Scratching the Surface: What I’ve Found in Singapore So Far

Not the 5 Cs I Expected

One Month, Five Depths

Before I landed in Singapore, I watched my share of YouTube videos and Instagram reels about the “5 Cs” of Singapore success: cash, car, credit card, condominium, country club - one set of markers of prestige that frame one vision of “making it.”

But after one month of actually being here — sweating through the humidity, fumbling my way around MRT stations, and eating my bodyweight in spicy noodles — I’ve stumbled into a whole different set of Cs that are more my style of success - deeper layers of life I’ve experienced and seen reflected in Singaporeans: Creativity, Care, Curiosity, Community, and Courage.

Of course, I’ve only scratched the surface. A single month is hardly enough time to really learn about this amazingly diverse city-state, but even in this short time, these five Cs have already begun to shape how I see Singapore — and how I see myself in it.

Creativity

Singapore is a living collage, where pieces from everywhere are layered into something strikingly whole. So far, I’ve only explored a fraction of the island — from brief forays into the Central Business District, to more than our fair share of wrong turns on buses, to wandering around Bedok, Tampines, East Coast Park, and up and down our little stretch of Siglap South. Along the way I’ve been learning to adjust to the great Singaporean dichotomy of humid heat and freezing air-con — stepping from steamy sidewalks into multistory, multi-sensory malls, dazzling in their endless array of stores, food vendors, and families filling every floor.

My favorite location so far is the area around Katong and Joo Chiat, with the Peranakan tiles and pastel shop-houses telling stories in technicolor all around us. The hawker centers are edible galleries — each stall a masterclass in food that’s both rooted and reinvented. Two of my current favorites? The crispy, rich wonder of fried oysters with eggs, and the comforting spice of a steaming bowl of laksa. Katong laksa in particular has captured my heart — a dish that carries centuries of history, migration, and mingling of cultures. But my curiosity about chicken feet broth is satiated, and that will remain in the no thank you column for now.

And the modern architecture? Glass buildings rising out of the landscape with otter crossing signs dotting along the sidewalk just below, orchids blooming at the airport and lush koi ponds on the property of a pretty dang urban apartment complex. The creativity is everywhere I look!

I’ve even found myself practicing little creative hacks just to navigate daily life. Rearranging our apartment with the limited furniture we shipped, figuring out how to walk Butterbean between sudden tropical downpours and blazing hot sun showers, learning to cobble together meals with ingredients I don’t yet recognize in the grocery aisles. It’s everyday improvisation — a reminder that creativity isn’t only in museums or hawker stalls, but in how we keep adapting and finding beauty in the ordinary.

Care

The depth of care I’ve experienced here is humbling. Our neighbors welcomed us not just with smiles but with genuinely helpful advice on settling in and even offered an invitation for me to attend Japanese flower arranging class at the local community center. At the MRT, an older gentleman saw me staring blankly at a my phone then all around at the signage and stepped away from his own conversation to help. Friends I’d only met online took us to lunch and shepherded us around like long-lost cousins. For a supposedly fast-paced city, the kampung spirit — that village-hearted care — is still alive and well.

There’s also the quieter care of this transition: taking care of myself when I’m exhausted, remembering to pause and breathe, and learning what rest looks like in a new place. Why hasn’t anyone told me how glorious naps are?! And there’s the care Betsy and I extend to each other — checking in, laughing through the hard bits, reminding one another that we can do hard things because we don’t do them alone. This shared tenderness is is ever my sanctuary no matter where we live.

Curiosity

Singaporeans seem to be gloriously curious. In just a few weeks, I’ve been asked about America, about our life in the Netherlands, about being two women married to each other, and — most urgently — what we paid for rent and my new folding bike. (Sometimes with the kind of bluntness that would make my former Dutch neighbors proud!) But it doesn’t feel nosy; it feels open, connective. These questions say: “Tell me your story. Let’s trade pieces of our lives.” And in that exchange, I feel welcomed — even when I accidentally admit how much we paid for chili crab.

Curiosity is also the posture I’m practicing. When I bump into something strange to me — a custom, a flavor, a ritual, even a bureaucratic labyrinth — I’m trying to skip the knee-jerk judgment that comes from my limited Western lens. Instead, I pause and think, how cool is this? I had no idea! Or, how lucky am I to get to learn this firsthand? It shifts me from critique to wonder, from resistance to gratitude. Curiosity reminds me I’m a guest here — and the world is far wider, wilder, and wiser than my imagination has ever stretched.

Community

This country is stitched together like a dazzling quilt, with each patch distinct and honored. We watched the National Day parade online and during a particular segment my heart was cracked open by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam inspecting the Guard of Honor military personnel.

This scene represents Singapore’s strengths, not just in mlitary might, but in a full embrace of different cultures, with some of the Guard wearing sacred cultural attire alongside their military uniforms, and women front, center and honored. It was a vision of community that doesn’t flatten (or fear, MAGA I’m looking at you) differences but lifts them up with pride.

Closer to home, Siglap — our neighborhood — has its own cookbook and we’ve even seen a sticker, “Straight Outta Siglap.” I love that a global city of six million people still finds ways to feel like a village.

Community has also taken different shapes for us personally. For Betsy, her school UWC comes with a ready-made network — a pop-up community that welcomed her instantly, complete with colleagues, students, and new routines to shape her life here. For me, it’s been slower and more intentional: finding and creating connections with the sober set here in Singapore, showing up for meetings, listening, and introducing myself again and again to the absolute warmest of welcomes. It is a beautiful becoming and belonging all woven together.

Courage

And then, there’s courage. Just before we got here I clued into the Pink Dot Celebration, where thousands filled the city with light and color, celebrating LGBT lives with joy and delight. Courage here is quiet, steady, and persistent. And honestly, it makes me braver too — braver than I thought I’d be in just one month. Moving a world away meant learning to do basic things all over again — from figuring out how to top up a bus card to navigating a supermarket where nothing is quite where I expect. And bringing our dog here? I handled every step of the import process by myself, no fancy relocation company — just me, stacks of paperwork, half a bottle of Tums, and a very patient Butterbean.

And then there’s that new folding bike — my first ever. Getting it on and off public transport without looking like a complete goober (okay, while looking like a complete goober) has been its own act of bravery. It may not sound epic, but trust me, there’s a particular kind of courage in wrangling handlebars and pedals while pretending you totally know what you’re doing. Have I mentioned that I am well into my 50s with a dodgy knee doing all this?

Courage, I’m learning, sometimes looks less like bold speeches and more like showing up for the everyday, one woobly step at a time.

What I Am Learning

So this first month has not been about the surface Cs of success but about deeper ones: creativity, care, curiosity, community, and courage.

I came to Singapore expecting change, expecting things to be hard, urban, fast and flavorful. What I didn’t expect was the depth — the beauty, the kindness, the blunt questions, the celebrated diversity, the everyday acts of courage — that would start shaping me so quickly.

And if I manage to learn Japanese flower arranging without killing the flowers, well, that will be my sixth C: comedy.