Intro
If you’ve stumbled upon this article, you might be new to Singapore or interested in moving to Singapore. I wrote this piece to share my “onboarding experience” as a Canadian expat that recently moved to Singapore in the spring of 2023.
For quick background context, I was in a bit of a rut where I felt kind of unmotivated and bored back in Canada. I knew I needed a change and so the easiest way to do that was to fully immerse myself in a new environment — which happened to be Singapore this time around. Onwards was my path to finding a new jet stream to ride.
In this article, I will touch on a variety of topics such as motivation, finances, friends/family, navigating a new region of the world, amongst other things. This is a long-form read that digs into some details of my first 100 days in the beautiful city-state of Singapore so I hope you leave with either some learnings or some inspiration.
Key takeaways:
- Big part of my new happiness comes taking care of my physical self
- How quickly you can get yourself a basic social group matters
- I was able to re-find my ambition with a reset button and a new country
Physical Body
When I left Toronto / Montreal, I was more overweight than I wanted to be and not physically active compared to a previous self when I lived in London. I had tried to maintain my health through physical activity but found it tough to stay motivated and consistently active — particularly during the brutal Montréal winters where you’d be walking outside in 20cm of snow and -20 degrees C to get to the gym. Even in Toronto, I had built my own home gym with a squat rack, plates, bench, etc which solved for convenience but did not solve for motivation.
When I came to Singapore, my first order of business was making sure I had a good physical routine to make my body healthy again. The old saying that health is wealth was something I resonated with. When I saw a chiropractor the other day and they said “You are all good, keep doing all of the activities; you have full freedom to do so,” it felt incredible and I had renewed sense of what the word freedom meant. I did not want my body to be the blocker for not doing things.
Here were a couple of things I did:
- Hired a personal trainer for boxing with 1:1 intense training 1x/week
- Taught myself how to swim with pointers from national level Turkish swimmers (reached my goal of doing a smooth 40m freestyle on Day 97)
- Incorporated functional fitness and HIIT, rather than just weightlifting
- Re-kindled my love for the sport of badminton, playing 2h a week with intermediate level players
- Ran in the local park with the house dog, a puppy Samoyed
- Tracked my macros and calories for the first 6 weeks on MyFitnessPal so I could re-calibrate what I knew about nutrition and portion size
- Examples of an intense workout day 1x a week: 5k run in the morning, 2 hours badminton at noon, 30km bike ride evening
A typical week for me is where I where I have 2 days for sports, 3 to 4 days for weightlifting, 3 to 4 swim sessions, 3 to 4 recovery sessions in the steam room. 1 to 2 ad hoc cardio sessions like biking or running.
Over the course of 3 months, I saw some real improvements in my health as a result of these active lifestyle changes:
- Heart Rate Variance (HRV) improved by 36% on average
(measured by Whoop 4.0) - Resting Heart Rate (RHR) decreased by 14% on average
(measured by Whoop 4.0) - Fat mass decreased by 3.9kg (8.58lbs) and body fat decreased by 3.1%
(measured by Fitness First BodiTrax) - Muscle mass increased by 2kg (4.4lbs) and muscle comp by 3.6%
(measured by Fitness First BodiTrax) - I am getting much more sunlight and my anecdotal fitness is way higher where I can be active for 3+ hours in a day and still have energy
Living Situation
My thought process for figuring out where to live was to look at a persona of who I wanted to become and go to where those people lived (i.e. young, ambitious entrepreneurs). I went through a decision-making framework of either A) surrounding myself with founders in a co-living situation to boot up my learnings — even if temporary, or B) rent my own place and be lonely from the very start. Choice was obvious when it was put that way, so I immediately Googled terms like “where to live in Singapore as an entrepreneur.” After reading a bunch of blogs and watching a bunch of YouTube videos, I started reaching out to the people that wrote those blogs as my starting point.
Through this process, I met Conrad, who runs OurFamilyWithoutBorders. We got to know each other via 2x video calls while I was still in Canada. I was put through the gauntlet and interviewed by other housemates as well to see if I passed the test. In short, once they had made their choice to let me in, it was an immediate go-ahead on my part because this co-living scenario would satisfy living arrangements, give me an initial group of people that knew their way around Singapore, and hopefully a new group of friends I would get along with. Further, this wouldn’t be my first co-living experience. I had lived in a 7 bedroom house in university, as well as a 6 bedroom house in San Francisco — both of those situations were positive ones for me so it was a no brainer decision to move forward.
