Experiences of an Indian Expat in Singapore

Raghuraj Hegde
10 min readMar 19, 2017

My experience in Singapore has been mostly positive, some equivocal and very few negatives.

As for my background. I came to Singapore to pursue my Clinical Fellowship in Ophthalmic Plastic Surgery & Ocular Oncology in National University Hospital, Singapore. I worked under an employment pass (EP) which is issued to every highly skilled foreign workers employed in Singapore. For unskilled /semi-skilled work (usually manual work in construction, bus drivers etc) , a special visa called S-pass is issued by the immigration.

I had lived or/and worked in various parts of India before coming to Singapore- Bangalore (my home), Mysore, Kottayam, Kolkata and Hyderabad, So transitioning to live in a new city was not a problem for me. I loved the time I spent in Singapore. It is a country-city where everything works. The amazing public transport, healthcare, merit based employment and education policies, social security, low crime, almost no visible poverty, low corruption in all spheres all become so attractive coming from a country where all the above are distant dreams. However I do understand the governance and political reforms in Singapore would be far easier considering it is just a small island compared to the large expanse that is India.

The politics

The Singapore that we see today is the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew who ruled Singapore with an iron hand and was very ruthless in checking opposition preventing a chaotic democracy that many of the other Asian countries are struggling with. I admire Lee Kuan Yew for what he did for the country but may not agree with his methods. He got the job done but a lesser person would have descended into megalomania and tyranny. I wrote the following piece when he died in 2015-What do people think about Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew? By western standards Singapore would be called an autocracy but in my opinion they are a controlled democracy and I fully agree with the present PM Lee Hsien Loong in saying that Singaporeans are pragmatic people.[1]

We have no choice as we are a very small country with an open economy. If we do not look towards the world, we will have no way to go. — Lee Hsein Loong

Working environment

I would be hard pressed to talk about other fields but my colleagues in my hospital were wonderful to work with. I got immense support from my seniors as well as residents and nursing staff to help get into the system. It also helped that I had wonderful mentors during my time in Singapore. I made many friends during my stint in there and some for life I hope. But the general trend in Singapore medical system is that doctors are mentored to go up the system which was a welcome change. I don’t see this happening much in India. The big shot doctors in India don’t even have a real number two. All their underlings are readily replaceable with the next guy on the assembly line. In Singapore there is a tremendous value doing something different from others. Stars are identified young and promoted to top positions. The head of the Ophthalmology department in the hospital I was working in was a double masters and a PhD. A professor with over 1,000 peer-reviewed papers and has received $50 Million in funding for clinical trials. He was is still in his 40s. Clearly star performers were rewarded. No wonder Singapore is a behemoth in clinical research world.

The hospital I worked in

Facilities

As mentioned before, their systems work very well. Public transport is splendid. You do not require to own car to get around in Singapore and if you want to, it is quite expensive to own (car +10 yr car license) and to drive (fuel+tolls). Every aspect of urban life is taken care of that sometimes Singaporeans forget how good they have it and complain about mundane things like not getting a seat in the local hawker food center. Complaining is a national pass-time. Real estate is expensive and most of the expats live on rental property which can consume as much as 25–50% of their income depending on the type and size of the house. Food is the highlight of Singapore and it is sometimes cheaper to eat out than to prepare your own food- and that’s what many people do in Singapore. Manual labour is expensive but not as expensive as in the west. Their non-skilled labour market is near-totally occupied by foreign workers.

The hospital I worked at was a public hospital and it had better quality patient care than even private hospitals. They even had a local MRT train station inside the hospital to make it easier for staff and patients to get to the hospital. The hospital building was HUGE and was more like a mini-mall than the type of hospitals I had worked in till then. The state of the art technology that I got to work with in Singapore had spoiled me to an extent that the first few months working in India were a struggle. Singapore has a muti-tier health economy almost the whole population is covered under some form of medical insurance. Healthcare in Singapore is one of the best in the world- expensive than say India but quality has costs. Their health-care system is the envy of the wealthy western world- where they’ve balanced total coverage with personal accountability of their citizens towards their own healthcare.[2]

Language

One of the official languages of Singapore is English. Tamil, Malay, Mandarin Chinese are also national languages in accordance to the ethnicity and diversity of the population. However Singlish is a colloquial version of English that has evolved after their independence with influences from Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. It is funny and difficult to follow at first but one does get accustomed to it. I feel Singlish is more efficient than regular English by dropping unnecessary words from sentences. You would get to hear delightful and colourful phrases like:

“Wah Lau! All makan place close ah! No chope also. So now eat how?”

“It’s ok Lah! Why you be so kiasu?”

The Singaporean government discourages Singlish and so do many snobbish Singaporeans who think of it as “low-class”. The government promotes a Speak good English movement to discourage people speaking Singlish. This however has not stopped the locals from using it liberally in informal settings and I kinda love them for it.

In professional settings and in official work the English is more British and easier to follow. The ability to communicate in English is so important and hadn’t realized until recently when I met one of my friends who was doing fellowship in Korea. She was having a horrid time there because none of her colleagues speak in English in regular usage but only when work requires it. Singapore is easy to live in because almost everyone can understand and speak in English. Other than a few words in Mandarin and Malay I didn’t have to learn any new language completely.

