Hi guys, in this final part of my series inspired by my recent trip to Central Asia, I am going to just do a Q&A about some issues that I have not covered in my first three post in this series but were interesting enough for me to still discuss here.
Q: You were traveling with your husband, was it reasonably gay friendly and did you ever feel unsafe as a gay couple? This is after all a Muslim-majority part of the world and what advice would you give LGBT tourists?
A: We never felt unsafe on the entire trip but that's mostly because we are two strong men traveling together and that makes a lot of difference - Central Asia is actually very safe compared to other parts of Asia and crime rates are relatively low and that's for all kinds of crime. I remember one night in Bishkek I went for a walk on my own late at night and even when I was on my own, I felt totally safe. I would never ever show any public displays of affection to my husband in public, not even in London as it's just not worth the risk and we also benefit from the fact that we can 'pass for straight'. Let me give you a case study to illustrate my point: about 12 years ago, we had a gay neighbour in Soho who was extremely effeminate, let's call him DS and DS was so effeminate that he was practically transgender, in that we would often see him dress as a woman - he wore women's clothes, had a wig, wore make up and it was really only his voice and Adam's apple that gave away the fact that he was in fact a man. DS was attacked on a few occasions - he was beaten up and robbed, so he declared that this was an unsafe neighbourhood and he was going to move away. My husband and I lived in that neighbourhood for 12 years and we never experienced any risk of being attacked mostly because we didn't look anything like DS - if you were a criminal looking for a victim to rob, you're going to pick on someone who was less likely to fight back and I benefit from being bald, ugly and scary looking. Neither my husband nor I are effeminate like DS, so that means we're far less likely to run into trouble even if we were placed in the exact same circumstances. I remember one night when DS was attacked just at the entrance of the block, I had only just returned from gymnastics training no more than ten minutes before the attack happened so it was quite possible that those attackers saw me and decided "no, he's not the kind of guy we'd wanna mess with, let's wait for a weaker target." When I was in Bishkek, I saw a gay couple walk down the street holding hands and that really surprised me as I thought they were pushing the limits, testing the boundaries but they looked like the kind of tough guys you wouldn't wanna pick a fight with in either case. I felt even tempted to go up to them and speak to them (as a fellow gay man) as to ask them why they were so bold, but all I did was discretely whisper to my husband, "look they're holding hands." I have travelled to far more homophobic places before like Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia and Oman - I never once felt unsafe in those places.
Gay sex is actually completely legal in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, even though they have very limited rights compared to their counterparts in the West. Nonetheless, the fact that gay sex isn't criminalized there is already a surprise to me and these are one of the few Muslim-majority countries where gay sex is legal. That is probably because these central Asian countries are very secular and religion doesn't play a big part in political life - however, openly gay people do face discrimination and homophobia; there are no gay bars in Bishkek for example, the last gay bar in Bishkek closed down in 2017 after too many threats of violence. However, there are many apps that gays can use to network and find partners online, so the gay scene went from underground to online. We used a lot of common sense when it came to who needed to know about our sexuality - so with our AirBNB host in Almaty, as far as she was concerned, we were just two friends traveling togethter and she didn't ask who was sleeping where in the room. She was more concerned about things like us having enough toilet paper and checking out on time, when we talked to her, she kept it strictly professional and avoided any personal questions. Likewise, I didn't ask her if she was married or had children - that's none of my business and I'm really not interested. When we were in Bishkek, the staff allocated us a room with two single beds and we didn't ask for a double bed. Thus if we were careful enough never to draw any attention to ourselves as a gay couple, that's the main reason why we felt totally safe. However, let's imagine if DS came with us on this trip, I would be concerned! I would be worried that DS would stand out too much simply when he was walking down the street - if someone were to attack DS, I am not sure if or how I would be able to prevent such an attack. Certainly the risk that DS would face in any city is a lot higher than what I would experience simply based on his appearances. Heck, I remember how you could smell DS from a mile away as he wore so much perfume and it was just all these factors adding up which put DS at so much more risk of homophobic attacks. Thus when people discuss whether or not this country is gay friendly and safe or not, I think a lot of it depends on the individual traveller! Central Asia was very safe for me, but it wouldn't be for someone like DS. Cities are a lot more dangerous for people like DS and he isn't even safe in a place like London, he simply isn't safe anywhere.
