SG Notes Part 2: like a fish out of water

Hi guys, in today's post, I would like to share with you some of my experiences in the 12 days I had working in Singapore. Oh yes, this was a work trip, not a holiday and I had so many meetings - some of my days were so packed that I barely had time for dinner and there was one occasion when I was so exhausted that I fell asleep during a Skype call with a client in Manila. I have worked briefly in Singapore in 2011 but that was different then as I was mostly dealing with expatriates (read: Angmohs) then whilst I was dealing only with local Singaporeans on this trip. The business culture between Singapore and the UK is vastly different and given that I left Singapore 21 years ago, boy did I feel like a fish out of water and there were times when I was left feeling a bit confused as I didn't quite know what to do. I like feeling in control, I like knowing how to relate to the people I am meeting so being thrown in a situation like that made me feel quite uneasy and that's when I realized just how totally anglicized I have become over the years, particularly when it comes to the way I conduct myself during business. There are times when I feel so at home in Singapore (that usually involves me having a laksa at a hawker center) but then there are other times I just feel like a complete foreigner who is clueless.

Firstly, I was quite surprised by the way Singaporeans are so casually dressed at work. But it goes way beyond being dressed casually because of the very hot weather, the rules of what is deemed acceptable are totally different from the UK. In the UK, there is a huge taboo about short sleeved shirts in the business community. Short sleeved shirts are associated with manual labourers, such as factory workers operating machinery, such labourers would risk getting oil, grease, mud and other stains on their sleeves whilst operating machinery so they would often wear short sleeved shirts to be practical whilst working with their hands. Someone who works in an office like a lawyer or a banker would not have to worry about getting his sleeves dirty in an office, so he can quite happily wear nice suits and ties and look formal in the office. Thus by that token, a man would simply not display his forearms in a formal business setting - even rolling your sleeves up is considered at best unsightly, at worst inappropriate because only working class manual labourers would reveal their forearms at work. Thus how you dress for work in the UK has a lot to do with your social class and I grant you that the younger generation involved in IT and the creative industries are a lot more casually dressed these days (think Mark Zuckerberg in his jeans & T-shirt), but those involved in finance are a lot more conservative and old fashioned when it comes to fashion. Besides, it doesn't even get that hot during our summers (and even some of the summer nights can sometimes be quite cool) so wearing long sleeved shirts is the norm here for white collar workers.

But not in Singapore! Look, I am more than happy to acknowledge the fact that in different cultures, what is considered business attire may be completely different from what I am used to in London. But good grief, the number of men who turned up in short sleeved shirts to meetings. Okay, fine, I accept that there are different cultural norms in your country and after all, I did spend some time in China earlier this year when a top government official in Shenzhen who was a VIP at a very high profile event turned up in, that's right, a short sleeved shirt. So I get it, that's totally appropriate in the Chinese business community of course, fair enough. That's when I got it totally wrong - I thought, okay since you guys are so casual and the weather is so incredibly hot, I turned up for a meeting in shorts & T-shirt and the guy I met asked if I had just been doing sports. I was then pulled aside by a local Singaporean who told me that I had turned up too casually dressed - I made some excuse about a mix up in the diary and how I was meant to go to Sentosa that day, that was why I was dressed as such. I did get away with it as they were not exactly formally dressed either, but I was just puzzled - these guys looked the part of the typical Singaporean taxi driver uncles, yet they found my designer sportswear somehow offensive and inappropriate? Go figure - that's my bad and I had clearly misjudged the situation in Singapore. So after that incident, I defaulted to always being very formal for all my meetings regardless of what the other party wore.

The next area which left me being confused was how to speak to the other party during the meetings - oh that mix of local accents and languages. There seems to be a sliding scale which I would try to illustrate with bullet points below.

