so in that sense, they
• 1:15:08
  really. And then, you know, you should
• 1:15:10
  not be cold. You should not drink cold water
• 1:15:13
  and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, yeah, OK, bring
• 1:15:16
  it on. I'm going to be pampered.
• 1:15:18
  I'm going to let you pamper me. And, you know, be taken care of.
• 1:15:22
  You know the advice in Germany for that?
• 1:15:25
  They told my wife and they said she had the she had the problem
• 1:15:27
  being to start the rotation when my kid was born.
• 1:15:30
  And the advice from doctor was take a beer.
• 1:15:36
  Yes, I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm sure it helped, you know,
• 1:15:40
  I'm sure. And stuff and and take a beer.
• 1:15:43
  It's. Yeah, I mean, they might give
• 1:15:47
  you some liquor, but they make some different teas and you
• 1:15:51
  know, they, they, they, they have all this kind of
• 1:15:55
  approaches. So in that sense, there are a
• 1:15:58
  lot of services that obviously you pay for.
• 1:16:03
  And in Singapore as a foreigner, nothing is government given.
• 1:16:08
  I mean, forget about it. If you go to pay in Singapore,
• 1:16:12
  you need to have a very good insurance that you know pays for
• 1:16:18
  everything because Singapore is not going to doesn't have
• 1:16:23
  freeloaders. I forgot to ask you one thing
• 1:16:27
  before Fatima, how is the as a as a European citizen?
• 1:16:32
  Are you was your husband directly allowed to work there
• 1:16:35
  or he need a a working visa? Yeah, so it's a lengthy process
• 1:16:40
  and you need to apply for an employment pass.
• 1:16:42
  It's called an EP and it's given to the husband.
• 1:16:47
  The wife has something called ADP which is a dependent pass
• 1:16:53
  and in the past this dependent past allow a dependent past
• 1:17:00
  allowed you also to work. But since certainly since we
• 1:17:06
  arrived in 2017, that was not the case anymore.
• 1:17:13
  So wives did not have the automatic right to employment.
• 1:17:19
  So the husband is the one who has employment pass and he's in
• 1:17:24
  a way sponsoring the white who's really a dependent or trailing
• 1:17:30
  spouse. So not allowed to work.
• 1:17:37
  And, and yeah, you need to have a comprehensive insurance that
• 1:17:40
  would, you know, pay for absolutely everything because
• 1:17:43
  there's no freeloaders. The child does not get
• 1:17:46
  citizenship or absolutely anything, even though they are
• 1:17:49
  born in Singapore. And yeah.
• 1:18:00
  You there was the situation with the with the first kid.
• 1:18:04
  On the second kid, you mentioned that it was COVID as you were
• 1:18:07
  pregnant with the second kid. No, so she was born in October
• 1:18:11
  2019. OK.
• 1:18:13
  So I was very lucky. So just before COVID and then
• 1:18:17
  ramblings of COVID, COVID started in January to 2020
• 1:18:24
  already in Singapore. Yeah.
• 1:18:27
  Yeah. Because, you know, there were
• 1:18:29
  the cases in China. Yeah, I, I remember it as you
• 1:18:34
  know, the second-half of January 2020, we started hearing about
• 1:18:39
  this case and, you know, there's this case in China and there's
• 1:18:43
  this flu and respiratory disease.
• 1:18:47
  Yes. No Singapore had had experience
• 1:18:53
  with the what was was it avian flu or HS?
• 1:19:00
  H5 N 1. Yeah, H5 N 1 before which had
• 1:19:05
  been deadly and had, you know, there had been deaths from it.
• 1:19:10
  So the government had had that experience and they had learned
• 1:19:14
  from it. So they had been preparing for
• 1:19:20
  another kind of Black Swan event, which meant that
• 1:19:26
  immediately they had contingency plans and they knew what to do.
• 1:19:32
  So it was scary in the beginning, but it was also, I
• 1:19:41
  mean, that the Prime Minister was very transparent and they
• 1:19:47
  would give, you know, they would address a nation.
• 1:19:50
  And, you know, wearing a mask is nothing new in, in, in East
• 1:19:58
  Asia. You know the immediately, the
• 1:20:02
  the moment you have a cold, you put on a mask, Not so much.
• 1:20:08
  For yourself, but out of respect for others because you're in a
• 1:20:11
  public space and you don't want to be spreading your germs.
• 1:20:14
  So it's kind of seen as a yeah, out of respect for others.
• 1:20:20
  You're not kind of, you know, sharing your germs.
• 1:20:24
  So, you know, mask wearing was nothing controversial.
• 1:20:30
  I would say there's this term in Singapore called kiasu, which
• 1:20:37
  has different meanings, but one of them is, you know, they don't
• 1:20:41
  want to be the last one, but there's also this kind of fear
• 1:20:44
  of death. And they can be very, very
• 1:20:48
  careful. So, you know, OK, if there's a
• 1:20:52
  danger of exposure, you will just wear the mask.
• 1:20:56
  No big deal. And people would just wear a
• 1:20:59
  mask. You know, they're very clean.
• 1:21:01
  Everything's very sanitized to begin with.
• 1:21:05
  You know, you find sanitizers everywhere.
• 1:21:09
  You know, everything is kept extremely clean.
• 1:21:12
  The playgrounds, the, the MRT, the, the MRT is a metro.
• 1:21:21
  You cannot eat or drink in the MRT and except water.
• 1:21:26
  And that just keeps it impeccable for everyone.
• 1:21:31
  So they just kind of upped it a little bit.
• 1:21:37
  Then you had contact tracing. We did have, we did have a
• 1:21:45
  lockdown. We had two lockdowns, two weeks
• 1:21:52
  I think was the first one and then the second one I think was
• 1:21:56
  another two weeks. And then slowly, slowly they
• 1:21:59
  started to open. But I mean, after the initial
• 1:22:04
  fear that you got at just something so unknown, I felt
• 1:22:13
  very reassured and I knew that the government had the best, my
• 1:22:17
  best interests and the best interests of their population at
• 1:22:22
  hand. And it did.
• 1:22:23
  It never became a political game.
• 1:22:26
  You know, the opposition and the government in, you know, the the
• 1:22:32
  party in power got together and it was let's just do our best
• 1:22:36
  for our citizens. And it turned out that they had
• 1:22:39
  stockpiled medication. So there was never this feel of,
• 1:22:42
  you know, fear of medications. There was like everywhere in the
• 1:22:46
  world, people started to stock up on toilet paper.
• 1:22:50
  And yes, there was maybe a shortage of toilet paper for a
• 1:22:54
  while, but every, you know, most important.
• 1:22:57
  Yes. Of.