So for those of you who are straight and not familiar with gay culture, there is a whole multitude of gay men out there and we all experience homophobia quite differently. You can't tell that my husband and I are gay unless we do something like kiss or hold hands, this is because we are the kind of gay men who like men - if I may speak for myself rather than for my husband, I am sexually attracted to other men who are very masculine whilst guys like DS do absolutely nothing for me. Being a gay man, I dress and act in a way to adhere to this idealized image of the successful, older, confident businessman boss for a simple reason: that's what I find sexually attractive so I want to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see. I don't know DS well enough to know what kind of guys he would want to date, but clearly, DS would look at the mirror and want to see a pretty lady rather than a masculine man - that is his idea of beauty and whilst I respect his right to determine that for himself, I also worry about the risk he puts himself in when he walks down to the street dressed like that. Some people may go as far as to say that DS is 'asking for trouble' whilst others may argue that DS has the right to wear whatever he likes and walk down the street. There is a report in the BBC today that claims that London has become no-go zones for Jews during the weekend when there are pro-Palestinian marches; the fact is Jewish people would only stand out in the crowd if they adopted a certain kind of strict dress code as defined by the Orthodox Jewish community that allows them to identify a fellow Jew. Otherwise, I would be clueless what religion they belong to - I have a friend at gymnastics whom I found out he was Jewish recently, he didn't have a particularly Jewish sounding surname and he certainly never mentioned it. Likewise, I don't talk about my sexuality unless it comes up in the conversation - so once, I came out to a friend at the gym because I went on holiday and he asked me, who did you go on holiday with and I answered that I went with my husband. It took him a moment to realize, oh I get it, you're in a relationship with a man - it was evident that until that point, he didn't think I was gay. It's not like people like my Jewish friend and I are trying to hide anything, but we simply 'blend in' into mainstream society in a way that DS stands out and that is why DS experiences homophobic violence in a way I wouldn't - "blending in" is something a lot of gay men do to avoid trouble in everyday life.
Q: I don't speak Russian, can I still visit this part of the world?
A: Yes you can, though I would ask you to make an effort to learn the very basics to make your life a bit easier. But otherwise, just accept that hardly anyone speaks a word of English there and you will have to get your phone out to translate the most basic requests. Sometimes this can be done quite easily, for example if you're in a restaurant and you want to communicate with your waiter who doesn't speak any English. However, there are situations like when you're at a bus stop and you want to check if the bus you are about to board is going to your destination, then you're going to need to do it without the help of your phone because the bus driver is not going to have the patience to mess around on your phone whilst ten passengers are trying to board the bus at the same time. It frustrates me that a lot of people, Americans in particular, say that people in this part of the world are unfriendly because they don't speak English. That is a complete misrepresentation of the situation - the people I met in Central Asia are very friendly and helpful, they also don't speak English at all. Both statements can be true and when they realize that I speak some Russian, they often go out of their way to be helpful to me. I also think that English speaking tourists do give themselves a very bad name when they just ignore the locals who do not speak English - thus for example, I shared a Yandex taxi with an English speaking tourist (whom we shall call 'Helen', not her real name) to get back to central Bishkek after skiing. Helen was very happy to have met two English speaking tourists on her travels since she was backpacking on her own in this part of Central Asia, but when we stepped into the taxi together, she just continued talking to us and just totally ignored the taxi driver, she didn't even acknowledge his presence. I went out of my way to greet the taxi driver in Russian and Kyrgyz and whilst I kept on talking to Helen throughout that journey, I stopped and thanked the taxi driver as we got to our destination. It was a brief exchange of pleasantries but at least I made the effort. I think the taxi driver would have found Helen quite rude - it is okay to ignore the bus or train driver when using public transport, but she should have at least said hello to our taxi driver, even if she had to do that in English; so that's why people like Helen give English speaking tourists a bad name in countries like Kyrgyzstan as I thought Helen was so rude. She could have made an effort but she could not be bothered.
Q: Can you bargain in this part of the world?
A: Yes actually, but it's not as bad as some other parts of Asia or Africa. Let me give you an example, when I got to Bishkek bus station, I had to change my Kazakh tenge for Kyrgyz Som, I was looking for a money changer when I was approached by a taxi driver who offered to do that exchange for me. It was only for a relatively small amount of money but I did haggle with him for a better exchange rate - in the end, I realized I managed to get the equivalent of an extra £0.60 / US$0.75 out of him after about 5 minutes of arguing back and forth; it felt like a small victory to walk away from that negotiation but I did it all in Russian as the taxi driver didn't speak a word of English, so that felt good. The bag that my husband brought with him on this trip was falling apart so we thought this was probably a cheap place to get a new bag, when we finally identified the one we both liked, I asked for a small discount and eventually got a 7% discount after a bit of haggling with the old lady in the shop - once again, this was all conducted entirely in Russian as she clearly didn't speak English and I don't think I would have managed to get the discounts in both cases without my ability to speak enough Russian to haggle with the locals. So yes you can try to bargain, but be realistic about what you can get in terms of a discount: you probably can get something like a 5 to 10% discount if you are a skilled negotiator, but there were also times when the other party just said no, we don't do any discounts, these are our final prices. This is not like China or Morocco where you can get massive discounts during the bargaining process, as much as 75% because the shopkeepers are starting with ludicrous prices in the first place and I don't like to do that - it is time extremely consuming and even after you have bargained hard, you still walk away not quite knowing whether or not you have actually managed to get a decent price. There are so few tourists in this part of the world so the prices you see in the shops are what the locals pay. The shopkeepers won't try to rip the locals off as they are dependent on repeat business from the locals; contrast that to a place like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul where most of the visitors are tourists rather than locals.
Q: Was it bitterly cold when you were there? How did you cope?
