Discovered

Here’s an article from TODAY:

S’porean diaspora gathers in cyberspace

OS Portal has 9,000 users a year after launch

Friday • August 10, 2007

Derrick A Paulo
derrick@mediacorp.com.sg

THERE are hardly any Singaporeans in the faraway city of Bogota, Colombia.

Yet, Ms Kemmy Lim, the head of secondary at Colegio Gran Bretaña, an international school, managed to contact a fellow citizen there whom she never knew.

The first time they met, after chatting on the phone and online, Ms Lim went to her new friend’s place and was served four types of Singaporean curry: Egg curry, vegetarian curry, prawn curry and fish curry.

“Who could have asked for more??!!” she blogged, and decided to be the next host.

Stories like this are being repeated in both far-flung destinations and big, cosmopolitan cities as more Singaporeans live overseas.

The ripples of connections have grown, especially recently, due to a cyber hub that is making a splash.

The Overseas Singaporean Portal (OS Portal; at www.overseassingaporean.sg) is how Ms Lim and thousands of others are being “discovered”, wherever they are.

“Guess-timates” and Pyjamas

Wished I had the time and energy to always blog after every interview. But I don’t. So Here’s a 2-in-1 post.

We had a delightful meeting with officers from the Overseas Singaporean Unit on Friday. Despite having covered parliament and other government matters before, I must admit I was a little nervous as my group and I boarded lift to the 14th floor of the Ministry of National Development building. The OSU is afterall part of the Prime Minister’s Office. Lee Hsien Loong’s office leh!

My nerves were set at ease quite immediately when we met with the two ladies. They’re awfully nice, and I’m not saying this just because I want to get in their good books. They ARE nice and were very forthcoming with sharing information, some of which aren’t even exactly very official yet. We had a list of questions for them, they answered everyone of them. Among the most pertinent question was what exactly is the role of the Overseas Singaporean Unit. Yar, we know they help to keep Singaporeans overseas connected with each other and with other Singaporeans back home, but how do they do it, and what’s a day in the life of a OSU officer like?

So here 10 interesting things we found about them. (BTW, if you think I got this from a corporate brochure, you’re wrong. They don’t even have one. There hasn’t been time to do one they say, it’s barely 2 years since they “opened shop”):

• The Overseas Singaporean Unit is a secretariat. It does more coordination work than anything else. They engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Manpower and such.
• It is part of the PMO’s National Population Secretariat branch.
• One of their aims is to also bridge gaps that exist between the ministries Overseas Singaporeans would have to deal with. In simpler words, they are the one-stop center for information for Singaporeans who are preparing to return. They can help to coordinate between the Ministry of Education and say Immigration Authorities too.
• They are not a consular. Rather, they’re a counselor. (Sorry for that cheesey comparison, that popped in my head during the meeting). They provide the advice to help Singaporeans relocate when there a request for it.
• They don’t actively seek out Singaporeans overseas and try to persuade (or threaten) them to return home . They merely maintain links and act as a contact point.
• They don’t have official figures of how many Singaporeans there are overseas. There are only… guesstimates, as put by one of the officers. (You can imagine, I was straining my ears real hard to catch what she said. Guessti… what?) And then she went to explain: “We only have anecdotal evidence.” Numbers are only available when Singaporeans register themselves online on the e-register of a change in address. The Singapore Day in New York was a good example. Based on whatever data they had, they had only expected 600 people to turn up. 6000 turned up instead.
• They have no affiliation with any Singaporean Clubs overseas although they maintain good links with them.
• Officers at the OSU also go on ministerial visits.
• There are only 7 staff members at the OSU.
• The Overseas Singaporean Portal is not their corporate website. Their corporate info can be found here (and it sucks isn’t very informative)

So, indeed, it was a very fruitful meeting and e-mails flew that evening itself. We were put in touch with this guy called San Choo, who actually organises activities for this club we should have known existed. It’s called R.O.S.S. – Returned Overseas Singaporeans in Singapore! The only disappointing thing came out from the meeting was that the OSU couldn’t fund us. Admittedly, we weren’t quite expecting them to be able to anyway.

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On Thursday, we met up with Jimmy Yap, a motivational speaker cum financial planner who had been in the UK for a long long long while (he left in the 1960s on an airline I never knew existed – British Caledonian – with merely 60 pounds in his socks) but eventually came back to Singapore, and boy was he an interesting character.

One statement he said gave me the quivers. “I don’t let the environment decide your fate, you be environment.”