• 1:22:58
  Course. And then, you know, those of us
• 1:23:02
  who started to stockpile, because I was one of them, on
• 1:23:06
  toilet paper, we started to feel really guilty because we had
• 1:23:10
  deprived our fellow, say, the sense of toilet paper.
• 1:23:13
  So we just went around the condo like distributing.
• 1:23:17
  Toilet paper you're writing you're writing something you're
• 1:23:21
  you have written something in the post that you're one of your
• 1:23:23
  kids got got COVID, yeah. And you were impressed by by the
• 1:23:27
  Doctor Who was on call 24. Seven, yes.
• 1:23:30
  So the whole family got COVID. OK.
• 1:23:33
  And. It was pre vaccination.
• 1:23:38
  Post vaccination. Post vaccination, OK.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, post vaccination, yes, yes or no?
• 1:23:45
  I don't remember now. Pre or post, I don't remember.
• 1:23:49
  Like my kids were too young to be vaccinated at that time.
• 1:23:53
  So I we got our, you know, we got our shots and it was like,
• 1:23:57
  you know, if you don't want to get vaccinated, you can leave
• 1:23:59
  the country. Thank you very much.
• 1:24:01
  You know, you need to prove, you know, show proof of vaccination.
• 1:24:04
  And you know, this is when you know you have your this is the
• 1:24:08
  place you need to go to get vaccinated.
• 1:24:10
  And these are the available times.
• 1:24:13
  Select your slot and so smooth. So, you know, just a beauty.
• 1:24:21
  I I'm just so impressed by their logistics and how quickly they,
• 1:24:27
  they set up the system and you would arrive to say a football
• 1:24:32
  stadium or to a basketball stadium, gym, school gym, and
• 1:24:37
  they would have the booths and, you know, you would scan and
• 1:24:41
  they would check it's you, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:24:43
  You go, you get vaccinated and yeah, that's it.
• 1:24:49
  We got COVID and at that point you needed to, there was contact
• 1:24:54
  tracing and you needed to report if you got COVID.
• 1:24:58
  So the government also distributed for free face masks
• 1:25:03
  and COVID tests. So you would get on your post
• 1:25:07
  box, you would get COVID tests for free and they would be, they
• 1:25:13
  would replenish them every six months.
• 1:25:16
  So we did the tests and we were all positive.
• 1:25:21
  So we said, OK, we have, you know, all the adults are sick.
• 1:25:25
  And also we have kids under 3 years old who are also sick or
• 1:25:31
  at 3 or 4 years old anyway. So yeah, we had small kids who
• 1:25:36
  were under three, yeah, or under 4 with, with COVID.
• 1:25:42
  And they immediately put two doctors on call on WhatsApp for
• 1:25:49
  the kids. And these doctors would call us.
• 1:25:52
  They immediately called me and said, this is your assigned Dr.
• 1:25:54
  for your child, child, smaller child, and this is your assigned
• 1:25:58
  Dr. for your older child. How are the kids doing?
• 1:26:01
  How is their fever? You know, has a fever, you know,
• 1:26:07
  has it gone down? Is it up?
• 1:26:08
  Can you please monitor it? What to do?
• 1:26:11
  You know, you apply, you know, wash clothes, you know, cold
• 1:26:15
  compresses, blah, blah, blah, you know, the basic stuff.
• 1:26:20
  But also, OK, if it goes above this, you can go, this is the,
• 1:26:24
  the, the, the hospital you can go to.
• 1:26:28
  Or this is when you need to give them medication.
• 1:26:31
  This is how long it should last. If they see if you notice any of
• 1:26:35
  the following, you need to go to a health service.
• 1:26:38
  It was it was amazing. It was amazing for free.
• 1:26:42
  This was absolutely for free for everyone.
• 1:26:45
  Because in this case, I guess the logic is you don't want to
• 1:26:50
  differentiate. If I get sick and I am a
• 1:26:53
  different skin color and nationality than you, it doesn't
• 1:26:56
  matter because my bacteria will hit your local person the same
• 1:27:00
  way. It makes no distinction.
• 1:27:02
  So in that case. Yeah.
• 1:27:04
  And at the end it would not be fair to say, OK, if you are poor
• 1:27:07
  you have to die because. Yeah, but not, but not even if
• 1:27:13
  you're poor, if you're just a different skin color or you're a
• 1:27:16
  different nationality or you're a different everything was the
• 1:27:20
  same for everyone. But the fact that you had
• 1:27:22
  doctors, like 2 doctors and the, the, the age difference between
• 1:27:26
  your kids kids is not that big, right?
• 1:27:29
  It's two years, yeah. So you they could have said, OK,
• 1:27:32
  you have one person that is your contact person.
• 1:27:34
  But he said assigned to because they knew that most probably the
• 1:27:37
  symptoms were different in the age groups.
• 1:27:40
  Yeah, it was. I was so impressed.
• 1:27:46
  I was. Yeah.
• 1:27:47
  And immediately, you know, work from home started again
• 1:27:53
  relatively smoothly and continued for a while.
• 1:27:56
  And then, yeah, businesses reopened again very fast.
• 1:28:07
  People being very cautious, did not go out that much.
• 1:28:11
  So they relied a lot on delivery services.
• 1:28:16
  I wasn't that scared. And I would just wear my mask.
• 1:28:20
  It would suck because the heat and the humidity, it was just
• 1:28:24
  horrible. But yeah, you would go out.
• 1:28:26
  You would do your contact tracing.
• 1:28:27
  You know, you would do whatever you needed to do.
• 1:28:30
  And then you would go home. And then things started to
• 1:28:34
  relax. You could still work from home.
• 1:28:39
  Maybe you needed to keep a distance.
• 1:28:41
  Then you didn't really need to keep a distance.
• 1:28:43
  But the country state closed for almost 2 years.
• 1:28:49
  Yeah, closed in the sense that in the beginning.
• 1:28:53
  Like Australia? Yeah, it was hard to.
• 1:28:56
  And if you did need to, you could go out.
• 1:28:59
  But to come in, in the beginning it would be a quarantine, but
• 1:29:04
  after a while you had to pay for your quarantine.
• 1:29:11
  Oh, Oh yeah. OK, that means not, not so many
• 1:29:15
  people are coming anymore. No, not so many people were
• 1:29:18
  coming. And if you were, say, if you
• 1:29:19
  were a foreigner and you wanted to go out, Can you imagine?
• 1:29:24
  Twice. Yes, I mean quarantine with two
• 1:29:28
  kids in a hotel room, you can't leave for two weeks.
• 1:29:33
  First of all you that and then the second you have to pay for
• 1:29:35
  it. And then you pay, need to pay
• 1:29:37
  for it. You need to pay for it.