A: Yes and no, on the day I arrived it was actually +14 degrees and so warm but it then quickly dropped to -25 degrees. I was absolutely fine with the cold but my phone wasn't - my phone battery would die suddenly, like it would drop from 80% to 5% after exposure to the extreme cold. This was incredibly frustrating of course as one wants to take loads of photos and videos when on holiday in these beautiful locations, but once that phone is taken out of my pocket, I can only take a few photos or a short video before I have to quickly return it to the warmth of the pocket or the battery will just collapse. This happened a lot when the temperature was below -10 degrees. There was only one occasion when I felt very cold and that was at the top of Mt Shymbulak when it was so windy - every part of my body was covered except my face. Usually I get away with that but on that day, the wind was blowing bits of ice and snow so hard at my face, my cheeks, mouth and nose felt painful and I needed something like a face mask to protect them. It wasn't even that cold that day, it was probably about -7 and we had days when it went down to -25, but it was the coldest I felt on that trip because of the wind. Furthermore, it is very important to invest in a quality pair of gloves for this kind of winter weather, you can wear several layers over your body but we often only wear one pair of gloves, so those gloves have got to be enough to protect your fingers against the very harshest of winter weather. If you are afraid of very cold temperatures, you should visit Central Asia in the spring or autumn, but you should avoid the summers, as it can get stupidly hot there.
Q: What time do shops and restaurants close? How do you spend your evenings there?
A: In some parts of Europe, Australia and America, shops and restaurants tend to close very early. But in Central Asia, they are far more Asian in this aspect - the shops in the malls close at either 9 pm or 10 pm. So if you go to the mall at 9:30 pm, some of the shops may already be closed but many will still be open. Restaurants will stay open till very late and there are even plenty of 24 hour places for those who want to have a meal in the middle of the night. Public transport in Almaty shut down close to midnight whilst in Bishkek it was even earlier like at 10 pm. However, taxis are very affordable if you wish to travel later at night and the streets are still busy late at night even when it was very cold in winter. So I took advantage of these late night openings to go shopping until I got hungry then I went for dinner very late.
Q: How do taxis work there? Are there dishonest taxi drivers who would overcharge a tourist?
A: I used Yandex and that's the equivalent of Uber in the Russian speaking world. It's very transparent and easy to use - I'd simply enter the destination into Yandex maps, I would then have some options regarding the type of ride I can pick and how much it would cost, then once I confirm it, the driver would usually turn up in less than 3 minutes. I always paid the driver in cash and if I was happy with the service, I'd round it up and leave the driver a little tip. So for example, I was quoted 977 som to go from my hotel to Bishkek airport. When I got there, I paid the driver 1000 som and told him to keep the change. That was a longer journey at 1 am in the morning, so it cost a bit more. Usually, I paid about £3 (US$3.80) for a journey within the city. You pay the price quoted on the app and that's the same price locals pay, so you know they cannot rip you off - the taxi drivers I have met were incredibly friendly and very curious why I chose to visit Central Asia.
Q: Did you encounter many foreigners on this trip?
A: Not many, though it was hard to tell - I encountered Russian speaking white people on this trip and I found it hard to tell whether they were Russian tourists visiting from Russia or if they were just local white Russian people. Almaty was simply a lot more tourist-friendly than Bishkek. I encountered a small number of Chinese tourists in Almaty but the largest number of foreigners on this trip were Indian students - not tourists, but students. There are many Indian students studying in both Almaty and Bishkek, this is because there is intense competition to get into the top Indian universities to do courses like medicine and if you can't get into a good local Indian university, going to study abroad is an option but studying in a country like the UK, Canada or the USA is very expensive and so some Indian students opt to study in cheaper places like Central Asia where the courses are offered in English. When the war broke out in Ukraine, many Indian students had to abandon their courses and leave Ukraine in a desperate hurry; but until then, most people were not aware that there were so many Indian students studying in big cities like Kiev, Almaty and Bishkek. I could count on one hand how many black people I saw on this trip, you're highly unlikely to encounter any black people in Central Asia.
Q: What is the feeling in Kazakhstan about the war in Ukraine?
A: It is very complicated. Let me focus on Kazakhstan for this issue as they share a very long border with Russia (Kyrgyzstan doesn't have a border with Russia). Certainly Kazakhstan doesn't want to become the next Ukraine - nobody in Kazakhstan wants to get dragged into the next war. Culturally, Kazakhstan is very close physically and culturally to Russia, so there's a sense of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". Keeping very friendly relations with Russia is seen as a viable way to avoid any kind of war because Russia would not see these countries as enemies to invade but as friends to count on whilst at war with other parties. These countries are not thriving democracies but more like countries that have been ruled by autocrats and strongmen who are not keen to share their power, much like the way Putin rules over Russia. As these countries are so Russian speaking, the locals consume a lot of Russian media and are subjected to a lot of Russian propaganda but not all of them fall for it. After all, the media isn't censored in Kazakhstan and thus the people of Kazakhstan can access news sources from the West reporting on what is going on in Ukraine. There has been some negative reactions in Kazakhstan for example to the number of Russian men who have fled there to avoid conscription in the recent months - there is a range of reasons why Kazakhs don't want more Russians in Almaty. The new arrivals are competing for the same scarce number of rental units available, thus pushing up rents for everyone, Kazakh and Russian alike. Others also fear that these new Russian arrivals will undercut the locals in the job market if the Russians are so very desperate they will accept much lower wages and worse working conditions. Some others even feel that those who are anti-war should stay in Russia and fight for regime change rather than flee abroad. There are also Kazakhs who don't welcome this influx of Russian migrants to their country now as Putin used the excuse of protecting Russian-speakers in the East of Ukraine as part of his reason to justify this war, so if Kazakhstan receives even more Russians, then that gives Putin another reason to invade. So many countries have cut off ties with Russia because of the war, but this is not the case in Kazakhstan as they are having to deal with this reality of having to live with a neighbour like Russia, after witnessing what Russia has done to Ukraine and how the people of Ukraine have suffered.
