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Jeremy Yap followed his heart five years ago to a land where few Singaporeans would think of exploring, let alone set up base — Chile.

But it was not his first foray into the South American country, where Spanish is the national language, he tells AsiaOne. [Fun fact: Chile is also considered the southernmost country in the world due to its length.]

Its capital of Santiago in particular, holds fond memories for the 34-year-old regional business manager as it was not just the place where he did his exchange programme as an undergraduate 10 years ago, but also where he met his wife, Rie Okawara, who was also a fellow exchange student from Japan.

After his year-long Chilean sojourn came to an end, Jeremy moved back to Singapore, along with then-girlfriend Rie.

Upon graduating from their respective universities, they both found jobs here — he for the British High Commission and subsequently a law firm, and her in hotel sales.

They tied the knot after five years, which also coincided with a period of restlessness for Jeremy. Their wedding gave them the perfect excuse to quit their jobs and go on year-long 'honeymoon'.

Radical? Yes. YOLO? definitely.

"Sometimes in Singapore we plan too much, at least for me personally. I planned so much that I forgot what I really wanted to do," says Jeremy of his long-held intention to revisit Latin America.

Jeremy admits that their decision, which he gently broke to everyone over the course of a year as they began saving for their trip, was met with shock by his friends and family.

"Obviously the first thing they said was, 'Huh, you siao ah?'" laughs Jeremy.

His parents were initially disapproving of their move to a whole other continent 30 hours away by plane, with next to no plan in place. Friends on the other hand, were concerned about their finances due to the lower salaries there.

"I didn't know what I was going to do… but I decided not to care," wrote Jeremy in a blog post looking back on his decision.

What he did know, however, was that he had items to check off his bucket list. They included living and working in another country, improving his Spanish and "focusing on living life, rather than working all the time".

So while it was a honeymoon on paper, Jeremy and Rie were also on the lookout for work opportunities in Chile.

Things began to take shape when a job offer came knocking for Jeremy's wife just three weeks after they arrived. But Jeremy soon found a job, as well, working at a business consultancy firm. He stayed for three years before landing his current role at a tech company headquartered in Singapore.

One of the many questions he's been asked since making the move is, "How is it like working in Chile?" The answer, he has found, couldn't be more different to the Singapore office culture.

The main thing that he had to get used to was how Chileans "work to live", rather than "live to work", he says, recounting in his blog how he once found himself alone in a darkened office building when it was only 8pm.

As a Chilean friend who'd worked in Singapore once told him, "In Chile, we party on the weekends and we use the weekdays to recover. In Singapore, you work hard on the weekdays and use the weekends to recover."

Another thing he had to get used to about the Chilean work culture?

When 'tomorrow' doesn't really mean 24 hours later, and calling someone multiple times to follow-up is expected, rather than an annoyance (on the part of the receiver).

"In Singapore, not delivering your work after you made a promise that you will send it 'tomorrow' is taboo. Whereas in Chile, 'tomorrow' could mean 24 hours later, 48 hours later or perhaps never," he notes.

And he's serious, stating, "I reckon the number of follow-ups I've done in Chile would have got me blacklisted in many organisations in Singapore."

In the early days of life in Chile, he had missed the efficiency of Singapore in general, as he recalls feeling "very irritated" by how things didn't always work well in Chile. Getting a travel visa for example, was a one-and-a-half-year wait. "And to collect the visa, you had to queue up at the immigration office from 3am, just to make sure you got a collection ticket."

"But being here has taught me a lot about patience, and focusing more on happiness rather than material things," says Jeremy, who shares that he's so used to waiting by now that he recently spent eight hours stuck in traffic with his wife and thought nothing of it.

"After we got back home we were like, if this was in Singapore, we'd be damn pissed off already," says Jeremy, smiling.

Another thing which Jeremy misses would be the safety that Singaporeans often take for granted.

"For example, I can't just leave my bag at McDonald's to go order food because it might get stolen."

Other than being verbally attacked on one occasion following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jeremy is thankful he has not found himself in any other sketchy situations so far in the relatively peaceful and economically-stable nation.

"I just scolded the person back with the most colourful language I knew," says Jeremy, who speaks fluent Spanish now and is even able to conduct business meetings in the language.

"I do miss a little bit of the metropolitan lifestyle that Singapore has and the multi-racial environment, as obviously I'm a minority here and there are not a lot of Asians," he adds.

When we speak to him in late July, it is winter in Chile, where temperatures are milder in the city and freezing in southernmost regions such as Patagonia. Of course, the cold weather would make one miss our sunny shores, not to mention the food.

Being thousands of kilometres away from home, with only five other Singaporeans that he knows around Santiago where he's based, he has to get down to cooking in the kitchen whenever he misses local hawker fare. He shares wistfully that he "tried, but failed" to make his favourite Hokkien mee and char kway teow.

National Day party for 100 pax

The love for Singapore food is part of the reason why Jeremy is planning to hold a National Day event in Santiago later this month, with some help from the Singapore Global Network (SGN), a division of the Economic Development Board which engages with Singaporeans overseas.

"Other Southeast Asian countries have their embassies here, where they would hold Malaysia Day, or Thailand Day, but for the six of us Singaporeans it's like, 'you want to come to my house', or 'I go to your house'," says Jeremy with a tinge of envy. He is excited that for this year's National Day, that will no longer be the case.

With SGN giving out partial funding for National Day-related activities, it presented to them an opportunity to hold not only a larger-scale and more formal event, but the chance to share Singapore's culture with their friends and business associates in Chile.

"It is financially difficult and almost impossible to cater a home party for 100 people," says Jeremy, who was last in Singapore in 2019, before the pandemic hit. 

They ran into some hiccups when it came to securing the venue, which is why the event will likely be held later this month instead of on Aug 7 as initially thought.

Estimated to accommodate about 100 people, they plan to have food catered by a Singaporean there who was a former MasterChef Spain contestant, and are still considering other activities such as a movie screening.

And while Jeremy is happy with his life now in Chile, especially with most Covid-19 restrictions lifted (he has had four vaccination shots to date as mandated by the Chilean government), he doesn't rule out returning to Singapore sometime in the future.

It's a question he gets asked "all the time" by his parents.

"My mum would want to hear this, because I always tell her 'I don't know yet' [to the question of when he's returning home], but maybe when my parents are a bit older, then I might go back. But now they're still healthy, so I'm like, I better take advantage of this time first."

He admits to occasionally wondering how his life would have turned out in five years if he were still in Singapore.

"I compare myself to friends sometimes. Obviously a lot of them are earning more money than I am, they might have bought a house, [and I'd think] how my life could have been that way. But then I'm happy with what I have," says Jeremy.

One good thing, however, is that he has managed to save more money in Chile than when he was working in Singapore, due to the ample supply of fresh and inexpensive produce from the local markets. Eating out, which costs more in Chile compared to Singapore without the option of cheap hawker fare, is something they indulge in about once a week.

And as they say, you can take a man out of Singapore but you can't take the Singaporean-ness out of the man. Besides the love for good food and an appreciation for living in a multi-cultural society, Jeremy shares that one defining quality that he has as a Singaporean is definitely the ability to sniff out a good deal and "to know if something is at a good discount".

One of Jeremy's newfound philosophies on life, as a somewhat "atypical Singaporean" by normal standards, is that, "Sometimes in life, you don't need to plan so much", and to take things as they come. He jokes, "After all, you might plan but still end up having to wait eight hours in traffic, so just enjoy [the process]."

candicecai@asiaone.com

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