• British English - the way I would talk with a fellow British businessman
• International English - the way I would talk with say a German or Swedish businessman
• Simplified International English - the way I would talk to a Korean or Japanese businessman
• Singaporean English - the way I would talk to a Singaporean who has a strong accent in order to establish rapport and reinforce my Singaporean credentials
• Singlish - to go out of my way to establish my Singaporean credentials
• Standard Mandarin - to demonstrate my ability to deal with the Chinese/Taiwanese market
• Singaporean Mandarin - to establish my Singaporean credentials
• Hokkien + Mandarin mix - to really prove that I am the Ah Beng from Ang Mo Kio
• Hokkien + Malay - now I'm just showing off that I speak Malay as well

I can choose to speak in all of those manners but I am always wondering which to use - for example, if I went out of my way to try to establish rapport by speaking Singlish, would that come across as condescending as clearly, I don't normally speak like that after having lived in the UK for 21 years? If I spoke Singaporean English, would that undermine my credibility as the capital debt market specialist, the corporate finance expert who had built a successful career in London? Surely nobody expects me to sound like the Ah Beng from Ang Mo Kio? But then again, if I spoke with the accent I usually use in meetings in London, an accent which I created my copying the most posh characters I have seen in the movies, surely that would just alienate the vast majority of the people I meet in Singapore because I would sound totally different from them. I have met CEOs who sound as if they could be taxi drivers, I have met Singaporeans who speak English flawlessly without even the slightest hint of any kind of Asian accent. One of the CEOs I met studied at Harvard but spoke in a very Singaporean accent - I was wondering if he was doing it deliberately to see if I would switch my accent to match his, is he playing games with me? I had already started out in International English, wouldn't switching accents mid-meeting be really weird? Ironically, one of the most productive and successful meetings I had was conducted almost entirely in Mandarin as the guy had a wife from China and operated most of the time in a Mandarin speaking environment, I gladly switched to Singaporean Mandarin to establish rapport and it worked really well. So sometimes, I do get it right and sometimes I do get it wrong. Goodness me, this is so much more complex than in the UK, where I only use one particularly type of very refined English to assert my class identity in the business context. I don't even have to think, there's only one accent I would ever use in the UK regardless of how the other person(s) spoke.

I remember one incident very well, this was with my sister rather than with a business client. You see, my sister would be totally blunt and honest with me whilst a client whom I don't know very well might not speak his mind. I was in London and trying to show my sister some information on a website, she was in Singapore on her computer but was claiming that she couldn't see that very same information I had in front of me, even though we were clearly on the same website. I got frustrated and called her, but somehow I chose to speak in Mandarin rather than English. Look, we come from a multilingual household where we spoke a mix of Mandarin, English and Hokkien growing up - yet my sister took great offence to me speaking to her in Mandarin, she told me, "don't be so fucking condescending." I realized that I had upset her and I switched right back to English - she didn't tell me specifically to speak English, but I knew exactly why she was offended. In Singapore, you would often default to English as the language of communication if you knew the other party was well educated and you would only use Chinese if you doubted if the other party could speak English well enough, say when you are ordering food in a hawker center or if you were dealing with a cashier at a supermarket. There is clearly a hierarchy when it comes to the languages in Singapore and I didn't realize how I could end up pressing the wrong buttons even with my own sister like that as she was clearly a well educated professional who spoke English well.

Here's the thing about Singapore that baffles me: I don't know what the rules are and I am not sure if there even are any rules about how one ought to speak in a business context. It almost seems that you would default to the 'towkay' (the most senior businessman) in the room and he would set the tone of the conversation, everyone else will merely fall in line automatically. I'm not saying that this same principle will never happen in the UK of course, but given that I work in financial services, the British 'towkay' would probably speak with a rather refined, posh, upper class accent and the rest of us are simply expected to conform if we are to be accepted. This means that Singapore is a far more classless society compared to the UK, where your social class is so important. Is this a good or a bad thing? Well, it depends on whom you ask - you see, for me, I have thrived in the UK because I am very good at following the rules: I have been involved in gymnastics from a young age and had competed for many years at an international level. This is a sport where you are judged and there is a book called The Code of Points, otherwise known as the gymnastics bible - that's the rule book which explains exactly how you are supposed to construct your routine and how the judges will score what you present. If you want to win, you (and your coaches) need to study the Code of Points and know which skills will be highly rewarded and avoid the ones which won't be, so you will maximize your potential of outscoring your opponents at the competition (see the video below for the calculations of a routine). After decades of simply accepting this system where those who follow the rules will be rewarded, I have no problems applying that same principle in other aspects of my life.

