An open letter from a person who chose to migrate to Australia from Singapore as a family
For me, personally, it is life. I find the true meaning of life when we decided to migrate to Australia from Singapore. What do you value the most about life? You got to ask yourself this, “What do I live for?”. Do you live for money? Do you live for work? Do you live for the clothes that you wear or the type of food that you eat?
For me, I live for my family. When we migrated here in Australia, I started to enjoy my life so much more. And as a family we do things a family is ought to do together, including things you might think are not enjoyable but they are: cleaning the house together as family, mowing the lawn and doing our garden together as a family, taking a deep in our swimming pool at our backyard as a family. Not necessarily going to the movie houses (because tickets are expensive), but going to video rental shops and watching it together as a family.
In Singapore, you go out to the hawker center, join the queue, and wait for your dish — which can turn out nice or not nice. In Australia, family life is different. We go to supermarket and get the ingredients when we want to cook for ourselves. For example, we had a lot of chicken rice in Singapore but from our own point of view, we really enjoy the food we prepared for ourselves more.
And best of all, we sit down, eat the food we prepared with some of Australia’s best white wine to compliment the rice and chicken meat. That in my opinion is life. That in my opinion is what life should be all about. When the kids comeback from school early, we jump on our bicycles, and grab our fishing rods and we do a bit of fishing. The weather is nice, the scenery is nice, there are no crowds, and you don’t have to spend a large chunk of money just for a holiday.
In Singapore, I have to admit it is a very good place to work. You can literary work day in day out day and night and when you get tired from work you go to sleep and continue working when you wake up and you work, and you work, and you work.
For me, work is part of life but it is not life.
Our lives in general have improved when we chose to migrate to Australia from Singapore as a family.