Singaporean living in Switzerland

I've struggled to write this post. First, I felt I hadn't lived here in Zurich long enough to comment. Then later, I found it hard to articulate what I truly felt about being a Singaporean living in Switzerland. But it has been a good 9 months since I made the move so it's really now or never.

Little background due diligence about me

I think I'm rather typical Singaporean. My parents live in a 5 room HDB apartment, I have just one younger brother thanks to the "stop-at-two" birth control policies of the early 80s, I went to local schools right up to university, I kinda like how I can speak Singlish with ease and I complain a lot to anyone that will listen to me.

I also think I'm a rather privileged typical Singaporean. I spent 8 months on exchange in Amsterdam during university, another 2 years getting my Masters degree in London, the first 2 years of my working life travelling all over the world on the company's expense and now I'm based out of Zurich. I'd say for someone barely 30, I've traveled quite a fair bit and lived in quite a number of cities for an extended period of time.

Why did I move to Switzerland?

Singaporeans are pretty used to having someone around them moving to Australia, the UK, China, the States but I still get a surprised look and raised eyebrow when I say I now live in Switzerland. The Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs website indicates that there are probably 200 or so Singaporeans in Switzerland. That's perhaps the number of Singaporeans in 1 lane of the causeway crossing over to Malaysia on any given day. So I get it, its rare.

I moved because of love. And it was only possible because of opportunity. Long story short, my partner and I had a vision of living in Europe while we're both still fairly young. It also didn't make any sense that he was based out of Sydney and me out of Singapore. So us being crazy us, co-locating meant moving thousands of miles to Europe. He got what seemed like a brilliant opportunity then to move to Zurich and I took the plunge and followed him here.

What do I do now in Switzerland then?

I took up a rotation within the company I work for that gave me the opportunity to be based out of Zurich despite my non-existent German. This, I am eternally grateful for and on days where work annoys the hell out of me, I think about how being here was only possible cause of the opportunity I was given.

I work for a large (well large is an understatement) management consulting firm and they did everything they could to help secure my work permit. It is notoriously hard for a foreigner to get a work permit in Switzerland especially if you're non-EU and you have no local language abilities. It doesn't help that the immigration laws are only tightening by the minute so I was rather lucky that it all sorted itself out with not too much damage done.

So no. I'm not a Swiss-tai-tai, not that I'm complaining... I do make Swiss francs now.

Are you really the only Singaporean there? How about Asians?

I've met 2 other Singaporeans in my last 9 months. Granted I'm not the most sociable and I don't seek out opportunities to meet fellow Singaporeans. My company has a grand total of 3 Asians and I've only seen one other Asian in my neighborhood. So yes, there really aren't many asians, much less Singaporeans here, I must say it seems like this is really not a first choice for asian migrants at all. From what I've heard, the asians here largely comprise of spouses who married a Swiss native or are transient like myself. There really isn't much of an asian community here and Zurich is the first major city I know of that doesn't have a Chinatown!

Political poster seen everywhere in Zurich

Are things really as expensive as people describe? Are you making a lot more money?

The honest answer here is yes and yes. Which to me basically balances the scales. Moving here did see my net income increase significantly taking into consideration the strong Swiss franc and also across the board, any sort of labour is paid more than back home in Singapore. But things are also really a lot pricier than back home. You'll always find exceptions but here's a little price comparison, all in SGD:

Singapore          Zurich Movie tickets for 2 $25 $55 Mid price restaurant for 2 $80 $140 Washing detergent 1 litre $8 $16 Electrictian to put up a light $100 $420 Public transport 1 trip $3 $7 Buying a BMW                         $250,000 $90,000

Grocery shopping for the both of us a month runs about SGD$3500 or so. Getting someone to "just come and fix something" is not an easy decision when its 500 bucks and we shelved the idea of getting help to clean our apartment when we found out it's easily 75bucks an hour.

There are so many other questions I'd love to tackle but this post is getting really long, I'll continue with the top 5 questions I'm always asked in the next post. 

1. What are the Swiss really like?

2. What are some places to visit in Switzerland?

3. Do you face discrimination?

4. What is there to do in Zurich?

5. Do you plan to make Switzerland your permanent home?

Drop me a comment below if you have any others you'll like me to answer!