Thus when I entered working life in the UK, I was quick to learn exactly what I needed to do in order to fit in socially. I was more than happy to make a very clear distinction between how I would present myself professionally at work and what I did in my free time to express my personality. Likewise in gymnastics, there were silly skills I would do for fun in the gym when I wanted to fool around with my friends, but these were skills would never perform at a competition when I was trying to win the gold medal. The class system in the UK is extremely harsh and unforgiving, within about five to ten seconds of meeting someone, they would have probably gleamed enough information about you to ascertain your social class and which pigeon hole to stuff you into - they would want to know if you're an equal, if you're superior or inferior. It isn't hard really, so for example, I could hear someone talk and before they even finish their first sentence, I would be able to tell just how educated they are - likewise, I can also look at little details like a man's shoes or shirt and immediately be able to determine what kind of social class he belongs to and what his upbringing was like. Oh yes, first impressions do count in this very harsh British class system and if you give someone a bad impression within the first ten seconds of your meeting, you have probably sabotaged your chances of getting whatever you want from the other party.

Here's the thing though - the rules of gymnastics are not top secret, all you have to do is to get hold of the code of points and everything is laid out extremely clearly there. Read the code of points and follow the rules like everyone else, that's all there is to it. Likewise, knowing what kind of shirt to wear to a business meeting isn't rocket science and I have even written a blog piece about it to share that information years ago, but the problem is that so many people out there have this 目空一切 approach to life, they don't care what others think, they think their opinion is all that matters. So staying with the example of the shirt, all you have to do is to consider what others will think about you, what kind of message you would send out by wearing a shirt like that to a business meeting. However, most people are so selfish and self-absorbed that they would only consider if they like the shirt, like that's all that matters to them and they never even consider for a moment what others may think of that shirt. That is why I roll my eyes when people bitch about the whole issue of social mobility in the UK, I am an immigrant from a poor working class family in Ang Mo Kio, yet I come with a very simple desire to follow the rules in order to get ahead in life and look where it has gotten me. I have learnt the rules, I have modified my accent, I have dressed the part and I have reaped the rewards, just like the gymnast who is willing to change his routine in order to win the competition. It isn't rocket science, really. So for a gymnast like me who is just better at following the rules than others, yeah of course I prefer the British system as it gives me an edge over others.

I would compare Singapore though to America where it is far harder to tell one's social class from the way they talk and dress. I have met towkays who run vast multi-million dollar business empires but still dress and talk as if they are your typical taxi driver uncles. The rules which I am far more used to in London simply do not apply in Singapore. This means that someone from a very working class background, who is clueless about fashion and speaks in a rather unrefined manner is simply not penalized at all when going into a business meeting with a local towkay who is more than likely going to be just as badly dressed and speaking Singlish. This is a huge victory for social mobility and I'm sure my left wing friends in the UK would be holding Singapore up as some kind of golden example for a socialist utopia whereby social class doesn't define your place in society. And by that token, I don't actually disagree with them - look, I came from a working class family in Ang Mo Kio and I had little help in getting ahead in my career. I know how hard it can be for someone in my position to struggle against the odds to succeed and if the playing field can be somehow leveled, to allow working class kids from Ang Mo Kio to compete with the elites in their society, then that can only be a good thing. After all, nobody wins when perfectly competent working class young people are discriminated against on the basis of the social class - I believe an efficient economy should be run purely on the basis of meritocracy, rather than to preserve the privileges of the upper classes and those already in power. Whether by design or by complete accident/coincidence, the seemingly classless society in Singapore that we have today does have its merits over a far more rigid British system.