Q: Are there little things on this trip that reminded you that you were in Asia and not Russia?
A: Oh I had always said just how Russian this part of the world is but once in a while, yeah there are little things that feel very Asian. For example, there's this salad literally called 'Chinese salad' and it is a salad with rolled tofu sheets (known as 'tau kee' in Hokkien and 腐竹 in Mandarin), I absolutely loved this salad as I used to eat a lot of tau kee as a child and the dressing contained soy sauce, it was one dish that inspired by Chinese cuisine but you would not find in any Chinese restaurant. It was one of these strange fusion cuisine inventions that was unique to Central Asia. I also felt like the big malls reminded me of the malls I had seen in other Asian cities, sure you have the high end malls like Mega Mall in Almaty and Bishkek Park in Bishkek which were so modern you could be in anywhere in the world, but I really liked the more old fashioned ones like Tsum Mall in Bishkek which reminded me of Far East Plaza and Lucky Plaza in Singapore. It is less glitzy, more down to earth, less big names and I prefer shopping in places like that. There were also quite a number of very beautiful mosques that I visited, the most beautiful of them all was the massive central mosque in Bishkek. Lastly, people did look Asian - sometimes they looked very East Asian like Korean or Chinese people, sometimes the features were a bit more South Asian like Pakistani or Indian people, sometimes it was a blend of East and South Asian features, but they were definitely Asian and not white. The irony was that I was at one point 50 km from the border with China and imagine just how Chinese it would have felt had I nipped over that border just to take a look, but overall everything just felt so Russian that I felt I was still in Europe ,despite the small number of Asian things there.
Q: Let's focus on the positives, what impressed you a lot on this trip to Central Asia?
A: Firstly, it snowed a lot when I was there but the snow clearance was super efficient. It was very systematic and they knew exactly how to cope with heavy snowfall in this region. We had over 50 cm of snow in 12 hours in Almaty, so instead of clearing the snow off all the pavements in the city which would have taken them a very long time, the workers worked through the night to carve a path about a meter wide for people to walk safely through the snow that had fallen on the pavement and gradually, that path was widened through people using it. All night long, there were workers clearing the roads using snow ploughs so the roads remained open regardless of how heavy the snow was. Contrast this to London, where a tiny amount of snow would paralyze the entire city for days, as there is just no system in place to deal with the snow and ice. But in Central Asia, there is an abundance of cheap labour so even late at night, you would see people out in the streets shovelling the snow by hand even when it is -25 degrees. There are times though when the cheap labour isn't put to good use, I feel very safe when using the Almaty underground as there is an abundance of security. You have to put your bags through an X-ray machine and step through a mental detector just to enter the station, it was a level of security screen that was similar to that of an airport, but this was just for a metro station. Throughout the station, you would see security staff and cleaners. The trains ran on time, were frequent and the stations were not just clean but often beautifully decorated. There was a flat fee of just 100 tenge (£0.18 or US$0.22) per journey on the Almaty metro, which left me baffled as to how this could be profitable. But most of all, I always felt extremely safe in Central Asia and that is a sentiment echoed by all travellers who have visited this part of the world. There is a high correlation between safety and the abundance of cheap labour because there are security guards, police and soldiers everywhere you go, hence their presence will deter any would-be criminals. Whilst the investment in that much security (as seen on the Almaty metro system) may be an overkill that isn't productive, it does solve the problem of unemployment and the net benefit of that investment is a safer city where people feel very safe even at night, this leads to far more economic activities in the form of shops and restaurants opening late into the night, generating more revenue, putting more money into the hands of people so this is a virtuous cycle that leads to more prosperity for everyone there.
A: Actually we were warned not to but we did it anyway and as long as you boil it to make tea, you'll be fine. In the big cities like Almaty and Bishkek, their pipes are clean enough but no I wouldn't drink tap water out in the rural countryside.
Q: Would you go back to Central Asia, if so, which part(s)?
A: Certainly, I want to return to Central Asia. I would love to explore Uzbekistan next, I would fly into Tashkent the capital city and fly out of Samarkand, there is so much to see and do there. But I have just visited Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, thus I would leave it a year or three before planning a trip to Uzbekistan as I want to go to other places as well this year.
OK guys so that's it from me on my adventures in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, my next work trip will take me to Luxembourg and Belgium, a lot closer to home and at least all I need for this trip is French, German, Italian and Spanish which I actually can speak a lot more competently than Russian. I hope I have encouraged you to explore this magical part of Central Asia as I really enjoyed myself there. As always, please leave a comment below and let me know if you have any questions about traveling in this part of the world and I'll see if I can help in any way - many thanks for reading.