Recreation

Rather than the regular touristy stuff, my wife and I were more drawn to offbeat things to do in Singapore and the nightlife. We even wrote blog posts about it here: Singapore seen a little differently and The Spirits of Singapore respectively in our recently started travel and food blog. Despite being a small island you literally never run out of things to do. I was grateful to have my wife plan and pull me out of the house every weekend or I would have spent all weekends at the hospital and departmental research office. They have so many events nearly every weekend like Kite flying, art festivals, street performing conventions, flea markets, concerts, etc.- many of them we could attend free of cost. All countries in South-East Asia are easily connected by direct flights. So you will see Singaporeans flying off for weekend trips to a different country every time for a fraction of a price they would have to spend on a good hotel in Singapore. Apparently S$200 per person is enough for a 3 day trip to Vietnam,Malaysia or Phillipines including airfare.

Some snapshots of my leisure time in Singapore

Treatment of foreigners

Singapore takes no refugees and their immigration policy is very water-tight. They have a positive bias towards Americans and Europeans. Ang-Mohs as they are called are treated much better than immigrants from other parts of Asia. Among the Asian countries the Mainland Chinese have better chance of getting a PR or citizenship status than an Indian or Indonesian. Filipinos dominate the nursing field in Singapore and most likely to settle down in Singapore. Most of the manual labour jobs are dominated by Bangladeshis and Indian Tamils. Though many of them have healthcare benefits we often hear horror stories of these workers being exploited by their contractors and treated like slave labour. Many construction workers are injured during work and quietly shipped off to their home countries since healthcare is quite expensive. There were some cases of nannies from smaller Asian countries either commit suicide by jumping off or accidentally falling off tall buildings. Since my hospital was a trauma center many of these unfortunate foreigners ended up there. These issues don’t find mention in mainstream news and generally swept under the carpet.

There is no racism that is seen openly. There may be subtle forms of racism that I have not experienced but definitely heard about as anecdotes. The population there are used to the Indian population since about 8% of the population are Indians. Indians as an ethnicity don’t have a great reputation in Singapore. There are property ads which openly say “No Indians please” in them. This is more to do with cleanliness than racism in my opinion as I saw how poorly some of the HDB apartments were kept by Indian tenants (usually expats) while I was house-hunting.

My colleagues at my hospital treated me with utmost respect. The nurses and residents liked me at lot because I was the go to man when they needed troubleshooting. I was never treated any different than a Singaporean in my hospital. IN fact Indians in the medical field are well respected. Many of the top physicians are Indians in Singapore. I hear Indians dominate Law and Medicine in Singapore. I shared a great rapport with my colleagues. They even threw a barbecue send-off party in the hospital terrace before I returned. They still keep in touch and message how much they miss me around even though it’s been 2 years since I returned.

The People and culture:

Singapore has some of the most boring newspapers and TV news shows in the world. It has hard news without the spice that is becoming the stable of news publishing worldwide. There is a sort of a self censorship in the media in Singapore and they generally avoid criticizing the government.

Singapore has a very cosmopolitan culture and having lived in Bangalore I didn’t have any trouble gelling with different people from different places. There is this Kiasu culture (roughly translated to “self interest” or “competitive” depending on how it is used) that people used to warn me about but I never had an issue with it. I felt most Singaporeans are warm and the helping kind. Whether it is giving directions or helping elderly/ pregnant/ differently-abled people cross the road-they generally stop what they are doing to help out. Crime rates are so low that notices saying “cycle tyre stolen in this neighbourhood” are displayed on hoardings to warn residents. I used to have a good laugh at that.

Cost of living is high in Singapore but if you are making a decent income you should be fine. Many of my Indian friends settled in Singapore were doing well for themselves financially and have a comfortable life. The economy in Singapore is doing well and the exchange rate is favourable for Indians. Most Singaporean citizens are generally well off and usually own a house — 1 in 35 Singaporeans are millionaires and the government provides HDB housing to their citizens at subsidized 99-year lease rates.Almost all Singaporeans I have interacted with very polite and extremely well behaved. Very rarely have I seen citizens raise their voice in formal and informal occasions. They do complain under their breath about many things but nothing serious.

The food as I said earlier is amazing if your palate is suited for global cuisine. You can get every type of cuisine from the Chicago Deep-Dish pizzas to Tokyo’s Salmon Sashimi. Korean, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Indian, French, Italian, British,American- the list just goes on. The Chinese food is to die for and has very interesting variations depending on which part of Asia the cuisine is influenced by. I do have to warn you that sea food is a prominent ingredient in most SE Asian dishes so if you don’t enjoy sea food your choices will be limited. I learnt to eat using chopsticks- being a surgeon helps I guess.

The food in Singapore is an endless journey

In summary, Singapore is the melting pot of multiple cultural identities with an efficient governance system and an open economy. As an Indian expat I had very good experience as should be any expat’s experience as long as they make a decent income, work in safe environments and stay out of government affairs. An urban Indian or American won’t have lot of trouble living and working in Singapore.

The view of the Marina Bay Sands from atop the 1 Altitude on the other side of the river

Footnotes

[1] PM Lee talks elites and the law, and high salaries, on Chinese TV interview

[2] Log In — New York Times

Originally published at www.quora.com.

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Raghuraj Hegde

Consultant, Orbit, Ophthalmic Plastic Surgery and Ophthalmic Oncology Service, Manipal Hospitals, Bangalore