• 1:29:39
  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly.
• 1:29:42
  All of a sudden, everything, you know, Singapore became a little
• 1:29:48
  bit of a a bubble and you couldn't go out and people could
• 1:29:56
  not come in. Some people were stuck abroad,
• 1:29:59
  which was horrible. There were also cases of
• 1:30:06
  Malaysians. There's Malaysians who work in
• 1:30:09
  Singapore and then they go back to Malaysia, which is just
• 1:30:12
  across the Causeway and they live there and they were stuck
• 1:30:17
  in Singapore and they couldn't see their families for about
• 1:30:22
  more than a year. Mommy moms with, you know, 3
• 1:30:27
  month old babies that didn't meet them until the kid was two
• 1:30:31
  years old. The crazy thing about The crazy
• 1:30:33
  thing about those times is that you had a lot of social context
• 1:30:39
  missing. And like in this case, when you
• 1:30:41
  said people were were both apart from their families and they
• 1:30:44
  were not able to see themselves for weeks, that there were crazy
• 1:30:48
  times, crazy times. Yeah.
• 1:30:50
  And, and, and, and then there was I guess an element of
• 1:30:55
  discrimination because it got to a point where you could maybe go
• 1:31:02
  out and see your family, but you needed to do a quarantine in the
• 1:31:06
  country. You were going to go to pay for
• 1:31:10
  it, see your family and then come back to Singapore and do a
• 1:31:14
  quarantine and pay for it. So.
• 1:31:16
  Nobody can can afford that. Come on, it's time wise.
• 1:31:20
  Time wise. Time wise to begin with, you
• 1:31:23
  know, time wise. Good luck.
• 1:31:24
  If you get the permit, you know, permission for that.
• 1:31:28
  But so for example, my hairdresser had had a baby,
• 1:31:35
  yeah, at the almost around the same time as I had.
• 1:31:39
  And she had, after three months, she had come back to Singapore
• 1:31:43
  to work and the baby was with her family.
• 1:31:45
  And she did not see the baby again until the baby was about
• 1:31:51
  two years. So there were there, I mean,
• 1:31:55
  there, there were a lot of heartbreaking stories.
• 1:32:04
  Yeah, a lot of heart, you know, a lot of heartbreaking stories,
• 1:32:07
  a lot of sad stories. And I guess I was, we were very
• 1:32:12
  privileged in the sense that we were all together and we didn't
• 1:32:18
  have this need. But, you know, there were also
• 1:32:24
  people who lost family members and they couldn't go to funerals
• 1:32:28
  and they couldn't go to yeah, they, they, they couldn't see
• 1:32:34
  their family. So, so again, I obviously I am
• 1:32:41
  just giving you my, yeah, very lucky in a way, experience.
• 1:32:50
  We had a friend whose daughter was living with their grant with
• 1:32:59
  her grandparents in Malaysia. And you know, COVID started and
• 1:33:05
  what's going to happen, what's not going to happen.
• 1:33:08
  And he said, you know what, they're going to close the
• 1:33:10
  border. And he got on the car, drove to
• 1:33:14
  Malaysia, got her daughter, drove back.
• 1:33:17
  And I think 2 days later they closed the border.
• 1:33:20
  So yeah, I mean, I'm, I know I'm speaking from a privileged
• 1:33:27
  position, but. It's it's your own experience
• 1:33:31
  that you can speak from. So yeah, for sure.
• 1:33:34
  And that's the most important at the end.
• 1:33:36
  But but for me, yeah, I mean, COVID was a very relaxing time.
• 1:33:41
  My husband was working from home.
• 1:33:45
  You couldn't really leave your home.
• 1:33:48
  So we were together and then in the afternoon, all the parents,
• 1:33:53
  around 5:30, we would all come out, get together in the
• 1:33:59
  playground and the kids would play and we would, we met our
• 1:34:03
  neighbors and we started getting to know each other and we
• 1:34:08
  became, we became very close. And then, you know, we had this
• 1:34:14
  with one of my my neighbors with whom we became very close.
• 1:34:19
  We developed this walk called insanity walk.
• 1:34:26
  We would walk around the, the sort of the perimeter of the
• 1:34:32
  apartments where we lived. And it was a way to stay
• 1:34:36
  insanity. And I mean, you've started to
• 1:34:39
  talk to people and I know in in a way it isolated you and just
• 1:34:46
  say that started really relying more on social platforms.
• 1:34:50
  But I also found it a time where a lot of people relaxed,
• 1:34:58
  particularly if they had very travel intensive jobs.
• 1:35:01
  Spend more times with the family.
• 1:35:03
  Yeah. And they increase the connection
• 1:35:06
  to the local community because that was the only community that
• 1:35:09
  you could interact with. I think there are also, of
• 1:35:12
  course, besides the huge amount of negatives, there are some
• 1:35:16
  small positives as well. I can say I'm still saying that
• 1:35:19
  even though we had the let's say we had the, we had some, we had,
• 1:35:23
  we have lost some family members and, but I have to say I spend
• 1:35:31
  the most time with my kid. My kid was one also.
• 1:35:34
  So that was amazing. I got to work from home and
• 1:35:38
  there was there was. That was amazing.
• 1:35:41
  I have to say, from that point of view, it was really cool.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah. Fatima, you you wrote that you
• 1:35:49
  wanted to be a Singaporean. Yes.
• 1:35:55
  How did idea came up? How did what?
• 1:36:00
  What was that thing that that born that idea into your head?
• 1:36:05
  Well, I mean, so COVID kind of ends because, I mean, Singapore
• 1:36:12
  was still closed, but I, I, I started to get bored and OK,
• 1:36:19
  it's great to be a mom and everything, but I need to do
• 1:36:22
  something else. I, I really need, I have more to
• 1:36:26
  do. I have more to give.
• 1:36:28
  I am. So I you can't work easily in
• 1:36:33
  Singapore as a dependent. There's a lot of kind of
• 1:36:37
  loophole. So I thought, OK, why don't I
• 1:36:39
  open, why don't I register a company and from there let's see
• 1:36:44
  what I what happens. So I did that and through
• 1:36:50
  serendipity and connections from my previous life as a career
• 1:36:57
  person, I, I, I was, I started a consultancy and I started
• 1:37:05
  working with textiles. I was, I had the role as a
• 1:37:12
  commercial representative in Southeast Asia for a textile
• 1:37:18
  company. So I was working business to
• 1:37:19
  business and just setting up the business was so easy.
• 1:37:23
  I mean, in the UK it's pretty easy as well.