Hey Alex. I'm visiting Singapore right now. My cousin is trying to convince me to move back here because I work in tech and am educated in both the US and Singapore. He says I could easily get a high paying job here with my credentials (and his connections I suppose). That made me think of you moving back to Singapore while traveling on a British passport. What made you come back to Singapore? Why did you move back to the UK after?
ReplyDeletePersonally, coming back to Singapore now feels way different because I make a lot more money than I did when I lived here. But I kinda feel like even though Singapore feels great as a tourist, its too urban for me. There's a lot of shopping malls, but not much nature.
Hi Amanda, I hope you're having a lovely time on holiday. Ironically, I wrote a post on this very topic but put it on hold because I am rushing out the latest piece on The Amazing Race. But it is ready, I'll get it out for you as soon as I publish the other piece. Look, I never ever 'came back to Singapore' then moved to the UK, I went to Singapore in 2011 for work a number of times because the company I worked for at that time needed someone to help them with their Asian projects and I was being paid a lot of money to go to Singapore by them to do some work. I stress the part whereby I was paid "A LOT OF MONEY" to go to Singapore - now there is a massive difference between that and an unemployed person hoping to find a good job in Singapore. No, I was an expatriate being sent there to do a job. The project in Singapore didn't work out - as with a lot of things in finance, it was subject to regulatory approval and the process in Singapore turned out to be slow & complicated because of the Monetary Authority of Singapore being quite hostile to foreign companies wishing to operate in Singapore. The plug was pulled on the project and I moved onto something else. I must stress that I only returned because of that assignment, I have always had a very low opinion of these three things: a) Singapore, b) Singaporeans in general and c) the Singaporean government and it is a combination of those factors that kept me away.
DeleteOK the reason why I had a major problem with what you wrote Amanda is that you got it completely the WRONG way round by placing the country first before all other factors. Allow me to take Singapore out of the equation and replace it with a country that doesn't exist which we shall call Niceland. Niceland is just nice - it is rich, it has a lovely climate with 4 seasons, it is safe and the capital city Niceville is a bustling metropolitan area with so much culture and history. However, whilst Niceville might be a lovely place to go on holiday, whether or not you should move there depends on one key issue: can you get a well paid job there based on the skills you have and even if we can say yes to that question, will you be happy doing that job there in Niceville? My point is simple: an individual like myself is dependent on my skills, abilities, talent and experience to be able to get a well-paid job. I am not getting any favours from anyone, certainly not from any government! In fact, I have an old friend from Singapore and I'm not going to name & shame him since he reads my blog sometimes - he used to work in Niceland where he taught at the university of Niceville and had a good job, he was there for so long that he managed to get permanent residency in Niceland. The the university of Niceville made him redundant and he couldn't get a similar job in Niceland so he was forced to return to Singapore as he couldn't stay on in Niceland without a well paid job and he couldn't find alternative employment. So whilst in theory, both him and I can agree that Niceland is a lovely country and we both adore Niceville, without that well paid job at the university, it made life there impossible for him. My friend certainly prefers Niceland to Singapore but without a decent job offer there (and his skills are so niche that finding a new job of a similar level offering a similar pay was tricky), he couldn't stay on in Niceville.
DeleteMy point is simple Amanda, in both my case in 2011 and my friend's case, the decision to move from country A to B was associated with an employment opportunity and the circumstances surrounding that job offer, we moved from country A to B to do a job, knowing that we were moving to country B with a lucrative job offer in hand. No fucking stupid idiot in the right mind would move to country B thinking, "oh Niceland is a good country, I'll move to the capital city Niceville to get a job there." No no no that is so fucking stupid I can't stress how fucking stupid that is. It has nothing at all to do with the country, it has everything to do with the job offer. It doesn't matter how awesome Niceland is, without a super well paid job offer in hand, my friend couldn't stay there. Our decisions to move from A to B has everything to do with the job offers we receive and how much money is on the table, it has NOTHING to do with how we feel about the country. So let's take a country I don't like for example, if we take a very hot African country which is just a hot mess and chaos like Nigeria, then yeah I wouldn't wanna live and work there. I wouldn't be happy there. But if you give me a job offer and put enough money on the table for me to do a job there, then I will gladly get on the next flight to Lagos, if the price is right. It's all about money at the end of the day. It's not about how fucking nice Niceland is as a country, we are just individuals taking care of ourselves trying to make a good living and we want to earn more money.
I really don't like Singapore because of my experience there, I really don't trust the government there, I really don't like the system there - I would be here typing all day and night if I start listing the things I really fucking hate about Singapore but if you put enough money on the table, I'll get on the next flight to Singapore if you can give me a job offer that is lucrative enough for me to put all those things aside as I like the money you're offering - it's that simple.
DeleteAhh okay so you were working on a very lucrative project that required you to move to Singapore but otherwise it wasn't permanent and only the money was keeping you there. I'm sorry the Singapore government got in the way, hope you still made good money on that project.