So in Singapore, there's no need for the locals to bother thinking about their accent or what kind of shirt they wear to  business meeting because unlike the UK, there doesn't seem to be any penalty for getting that wrong. That is why I get the impression that Singapore does appear to be a very classless society, unlike the UK. I'm sure many Singaporeans are aware of how British society is obsessed with social class, but unless they want to live and work in the UK or deal with British people for business, this is simply an issue that doesn't affect them at all. That's why it has been tricky for me in Singapore, because I risk coming across as overly formal or even pretentious when I default to what I usually do in the UK when I am at a business meeting. So before you think that I am praising the Singaporean system, allow me to clarify that I am simply pointing out the differences between the two systems. I'm far more British than you think - so a Singaporean may think that when we're engaging a structural engineer for example, it is stupid to focus on the collar on his shirt he wore to the office rather than his ability to do his job as an engineer. But my response to that is an engineer should be good at attention to detail - one small error with his calculations could lead to catastrophic consequences and if you can't handle something as simple as picking an acceptable shirt to wear to the office, how the hell am I going to trust you to get things right with a multi-million dollar project, if that's your attitude when it comes to attention to detail? You may think I'm harsh, but I believe in selecting the right person for the job and if it means discriminating against someone with a bad attitude, so be it - welcome to the real world. Attention to detail is a vastly underrated virtual IMHO.

So let's look at the case study of Singlish: a prominent feature of Singlish is that it uses Chinese grammar and sentence structure. So my mother would ask me, "you got close the light in the kitchen or not?" (你有没有关厨房里的灯?) instead of saying, "did you turn off the light in the kitchen?" So the speaker is effectively ignoring the grammatical rules of English whilst constructing that sentence and simply defaulting to a set of rules that they feel far more comfortable with, regardless of what it may do to the end product. At one of my meetings which my Angmoh chairman attended, he did struggle to understand some of the things that the Singaporean guy we were meeting said because he did lapse (accidentally) into Singlish and that unfortunately, was enough to leave the white guy totally baffled, "I'm terribly sorry, I didn't quite understand what you just said?" I don't have anything against Singlish, heck I am happy to have a meeting in Hokkien if that is what you want to do. But if this guy couldn't even make an effort to speak standard English in a meeting with a foreigner who clearly couldn't understand Singlish, then I don't think that inspires confidence because it reflects poorly on his ability to pay attention to detail. I have little respect for people who willfully ignore the rules simply to make things a little bit more convenient for themselves - that is simply not the kind of people I would ever want to work with.

But before I finish, can I speak in defence of the British system? One thing that I keep getting asked in Singapore is whether or not I face racism as an Asian immigrant in the UK and the answer is a complex one: no there isn't racism per se but there is the class system. A poor, working class white person with blonde hair and blue eyes is going to be discriminated against within that system whilst a black or Asian person with the right social skills and education will be accepted by the upper echelons on society here. This system allows migrants like me to become successful and rich in the UK because I was simply willing and able to play by their rules. Nobody is discriminated on the basis of their skin colour, everyone is subject to the same harsh rules of the class system including white people. How is this any different from the gymnast who has taken the time and effort to study the code of points to construct the perfect routine that will score well at the competition? What pisses me off is the way some people play the race card when they fail to succeed, when really, they are failing to take any responsibility for the fact that they have made little or not effort to figure out why they are going wrong and what they need to change in order to gain access to better paid jobs. Oh yeah, they just play the victim's card, blame someone else for their failure and ask for sympathy - that is an attitude that I condemn wholeheartedly. Are things perfect here in the UK? Of course not, we do have our share of problems here but at least racism is not something that one has ever to worry about and the class system is far easier to navigate if you're willing to acknowledge the fact that it is there and accept that you will have to obey the rules. Oh please. It's not that hard, is it?

Well, it is what it is. I'm just glad that the in Singapore system will favour someone like my nephew who will have to complete his education, do his NS and find a job in Singapore over the next several years. He will thrive a lot better in Singapore than in the UK, that's for sure. That's one less thing for him to worry about and that can only be a good thing for young people like him. For now, I am just glad to be back in London where everything just seems to make a lot more sense to me. Please let me know what you think about, feel free to leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.