• 1:37:25
  Here it was very easy. And then working with people, I
• 1:37:32
  find Singaporeans to be very honest and they do what they say
• 1:37:36
  they're going to do. And, and I liked how everything,
• 1:37:43
  I mean, it has its drawbacks, right?
• 1:37:46
  But everything is very black or white.
• 1:37:47
  There's very clear answers to everything.
• 1:37:49
  And it's either a yes or no. And and you know, some people
• 1:37:54
  complain about, oh, you can't chew bubble gum and you can't, I
• 1:37:58
  mean, who gives a shit about bubble gum?
• 1:38:00
  If you can walk at 3:00 AM in the morning freely and nobody's
• 1:38:06
  gonna, you know, you're safe. You know, your kids can run
• 1:38:09
  around in the neighborhood and they are safe.
• 1:38:12
  And I don't know, I, I, I, I, I liked that.
• 1:38:23
  I liked that there was, you know, that the government would
• 1:38:28
  for the most part worked. You know, they were working for
• 1:38:33
  you and they were doing their best for you.
• 1:38:36
  And I liked the the community sense that existed.
• 1:38:42
  So for every, you know, for different events, there will be
• 1:38:49
  like neighborhood for calendar, different calendar dates.
• 1:38:54
  There, there will be community events that are organized in
• 1:38:57
  this case by the by your local member of Parliament and his
• 1:39:06
  constituency. So there's a, you know, mid
• 1:39:10
  autumn festival event, there's Chinese New Year, there's,
• 1:39:15
  there's Christmas and New year. There's even a Halloween 1.
• 1:39:19
  So the whole neighborhood would get together, organize this
• 1:39:25
  Halloween trick or treat event. The houses would absolutely
• 1:39:32
  decorate themselves. Yeah, not decorate themselves.
• 1:39:35
  What am I saying? People would decorate their
• 1:39:36
  houses and they would put so much into it.
• 1:39:40
  People would be walking on the street with their kids, you
• 1:39:44
  know, the kids could get semi lost in the crowd and you really
• 1:39:48
  wouldn't worry about it. They would play and you know, if
• 1:39:55
  anyone started getting a bit unruly or, you know, this is
• 1:40:00
  really not on, somebody would step in and put order.
• 1:40:04
  So people are proactive in the sense and trying to keep things
• 1:40:09
  organized and, you know, safe. It works.
• 1:40:12
  Sometimes it can be to an extreme, but I I like that.
• 1:40:17
  I mean, you know, if you have. I don't know, 20 kids in a
• 1:40:22
  bouncy castle and a parent offers to be there to, you know,
• 1:40:26
  keep an eye. And, you know, you start taking
• 1:40:28
  turns with parents and you develop the system of, OK, we
• 1:40:31
  all keep an eye on our kids even if we don't know each other.
• 1:40:35
  And I don't know, or, you know, kids learn how to wait for their
• 1:40:42
  turn on the slide. And I don't know, it might be
• 1:40:46
  really square off me, but you, you learn how to be polite and
• 1:40:51
  to respect others and to live in a community.
• 1:40:55
  And it's not just you. It's how your how what you do
• 1:41:02
  impacts others. I really liked that.
• 1:41:06
  I liked this. Yeah.
• 1:41:08
  I mean, all the neighbors go get together and we have an event
• 1:41:15
  together and then the member of Parliament will come and he will
• 1:41:19
  shake hands and, you know, you can approach them or let's all
• 1:41:24
  get together and have a Chinese New Year celebration.
• 1:41:27
  So we will have the, you know, the dragon dance and the lion
• 1:41:32
  dance. And I don't know, it starts
• 1:41:34
  creating a sense of we share this, the neighbors, you know,
• 1:41:43
  when there was a an earthquake, there was an earthquake in
• 1:41:47
  Turkey about 3 years ago. I remember starting a donation
• 1:41:56
  drive and all of a sudden I got so many things.
• 1:42:01
  My house looked like a warehouse and I didn't know how to take it
• 1:42:05
  to the to the fire station and a neighbor that I've didn't know
• 1:42:12
  and offered to drive me there. And it's perfectly OK because,
• 1:42:19
  you know, and maybe somewhere else you think, Oh my God, what
• 1:42:22
  if he's a weirdo and he kidnap kidnaps me or no, this is, you
• 1:42:28
  know, this is this is what you do.
• 1:42:30
  This is, you know, you knock on people's doors and.
• 1:42:33
  Was it was it an expert only neighborhood or it was a it was.
• 1:42:37
  No, no, no. It was a mix it.
• 1:42:39
  Was a mix. So it does for you, it does the
• 1:42:42
  mixture of of safety and community, right?
• 1:42:46
  Yes, safety, clarity, transparency, Community Trust.
• 1:42:56
  I can leave. I mean, the number of times I
• 1:43:00
  left my bag hanging from a chair and I forgot my bag and an hour
• 1:43:12
  later I'd be like, Oh my God, my bag and I would run back in my
• 1:43:19
  bag would be there. Or I left my phone in the bus
• 1:43:24
  and the bus driver, because it was a loop that the this bus
• 1:43:29
  route did, he would come back and have my phone and give it to
• 1:43:35
  me. Yeah, I I really like that.
• 1:43:42
  And maybe it goes back to respect also.
• 1:43:56
  People are respectful. And again, maybe I'm talking
• 1:44:01
  from my privileged position. I'm sure that you know the
• 1:44:06
  experience I have as what you see it would be very different
• 1:44:11
  if I was another skin color, another nationality.
• 1:44:15
  I look different. I don't know but for me but.
• 1:44:19
  That's, that's not relevant because at the end it's your, we
• 1:44:22
  talk about your experience and I think that's, that's the most
• 1:44:26
  important. But I, I, I have to ask you one
• 1:44:29
  thing, Fatima. So it sounded like an, like an
• 1:44:32
  amazing life. Your husband has a good had a
• 1:44:35
  good job. You end up having a good job
• 1:44:37
  that you like and you enjoy it. Your kids were happy.
• 1:44:41
  Why did you left? So first of all, we tried to
• 1:44:46
  become Singaporean. So once the first step is to
• 1:44:49
  apply for permanent residency. And once you apply to permanent
• 1:44:55
  residency, you start getting some of the benefits of living
• 1:45:00
  in Singapore. That includes being able to
• 1:45:02
  apply to local schools because as a foreigner, you can apply to
• 1:45:08
  to for your kid to go to a local school.
• 1:45:10
  But you are, you know, the last of the.
• 1:45:15
  Last of the. Last to be pick yeah, you have 0
• 1:45:17
  priority and you may end up in a school that's not that's not
• 1:45:22
  good or that is completely in the other side side of of, of
• 1:45:29
  the city state or it just doesn't work for you.