DeleteYeah it's true that many countries are deeply unequal and the average experience in a country doesn't matter, only the individual's circumstance. I've been here 4 days and it seems I'm too used to cool American weather that I'm sweating buckets here. My cousin, who I'm staying with, assumed I was here to look for work in Sg so I could move back, but I had to assure him this was just a vacation to see friends/family and eat authentic Asian food. After 4 days here, even if I found a similar tech job in Sg to what I do now in the US, I would have to live in more cramped housing, have less access to nature, and have to deal with the hot and humid weather. Some people think it's worth it because they like Asian culture and public transport, but those factors are neutral to me.
Just curious, what do you like about the UK that keeps you there? I'm making the assumption you do like the UK(despite it's faults), but please correct me if I'm wrong.
So let me explain it to you this way - your cousin had made an incorrect assumption and you assumed that I would think and feel the same way as your cousin, when I approach the issue in a very, very different manner. In the case of my old friend who worked at the university of Niceville, once he had lost that job, Niceville just became yet another expensive city in the West which he couldn't afford to live in as he couldn't find another well paid job there. This was mostly down to the fact that his skills were so niche that it made it very hard for him to find an equivalent job that paid as well once he had left that university. I also dislike the way your cousin thinks because I think it is a very working class attitude, I don't know how rich or poor your cousin is, but that way of thinking is soooo extremely, painfully, stereotypically working class. You see, working class people are poor, they are uneducated, they are helpless in the face of a crisis, they don't even have enough money to provide for their own families and often rely on government handouts for everything from medical care to their children's education. I know this because I grew up in a working class family - so working class people need to believe that the government in charge are benevolent and will care about working class families like them, thus the government will design a system that will take care of them. "I may be poor and working class, but I can count on my government, I have the best government in the world!" Now that's the kind of mantra that my parents would believe in not because it is true, but because they desperately want it to be true. It's the same thing with religion - I watch the news and I see people in Gaza, Haiti and Sudan who have lost everything and yet they are still so religious and praying to their god(s). Why? I look at them and think, you've got no hope in hell, you're going to die but they desperately cling to the hope that their god(s) care about them and wanna help save them from what they are going through? You see, the more desperate people are (we've gone a long way from the poor working class to people in a war zone who have lost everything), the more they desperately wish that there is a big brother entity in the form of a government or god that will help them. Whereas people who are richer, more well-educated and have skills, people like me are a lot more pragmatic and my mantra is, no you can never ever rely on anyone like a government to help you, you can only rely on yourself to find good work to earn money to take care of yourself. That's why I'll go to work anywhere in the world, even in places I really fucking hate, as long as you put enough money on the table, I'll do it for the money. So that's my point, it's fucking stupid of your cousin to think that the system in Singapore or the government in Singapore would somehow be the benevolent big brother who will give you a better future in Singapore, when really, the only person you can count on is yourself and it is entirely down to you to find a job that will pay you tons of money so you can take care of yourself and your loved ones. I really believe in this ethos of taking care of yourself and never making up this imaginary big brother who cares about you because let's face it, on this earth, we're all on our own, there's no benevolent big brother, we have got to take care of ourselves. This is why I find fault with your cousin's attitude.
DeleteAs for what you said about "hope you still made good money on that project", yeah I think I told you point blank that I made a fucking ton of money on the project that made me fucking rich to take good care of myself. After I made it that clear, you still used the word "hope" - like seriously? I think it's probably quite fucking rude to boast about how much money I make, but for you to use the word 'hope' in that sentence made it seem like I didn't express myself clearly. Let's go through it slowly then: a) I hate Singapore b) you need to offer me a lot of money to work there c) I was offered a ton of money, like a fuck ton of money to work there d) I said yes to the money and did it; therefore yes I made a fucking lot of money on that project thank you, I hope I've explained it clearly enough for you like this. I don't pretend that every single business venture I participate it was always successful, but I was paid a lot of money for the work that I did for that company at that point in time.
DeleteMoving onto your last question - I live in the UK, most specifically, in London because of my ability to make money here. I am a self-employed person who runs his own company, therefore it is essential that I am hunting for the next lucrative opportunity to make money. Thus this hunter needs to live in a hunting ground where he has sufficient opportunities to catch something good on a regular basis and London, being a massive city, has loads of opportunities for a hunter like me. Now you could probably say the same about any huge city like New York, Hong Kong, Berlin or Sydney and yes, such cities would offer a lot of opportunities but the difference is that I am well established in London with the right friends and connections to make my hunting a lot easier compared to say New Delhi, where I don't have any friends. There's no benevolent government here taking care of me, in fact the British government has always been really shit and it has especially been so for the last 8 years - things went downhill from 2016 since the Brexit referendum and the government has been truly shit since but I refer you to what I said above, I don't believe in relying on anyone, I believe in taking care of myself. Thus in a city like London, I know I can make good money given the combination of my skills and my connections, so that is why I choose to live here as I am confident that I can make plenty of money here. I am so pragmatic, it always boils down to money at the end of the day.
Oh I wasn't sure if the amount you were paid was contingent on the project being successful as opposed to a fixed amount to be paid upfront regardless of the result of the project. When you said the project didn't work out I didn't know if that meant it still paid well since you mentioned you are sometimes paid on commission. But okay, they paid you upfront then good for you.
DeleteI guess this goes back to what you said once about telling people "there are still poor people in rich countries" when you tell people you grew up poor in Singapore and they're surprised poor people exist there since Sg is a very rich country overall. There's no guarantee that if one goes to a rich or poor country they won't end up poor there. Oddly enough It wasn't just my cousin who assumed I came to Singapore to find work, it was also a professor who invited me for a talk. He even said over lunch "there's so many family offices in Sg, but I think it's better to come back after you get your US passport, but then you will be taxed twice according to US law." They're both not working class, about upper middle class. I suppose they just really like Sg and assumed they could use nepotism to help me get a good paying job, but that's a luxury mindset only the well connected can afford. I reconnected with an old friend while I was here, and I was sad to find out he was laid off a few months ago. He's never had a stable job while living and working in Sg(he is Singaporean), even though we both work in tech. I know my cousin and Prof probably think "that will never be Amanda, I'll help out to make sure of it", but the vast majority of people don't have someone like that looking out for them. Even with their nepo connections, if I suck or there's an economic downturn I'll get fired anyway.
In some cases, I work for commission when it is straight forward sales but in order cases when it involves playing more of the role of a project manager, then I get paid an agreed sum of money for the work that I do regardless of the results. Sometimes it is a mix of the two, where I play multiple roles. Thankfully, I am more than just a good salesman, I have a lot of technical knowledge in finance that allows me to take on roles that are more like project managers and therefore I can take on roles like that where I know exactly how much I am going to be paid. But let's use some common sense here Amanda, if someone was going to ask me to commit a few months of my life to work on a project, I'd ask for money up front regardless of the result and a bonus on top of that if the project works out favourably. And the money up front would be substantial already - it would be a fucking lot of money, enough to make me put aside any reservations I would have about Singapore to say, "okay I hate Singapore but for that amount of money which is fucking insane, yeah I'll park my feelings aside and do it." It's call negotiating a good contract that is in your favour Amanda and I'm the King at negotiation. I'll always make sure that nobody screws me over if I don't deliver the results - I've been in two situations where I got paid a lot of money up front and didn't deliver the results I was hoping to achieve, but still got the money up front because of my excellent negotiation skills. And that's one thing you have once again underestimated me on Amanda, when it comes to negotiations, my skills are second to none.
DeleteAs for the other point about nepotism and finding good work in Singapore, that's something I will cover in my next post which will be ready very soon.
At the risk of covering a topic that will be discussed in my next blog post, working class people end up with shit contracts because they don't know how to assert themselves when asking for exactly what they want and it is a lack of confidence to express themselves clearly with a toxic mix of poor social skills and even a lack of ability to use the right words (ie. a poor grasp of English or whatever the language we're using to negotiate) to deal with the other party. But like I said, this is a theme that will be covered in the next post. I used two examples there of people who don't know how to negotiate and ask for what they want and I use myself as an example of someone who can fail to deliver on a contract but still get paid a ton of money up front because of the way I had successfully negotiated a contract in my favour.
DeleteOh that's great you were so in demand and knew your worth that you could leverage that to get paid upfront regardless of the outcome. I'm not very good at negotiating, for different reasons than why working class people aren't good at it. Since I brought up nepotism, I'm starting to think that it's made me "soft" in a few different areas. No surprises there, you've met your fair share of rich kids in finance who have no business working in the role they're at, but are only there because they knew someone. And if it doesn't work out they have some sort of safety net to catch them. Any time I get a new job my cousin and prof ask to see my employment offer and try to teach me how to negotiate. But they have also negotiated on my behalf in the past and only told me after I got the good payout. And I think because they did it in the past when I was a helpless little undergrad/inexperienced working adult, I didn't get to learn that if I don't try to negotiate, I will be paid a lot less. But even if I was paid less, it didn't hurt me that much financially because I'm not from a working class family. But also, I'm not even sure how much I'm worth because I don't know how much of that payout is due to nepotism, and how much is due to me adding value. My boyfriend came from a working class family and got zero guidance about his career. So for him, he knows that if he is paid anything by anyone, that is 100% due to his competency and not anything else, so he negotiated a very high pay raise when changing jobs recently because he "knew his worth." He's been telling me that he thinks I'm underpaid and I should put out a few job applications just to see what I get back to obtain a "valuation" of myself. Maybe I just lack "hunger" to want more money sometimes, but when I return to the US I will definitely do that. It's not so much more money I want, but more free time and benefits(a higher big mac index).