• 1:45:33
  So then you go to an International School and those
• 1:45:37
  are private schools and they're very expensive and my job came
• 1:45:46
  to an end so my consultancy work came to an end So my biggest
• 1:45:52
  client sort of said OK, you know you've done a great job but this
• 1:46:00
  is it we, you know we're cutting budgets blah blah blah blah blah
• 1:46:06
  you're a casualty we love you, but this is it.
• 1:46:12
  And then there was the introduction of this point
• 1:46:17
  system. It's called a compass system and
• 1:46:21
  it's a kin to the Australian system where you need to get
• 1:46:28
  points. So the ability, I mean, you
• 1:46:34
  getting a job does not really depend on your employer anymore.
• 1:46:38
  So you need to meet the employer's criteria, of course,
• 1:46:41
  but you need to meet now a second layer, which is the
• 1:46:45
  government's criteria, which means we will assign to you
• 1:46:49
  points based on the field you work in, your age, your salary,
• 1:46:55
  your nationality, your level of education, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:47:00
  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:47:02
  So this in the beginning applied only to newcomers.
• 1:47:06
  So newcomers to foreign newcomers to Singapore needed to
• 1:47:09
  meet this criteria, but then they applied the system to
• 1:47:14
  foreigners already living in Singapore.
• 1:47:17
  So to renew your employment pass, you need to start meeting
• 1:47:21
  this criteria. And each year, the older you
• 1:47:26
  get, the more you need to earn and your points go down and down
• 1:47:32
  and down and down and down until you know there can be AI mean.
• 1:47:37
  Let's say you have a role as a supervisor and each year your
• 1:47:41
  salary needs to go up. I mean, it, there's going to be
• 1:47:47
  a moment where it just doesn't make sense for you to be the
• 1:47:49
  supervisor of that company because you're earning more than
• 1:47:52
  the CEO. You're too expensive, right?
• 1:47:56
  Or I mean, we don't age backwards.
• 1:48:01
  So after a while, you know, you start getting less and less
• 1:48:06
  points. So that was kind of if you were
• 1:48:10
  already employed. And in my case, it just started
• 1:48:13
  becoming more and more difficult.
• 1:48:15
  I had to, I needed to employ somebody and start paying them a
• 1:48:22
  minimum of X. And I mean, you know, my
• 1:48:26
  consultancy work paid, but I mean, it wasn't like the
• 1:48:30
  biggest, you know, pay of all. So they start making it more and
• 1:48:37
  more difficult. So you need to pay for this
• 1:48:39
  person, you need to pay government contributions for
• 1:48:42
  this person. You need to employ them for a
• 1:48:45
  minimum amount of time. You need to.
• 1:48:47
  So, OK, if you have a, you know, if you have a small business
• 1:48:53
  that allows you to do this, great.
• 1:48:55
  Of course, you know, you, you support the country that is,
• 1:48:58
  that has you and you know, you try to employ everyone, but if
• 1:49:02
  you have a small business, it just doesn't work.
• 1:49:05
  So it kind of makes it very difficult for really small
• 1:49:11
  businesses to survive, which again, might not be the priority
• 1:49:15
  of the government textiles definitely not a priority, but
• 1:49:27
  but yeah, it means that then, then what do you then what, what
• 1:49:32
  do you do? Right?
• 1:49:33
  I what do you do? And you know, I have a second
• 1:49:36
  child going into International School, very expensive.
• 1:49:41
  There's no help after a while, so we were four years on a
• 1:49:48
  secondment contract, but after those four years, all the perks.
• 1:49:54
  Went away. Went away and you get go on a
• 1:49:57
  local contract. So that means we had to pay for
• 1:50:00
  our own health insurance. The house was something we had
• 1:50:04
  to pay for since the beginning. So those golden parachutes don't
• 1:50:10
  really exist in Singapore anymore.
• 1:50:12
  Unless, I don't know, you're the CEO of a massive company, but
• 1:50:17
  mid level, no. So all of a sudden it was.
• 1:50:26
  And Singapore is not cheap. I mean, it's not cheap.
• 1:50:30
  You there are ways to, you know, get around and yes, you have
• 1:50:33
  public transport and I mean, like everything you can budget.
• 1:50:37
  But I mean, rents went up with a pandemic.
• 1:50:42
  There was, you know, rents started to go up.
• 1:50:47
  I mean, some people got rent increases of up to 50 percent,
• 1:50:53
  80%. We had, you know, we had a
• 1:50:57
  really lovely, lovely landlord who, I mean, who just such a a
• 1:51:09
  really lovely man. And you know, we didn't get that
• 1:51:12
  much of A, of a rent increase. But all of a sudden, there were
• 1:51:16
  increases everywhere. Transportation increased, food
• 1:51:21
  increased, everything increased and salaries were not going up
• 1:51:25
  as as quickly. And then on top of that, you
• 1:51:28
  lose one source of income. The introduction of this point
• 1:51:33
  system, it just started to put a lot of pressure on my husband
• 1:51:36
  and I. And we thought, you know what,
• 1:51:40
  we have the second one coming up to primary school.
• 1:51:43
  We'll need to start paying international fees.
• 1:51:46
  I don't have a job. The prospect of me getting a job
• 1:51:51
  is tenuous. Let's see if there are
• 1:51:58
  alternatives elsewhere. And very quickly an alternative
• 1:52:04
  came in the Middle East and that's where we are.
• 1:52:10
  So it was our choice in the sense that could we have stayed
• 1:52:18
  there for longer for sure. Would it have you know, we
• 1:52:22
  probably would have started going into savings and debt and
• 1:52:26
  whatever. Is that what you want to do?
• 1:52:30
  You know, how long can we use sustain this and how long can
• 1:52:35
  you you know what you know, when will my company say like, look,
• 1:52:41
  I can't keep increasing your salary and you're let go and
• 1:52:44
  then you're given two weeks to leave the country.
• 1:52:48
  But sounds this this. Point system sounds really like
• 1:52:52
  a socialist measure, I have to say.
• 1:52:54
  I'm it's, it's a bit, it's bit a bit towards strong left.
• 1:53:03
  Well, I mean, like Lee Kuan Yew used to say they're pragmatists.
• 1:53:09
  And I think, well, I mean, I, I, I, I don't know.
• 1:53:16
  I think it's a shame because like I say in the post, you
• 1:53:19
  know, they, the government seems to be very keen on attractive,
• 1:53:25
  very keen on attracting very wealthy individuals who yes,
• 1:53:32
  they might bring a lot of money into the country, but I don't
• 1:53:36
  think they add to the vibrancy of, of the place.
• 1:53:40
  I mean, you know, you all of a sudden, OK, my sector was
• 1:53:44
  textiles and I would speak to my clients and these were people
• 1:53:50
  who would sell fabric in Chinatown or in, you know,
• 1:53:53
  different parts of the city. And they were having an issue
• 1:53:56
  with seamstresses. Most of the seamstresses came
• 1:54:00
  from Malaysia and they would not get, they could not get any more
• 1:54:04
  employment passes or work passes for seamstresses because it's
• 1:54:12
  not a field that is considered a priority for the Singaporean
• 1:54:17
  government. OK.
• 1:54:18
  So all of a sudden, there's no seamstresses.
• 1:54:21
  There's really no Singaporeans that want to be seamstresses or
• 1:54:26
  tailors. OK, It's not the end of the
• 1:54:28
  world, but you start losing that kind of vibrancy then, OK, so if
• 1:54:33
  there's nobody to make your, you know, your clothes, you don't
• 1:54:36
  know how to sew yourself, OK, Then the fabric shops start to
• 1:54:40
  go and then it all of a sudden starts becoming very cookie
• 1:54:43
  cutter, you know, big chains everywhere.
• 1:54:50
  If you start losing these people, who would, you know, we
• 1:54:53
  would eat at Hawker centers, which are the kind of community
• 1:54:57
  communities, sort of. And the community is gone
• 1:55:00
  because if it, if you bring wealthy people in, they don't
• 1:55:03
  come there to build a community. Usually people who are, who have
• 1:55:06
  an extreme world, they go into places where they can buy the
• 1:55:09
  right to do everything. That's the reason why they are
• 1:55:12
  doing it, to avoid taxes and to buy the right to do everything
• 1:55:16
  and not respect the community. Well, or not really to integrate
• 1:55:21
  yourself, because with that level of wealth you do.
• 1:55:23
  Care you can buy your friends. You can buy your friends.
• 1:55:27
  You keep yourself apart. You know you want to be part of
• 1:55:30
  a certain milieu. Yeah, I I read for not long the
• 1:55:36
  the book of that whistle blower from Facebook.
• 1:55:39
  I don't know if you know the book.
• 1:55:41
  It's called Careless People. Yeah, yes, yes.
• 1:55:44
  You know it. Yeah.
• 1:55:45
  And you know, you know. I haven't read it but.
• 1:55:47
  So the the most shocking in a negative way from apart from
• 1:55:51
  that book was that Mark Zuckerberg is always allowed by
• 1:55:55
  everyone that he's playing with to win at board games and he
• 1:55:58
  doesn't see it. My 7 year old I can see if I
• 1:56:09
  allowed him to win. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:56:11
  They take offense. Exactly.
• 1:56:13
  And they take offense. But if you're really rich like
• 1:56:17
  you pretend, you don't sit I. Mean yes and no, but I mean, you
• 1:56:23
  start losing this. I think you start losing certain
• 1:56:27
  vibrancy, absolutely. You start losing maybe a group
• 1:56:31
  of people that yeah, OK, I don't have the same cultural
• 1:56:35
  upbringing, but we have other things in common.
• 1:56:39
  You know, we're both working to give our kids a better
• 1:56:42
  education. We believe in this.
• 1:56:44
  We believe to an extent in meritocracy.
• 1:56:47
  We believe in respecting others. And I don't know, you don't have
• 1:56:56
  this sense of entitlement. I again, I don't know.
• 1:56:59
  So, so this, this is what we, what we started to, to see.
• 1:57:05
  And you know, the, the, the government at the moment has
• 1:57:10
  really been prioritizing certain sectors.
• 1:57:13
  And that's what they, you know, they say, okay, this is a
• 1:57:16
  future. This is 1 of what we want to do.
• 1:57:18
  And I mean, Singapore to an extent is engineered.
• 1:57:22
  It has been an engineered society.
• 1:57:24
  It's a country that is what, 65 years old, 60 years old, I mean,
• 1:57:29
  and it was the vision of a single man who thought, I can
• 1:57:33
  make this swamp into something that the world has never seen
• 1:57:38
  before. And people probably went like,
• 1:57:40
  OK, you're absolutely insane. And then 50 years later, he
• 1:57:44
  proved everyone wrong still. Yeah.
• 1:57:51
  So it was bittersweet. I think there's, you know, you
• 1:57:58
  have conscription in Singapore, so all males need to do military
• 1:58:02
  service. Will women be allowed to do, you
• 1:58:07
  know, military service? There's a big debate.
• 1:58:10
  Some people say that if you have a male child that your chances
• 1:58:15
  of applying for permanent residency increase.
• 1:58:22
  Yes. No, you don't know.
• 1:58:24
  Could it have we waited longer and maybe it would have come
• 1:58:28
  because you apply and then you don't know?
• 1:58:30
  What's happening? Yeah.
• 1:58:32
  What's happening? And you know you will, you know.
• 1:58:35
  And if you try to find out, they will tell you.
• 1:58:38
  You will find out in due course. And we're assessing your
• 1:58:41
  application and you don't know what's happening.
• 1:58:44
  We are just reading your Facebook posts.
• 1:58:46
  Yes, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:58:49
  Oh my God, Fatima, you had an impressive ride.
• 1:58:55
  I have to say. I'm, I, I, I didn't sign up sign
• 1:58:59
  up for the whole ride when we first talked because I didn't
• 1:59:03
  know all the details. But I have to say I'm, I'm I'm
• 1:59:05
  deeply impressed and I think you're a, you're a fabulous
• 1:59:10
  human being that that never said no to adventure and this.
• 1:59:16
  Is and well, yes, I think you know, just to sort of close up,
• 1:59:20
  I know that we've gone over our time, but I think one of the
• 1:59:24
  other reasons why I liked Singapore so much was because it
• 1:59:31
  was very stable. It was very predictable and it
• 1:59:40
  was very safe, which maybe are things that in my own country
• 1:59:46
  are not the case. So, you know, going back to
• 1:59:49
  Mexico this summer, I mean, you see that, you know, it's all
• 1:59:57
  political division and scoring political points and the
• 2:00:03
  population is just, you know, the least on people's, you know,
• 2:00:11
  people in power, that's the least thing on their minds.
• 2:00:13
  The streets were full of potholes and dirty and like, how
• 2:00:19
  can people live like this when we're used to, you know, this
• 2:00:22
  perfection? And if there's.
• 2:00:25
  You know, there was an accident. There was a sinkhole in
• 2:00:29
  Singapore a couple of months ago, and the director of the
• 2:00:33
  Public Board of Utilities came out to apologize, to say that
• 2:00:40
  they were extremely sorry that this sinkhole had occurred.