DeleteI thought about this and a scene from a Singaporean movie came to mind. This was a Singaporean remake of a famous Hollywood movie called Freaky Friday (very Disney kid friendly family movie featuring Lindsay Lohan, from many years ago). In Freaky Friday, a mother and daughter really don't get along and refuse to see things from each other's point of view - so to force them to see each other's point of view, an old Chinese lady at a Chinese restaurants puts a spell on them and forces them to switch bodies, so the daughter wakes up in the mother's body and the mother wakes up in the daughter's body. And then they spend the rest of the film trying to undo the spell. So in the Singaporean version, there are two colleagues who really hate each other and as in Freaky Friday, switch bodies. So in the Singaporean version, the colleagues seek out this Chinese temple witch doctor to try to reverse the spell. The witch doctor speaks only in Hokkien and requires his assistant to translate to English, so the scene is a hilarious mix of Hokkien, Mandarin and English. The witch doctor demands $5,000 up front and the colleagues balk at that price tag and the lady asks for some kind of guarantee that it works before she pays $5,000. This is when the witch doctor tells her that he is a professional: "do you think you're being a flat screen plasma TV from the shop, so you can ask for a guarantee? I am a professional, like a doctor - if you go see a doctor and the doctor cannot cure your illness, you will still have to pay the bill for the doctor. If you hire a lawyer to represent you in court but you lose the case, you will still have to pay the lawyer's bill for their services - this is how professionals work. Being a professional means, I do the work, I do my very best, it doesn't come with a guarantee and you must pay regardless." I am able to quote from the film as someone has put that scene online and it is really funny, but you really need to understand Hokkien to get the humour. But the Chinese witch doctor has a point: even he saw himself as a professional, the very same way I undertook the work in Singapore. I was given an assignment by a company from Europe to do certain things for them in Singapore - I went there as a professional, I did my very best, I could not guarantee success as some issues were out of my hands and I was going to paid for the work I did regardless of the outcome. Thus as a Chinese witch doctor explained it, what he was asking for (and what I negotiated for in Singapore) is really just what we consider "professional" or "standard". I have opened my eyes to see how other professionals negotiate and I follow in their footsteps, I'm not reinventing the wheel here.
Delete*Typo sorry, "do you think you're BUYING a flat screen plasma tv".
DeleteHehe I always find it funny when I see Chinese superstition incorporated in modern day TV shows and movies. Do people still believe in this stuff? I once walked passed this mall in Katong where there was a shop called "Ghostbusters: Chinese Feng Shui services."
DeleteI actually got scolded by the prof who invited me for the talk in Sg because I was standing around for half an hour after the talk to take questions. He said to me over email "By the way Amanda, you don't have to stay after the talk even if you are an alumni. Expertise is NOT free, especially if it costs you time." I can negotiate other stuff, like doing horse trading or getting someone to help a friend, but somehow when it comes to my own salary I take it way too personally and undervalue myself. Maybe if I pretended I was negotiating a salary on behalf of a friend I can take my feelings out of the equation. But also, in upper class culture you're not really allowed to brag about money or money grub or it will look cheap, so there's a tendency to hand over a credit card without looking at the bill, or overpay for a service for convenience. This is why I like the idea of a class diverse workplace, because a rich kid and poor kid both bring different skills to the table. As a rich kid I can get along with other rich kids easier, but someone like my boyfriend is better at negotiating a bigger paycheck, bargain hunting, and being wary of scams.
Yes people do believe in it for reasons that I have already discussed above - working class folks feel as if they have no control in their lives, they have no money, they don't have a good job (they probably have a nasty boss who yells at them if they are 30 seconds late back from their lunch break) and they are the kind of people who wish that they have a benevolent big brother in the form of a god or government who will take good care of them. Thus Chinese superstition in the form of calling on all these gods and spirits is a form of feeling some control in their lives when there is none. So here's a true story, I knew of this man who had a streak of bad luck - he lost his job, his wife was in a car accident, his son failed his exam, you get the idea. One bad thing happened after another and he felt as if everything that could go wrong did go wrong all at the same time. So what did he do? He went to the Chinese witch doctor, the witch doctor did his "magic" which involved burning some joss sticks, some chanting, a lot of theatrics (hey you paid for magic, there's gotta be theatrics to make you feel as if the witch doctor is really doing something - so typically, the witch doctor will shout, roll around the floor as if he is possessed, even dance etc). Then the witch doctor sent the man away with a good luck charm and promised him his luck would change - the man chose to believe it and paid the witch doctor something like $500 for the 'magic'. Why? Working class people who are desperate for hope but have zero reason to have hope will pay $500 for a witch doctor to give them hope, the witch doctor is exploiting the desperate.
DeleteOddly enough, my mom has used Chinese witch doctors before. She's a terribly abusive person so she could never hold a stable job without fighting with a client or boss. Instead of fixing her bad people skills, she turns to a witch doctor to give her good luck. I just didn't think it was a thing outside of a poor developing country, especially in a rich country like Singapore. But if there's demand for something there will always be scams targeting that demand. I like watching finance videos on youtube, but that also means the youtube algorithm will show me get-rich-quick ads like "make 2% profit per day doing day-trading" courses. I think that is the equivalent of a Chinese witch doctor in the West where they're more secular.
DeleteLook up the clip on Youtube "funny Hokkien conversation from Just Follow Law" - that was a clip I quoted from. I'm not quite sure what the correct translation is, some people call them "temple mediums" as they can connect and communicate with the underworld whilst others call them witch doctors or bomoh, to borrow a word from Malay. But a witch doctor would tell a paying client like your mother what she wants to hear, "it's not your fault, you have some demon spirits in your life causing you bad luck and we need to get rid of those demons, then everything will be fine. Pay me a thousand dollars and we'll do the necessary rituals to cleanse your life of those evil spirits." It's a scam, but the people handing over the money actually do it with gratitude and joy.
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