• 2:00:44
  And what, you know it in my hometown, if you, you know, if
• 2:00:51
  your car gets destroyed because there's a pothole, I gives a
• 2:00:55
  shit. There's killings, there's
• 2:00:59
  kidnappings. You know, kidnappings were
• 2:01:01
  things that, you know, I grew up in, even in the 80s when Mexico
• 2:01:06
  was relatively safe, you know, there was still this kind of
• 2:01:10
  things. People don't trust each other.
• 2:01:13
  People are just waiting for the other person to stab you in the
• 2:01:16
  back. People don't do what they say
• 2:01:19
  they are going to do. And I found in I found in
• 2:01:22
  Singapore that you could trust people.
• 2:01:24
  Of course there's going to be backstabbing because you know,
• 2:01:26
  we're humans. But but to an extent, everyone
• 2:01:32
  seems to be working towards a shared goal.
• 2:01:35
  If somebody says I'm going to be there and I'm going to do my job
• 2:01:38
  and I'm going to do it this way, for the most part, they do it.
• 2:01:43
  The taxi driver, you know, will charge you what's fair there.
• 2:01:47
  Of course, again, there's you know, people who try to be
• 2:01:52
  smarter than you know, than they should everywhere.
• 2:01:56
  But, but it's rare in, in most instances, I find people to be
• 2:02:00
  very decent and very honest and it's very safe.
• 2:02:05
  And, and, and you didn't have, I don't know, I mean, this makes
• 2:02:12
  you a bit emotional, but you don't have the uncertainty of,
• 2:02:20
  you know, political assassinations or you don't have
• 2:02:26
  like your currency devaluating from one day to another and you
• 2:02:33
  lose your savings or, you know, somebody arrives and, well, you
• 2:02:38
  know, they take over your house because what are you going to do
• 2:02:42
  about it? So I'm not saying that it's
• 2:02:45
  perfect, and I'm sure there's corruption because corruption
• 2:02:48
  exists everywhere, but for the most part I see it as a system
• 2:02:57
  that still works for everyone. You know, Fatima, I think it's,
• 2:03:01
  it's absolutely normal what you feel because we are social
• 2:03:05
  animals and we need the community and we need to trust
• 2:03:09
  the people around us and we need to rely on the people around us.
• 2:03:13
  And when we are not able to do that, we suffer.
• 2:03:15
  And that's normal. And of course you are connected
• 2:03:19
  then you are. You are emotionally connected to
• 2:03:21
  a place where you could rely on your neighbor, where you could
• 2:03:24
  be. Yes, yes.
• 2:03:25
  Where you could you are not afraid to let your kids on the
• 2:03:29
  playground on another neighbor's watch because you are sure that
• 2:03:32
  you are finding them back when you come back yes and yes and
• 2:03:35
  all the all these things are normal.
• 2:03:37
  You know I, I do keep bringing this this example that I read in
• 2:03:43
  I think in Michelle Obamas book when I said the community was
• 2:03:45
  raising the the child and I think this is what we all miss.
• 2:03:48
  We all miss this community that works together.
• 2:03:51
  And, and if I see your kids outside, then they are doing
• 2:03:55
  something bad. I call you and tell you, see, I,
• 2:03:57
  I've seen this. Maybe you can talk to him.
• 2:03:59
  But I, I don't call you to, to have a fight with you.
• 2:04:03
  You know, I want to help you. I, and this is something which
• 2:04:06
  is missing in the society because in the society at the
• 2:04:09
  moment, and I can tell you it's ever the same from my experience
• 2:04:13
  at least. We are trying to be to have more
• 2:04:15
  money than the other, to have a better car, to have a better
• 2:04:18
  phone, to have a better, I don't know, a better name it a better
• 2:04:21
  kid. Even that we are we are forcing
• 2:04:23
  our kid to be better than the neighbors could, which is so
• 2:04:26
  stupid, so stupid. And I think this is something
• 2:04:30
  which is missing and this is something which is connecting
• 2:04:32
  you to Singapore. And I think that's it would be
• 2:04:35
  I, I don't want to disappoint you, but it would be hard to
• 2:04:38
  find it somewhere else, yes. Yes, yes.
• 2:04:41
  So in Singapore they call it the kampong Kampong spirit, which
• 2:04:45
  is, it translates like a little bit like the community or the
• 2:04:51
  neighborhood spirit. And yes, it's the spirit of, you
• 2:04:55
  know, we, we help each other. Exactly, exactly.
• 2:04:58
  And this is this is something which is which is hopefully will
• 2:05:01
  come back one day. And I think there are going to
• 2:05:04
  be a this wake up calls happening in the late years
• 2:05:07
  where countries are bombing each other for two pieces of land,
• 2:05:11
  which makes absolutely zero sense.
• 2:05:14
  Maybe we'll have a wake up call and realize nobody cares.
• 2:05:18
  Nobody cares if on this part of the land is written.
• 2:05:21
  I don't know, Singapore or Malaysia or China or whatever is
• 2:05:25
  written. We are all people and we try for
• 2:05:27
  this community together. That's it.
• 2:05:29
  Yes, I I think, I think that's, yeah, a value that.
• 2:05:34
  I mean, I didn't. If you had asked me when I lived
• 2:05:39
  in London if this was important, I would have told you.
• 2:05:43
  No, of course not. Who cares?
• 2:05:45
  Because you are in that world or in that world of running of of
• 2:05:49
  being on a rush, of getting, getting things done, climbing
• 2:05:53
  the career out, of doing that and that and that deliver 1.
• 2:05:57
  But once you realize that actually, you know what this is
• 2:06:02
  really valuable and it's really important and and you realize
• 2:06:07
  that there's another way, right? So if I go back home and I, you
• 2:06:11
  know, tell you know my parents or whoever, but why don't you
• 2:06:16
  trust this or why don't you give them the benefit of the doubt or
• 2:06:21
  to look at me like I am crazy. But but but you have experienced
• 2:06:27
  a place where actually that is possible and it's working and
• 2:06:31
  you, yes, it's working. Let's see how long it lasts
• 2:06:35
  because everything changes. Hopefully it won't but but but
• 2:06:41
  it is possible. And I think that's, that's,
• 2:06:45
  yeah, I, I think I'm very lucky to have experienced.
• 2:06:49
  Absolutely, absolutely I envy you.
• 2:06:51
  I'm searching for that. I, I know I'm, I'm, I have to
• 2:06:54
  say I'm a, I'm AUS fanboy. And I always thought that those
• 2:06:58
  small communities that, that exist in the US, those small
• 2:07:01
  villages are like this. But from the stories that I
• 2:07:04
  heard from my guest, it's just a dream.
• 2:07:06
  It's not reality. I'm sure it exists.
• 2:07:10
  Absolutely, absolutely. I want to finish on a on a
• 2:07:14
  positive note and I want to have a smile.
• 2:07:16
  I have I usually have 5 rapid fire question I call them and
• 2:07:21
  it's tailored. They are tailored by for for the
• 2:07:23
  guest and I have to ask you best food country Mexico, Italy or
• 2:07:29
  Singapore. I don't know.
• 2:07:40
  No. I don't know.
• 2:07:51
  OK, that's so you're not a, you're not a foodie or you
• 2:07:55
  cannot decide. I'm not a purist.
• 2:07:58
  I mean, I take the best of wherever.
• 2:08:00
  In Singapore you have a mix of everything.
• 2:08:04
  You can find everything. Yeah, you can find everything in
• 2:08:13
  Italy, obviously you have the ingredients and then you have
• 2:08:17
  the simplicity of it and the simplicity, but really focusing
• 2:08:24
  on the on the, on the ingredients and on, you know,
• 2:08:29
  this simple, beautiful way of making the most out of it.
• 2:08:32
  And in Mexico you can have both. You can have the ingredients.
• 2:08:36
  Because when I was there, Oh my God, I, I, yes, I mean, from the
• 2:08:44
  fish, you could get the fish, the, the, you know, the, the,
• 2:08:49
  the vegetables, the fruits. It was really amazing.
• 2:08:54
  But also the the way in which you can combine them right?
• 2:08:58
  Which again it it's a mixture of so many things so.
• 2:09:08
  OK, Which? Sorry, No, no, you don't have to
• 2:09:12
  say sorry. You don't have to have an
• 2:09:13
  answer. What did you face the biggest
• 2:09:15
  culture shock? Was it UK, was it China or was
• 2:09:18
  it Singapore? Biggest culture shock I think
• 2:09:28
  the biggest culture shock was in the beginning of living in
• 2:09:32
  China. So that time I lived in China
• 2:09:38
  was one of the the biggest culture shocks from the way, you
• 2:09:45
  know, people can just disassociate themselves to not
• 2:09:49
  deal with the crowds to. The way, you know, losing face
• 2:10:00
  might be interpreted, losing face is like being shamed in
• 2:10:06
  front of other people and, and the way, you know, people would
• 2:10:10
  react. I, I found that again, one of
• 2:10:13
  the one of the biggest sort of culture shocks.
• 2:10:16
  Yeah. If you could raise your kids
• 2:10:19
  only in one of these countries, which one would you choose?
• 2:10:24
  The UK, no. No, no, the countries that you
• 2:10:26
  already lived in. I think it would probably be
• 2:10:32
  Singapore. Having said that, for all the
• 2:10:36
  beauty of Singapore, I think it's a beautiful place for
• 2:10:43
  children to grow up in because they remain kids for a long,
• 2:10:47
  long, long time. So that in a sense is preserved
• 2:10:52
  and nurtured, but unfortunately the rest of the world does not
• 2:10:57
  work like Singapore and you do need to develop that streetwise.
• 2:11:01
  Absolutely. I like that.
• 2:11:03
  I love. That that that streetwise
• 2:11:06
  streak, because otherwise you are just such an easy target for
• 2:11:13
  everything. Absolutely.
• 2:11:14
  I call it street smart, but you have to have it.
• 2:11:17
  You have you need. You need to have it you
• 2:11:20
  definitely. Need to have it, otherwise you
• 2:11:21
  have lost. Which of this?
• 2:11:23
  Which of these places felt more like like Home Fatima?
• 2:11:38
  Singapore, I think. And again, I mean, I say it from
• 2:11:43
  my expat bubble maybe, but I I liked the system.
• 2:11:48
  I liked the. Yeah, I like the system.
• 2:12:03
  I I like the way things were set up.
• 2:12:05
  I liked, as I said, the transparency, the honesty.
• 2:12:14
  Going back to Mexico, I can struggle with, Yeah, this
• 2:12:22
  polarization that you see in many parts of the world, the
• 2:12:26
  inequality that is more and more and more.
• 2:12:30
  Missing middle class. Yes, yes.
• 2:12:38
  And I guess maybe I don't know. Is this your current station?
• 2:12:49
  The last station? The final.
• 2:12:51
  No, no, definitely not. No, no.
• 2:12:56
  That was a that was a first. No.
• 2:13:00
  Fatima, thanks so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you
• 2:13:03
  so much. It was an it was a really nice
• 2:13:06
  talk. I, I learned, I learned your
• 2:13:09
  story and I learned so much about from you.
• 2:13:14
  I have to say this, this freedom that you had in in deciding as a
• 2:13:17
  kid was impressive for me because this is, you know, you
• 2:13:22
  have kids as well and you know that the only thing that you
• 2:13:25
  want them is that they to be independent.
• 2:13:27
  So everything else, this is at least my, my feeling.
• 2:13:32
  This is what I want from my kid. I want to make him independent.
• 2:13:35
  And I see that it's possible and I see, I see that it works out
• 2:13:41
  well. So for me, it was a joyful
• 2:13:47
  conversation and thank you for your time.
• 2:13:50
  Well, no, thank you again, once again for yeah, for reading my
• 2:13:55
  post and for following up and now for your time and, you know,
• 2:13:59
  setting up everything. I, I, you know, it's my life.
• 2:14:05
  Sometimes you take whatever you do for granted.
• 2:14:08
  Like for me, you set up a podcast and you interview
• 2:14:11
  people. Oh my God, that's amazing.
• 2:14:14
  Where did that come from? But yeah, thank you for so much
• 2:14:20
  for, for taking an interest. I I really I thank you for.
• 2:14:26
  You had making it possible. You had an amazing ride, I have
• 2:14:28
  to say. And that's the story the the
• 2:14:30
  interest came, came by itself. Thank you for time again.
• 2:14:33
  And well, I hope that also we, we can do this again one day
• 2:14:37
  when, when you, you are in a news station and maybe to give
• 2:14:42
  me your Middle East experience. Yes, Yes.
• 2:14:45
  Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
• 2:14:47
  And if you want to talk about, you know, subcultures of Mexican
• 2:14:51
  food influenced by by all the immigrants you know.
• 2:14:59
  OK, that I will take that offer. I will take that offer.
• 2:15:02
  I will drop your e-mail for sure.
• 2:15:04
  Yes. Fatima, thanks a lot.
• 2:15:06
  Talk to you. Thank you.
• 2:15:07
  So. Much.
• 2:15:08
  Take care. Bye bye.