We currently live in a 6 bedroom landed property with 7000+ sq ft of space in the suburbs of Singapore. I initially thought my only gripe is that it’s a touch outside of the Central Business District (CBD), but now I love it because of the peace and tranquility that I get, especially with the birds chirping outside of my window every morning while the sun beams in through my floor to ceiling windows.
Amazing People
When I was back in Canada, I felt like I was in a suspended limbo. I desired access to likeminded, hungry, motivated people in a cosmopolitan city rich with culture. I also knew I wanted to build cool sh!t, be healthy, and travel a ton. All of these things seemed achievable in Singapore.
The biggest change that I saw living at my Singaporean house was that everyone else was an entrepreneur that loved to work hard. They did not necessarily see work as work, but work as fun, and a way for them to be creative. Furthermore, the environment allows us to consistently have conversations about how we can help each other — our successes are shared / our failures are shared. It makes being a founder that much easier to know that there are homies that have your back.
The same can be said about other folks that I have met outside of the house. Several entrepreneurs that I have met here are very focused on their craft — I find that admirable and want a little bit of that Kool Aid. I can often find myself saying “wow, it was really cool to meet that person.”
Here are some of the incredible folks I’ve met in my first 100 days and am proud to call my friends:
- Founder of an online game company with over 1M MAUs + lover of munching on tomahawk steak bones
- Founder of a devtools SaaS startup + professional League of Legends player
- Executive Director for a dance company + contemporary artist / educator
- Top 100 worldwide algorithmic trader + lover of salted peanuts
- Founder of an online community focused on productivity hacking + frequent patron of Japanese onsens
- Founder of a fashion label + lover of durian desserts
- Experienced FinTech developer + master at board games
- Founder of a superapp startup for SEA + got married on a Supertree
- Founder of a wedding dress company + social media influencer
- Chief of Staff at a SEA healthcare startup + muay thai fighter
Outside of my co-living situation, there were 3 ways I was able to boot up my social experience in Singapore:
- Networking Events: I was invited to several events hosted by accelerators, founders, and venture capital firms. I try to go to at least 1–2 of these every month. I even got to fly into Kuala Lumpur for one.
- Co-Working: I often ask if I can co-work with some newly-made friends. It’s a great way to cross-pollinate learnings but also to organically meet other people that might be there.
- Cold Outreach: I reached out to a bunch of folks on LinkedIn that I thought were interesting in Singapore. The novelty of me being new and their willingness to help out was incredible.
New Experiences
So far during my first few months in Singapore, I’ve had a chance to experience so many new things. Everything is brand new. It’s novel. Because of this sensory overload and mental stimulation, I’ve now picked up a couple of new hobbies. Here are some of those quirky things that have made my onboarding so memorable:
Bird Watching: I initially got angry at the birds outside my balcony yapping away in the early hours of the morning. Eventually, I had to sleep with earplugs so that I could get a proper rest but after a few weeks I started to realize that it was an insane symphony of different birds talking to each other and singing together. What was once annoying became beautiful. I mentioned this to a friend that is a bird watcher and they recommended I download the Merlin app so I could start identifying birds. After testing it out one morning and capturing the following soundbite of their melody, I was so inspired to capture more bird sounds and find more birds, but also got a newfound desire to create music. What if I could take these bird noises as inputs to create music? Could it be lo-fi music? Would I need a producer? So many questions sprung up. I am now working on a new project called “Birds on my Balcony” where I’ll be aiming to create some sort of musical art from these bird sounds and in collaboration with a housemate, produce some contemporary choreography.
Durian Dessert Cafés: The first thing I ate when I landed was a durian. Since then, I’ve been on a quest to find some of the top durian in Singapore and it’s been an epic adventure to go to so many dessert cafés. I love how polarizing the conversation is around this king of fruits — you either love it or hate it. I’ve been mapping out all of my favourite spots and on Day 99 got a chance to practice cutting open 30 durians for the public.
Wild Pets: Lately, I’ve been going on night walks with some of my housemates and have found that the animals are very active at night because they are nocturnal. I’ve caught a baby gecko running around our house perimeter, as well as a medium sized toad at a local park after I heard it croaking. I even set up an insect trap to help find food for the new critters but ended up deciding to release them after 12h because I knew it would be very hard for me to take care of them long term. It’s been fun satisfying my inner child. My friends back home in Canada joke that I am out here catching real life Pokémon.
Summary
Singapore is a super easy place to get accustomed to. The basic necessities are extremely well taken care of such as clean drinking water, transportation, cleanliness. For me, the move here was the right one because it allowed me to re-invent who I am. It was almost as if I was playing a game and I put my character in a new world where he could start from scratch, but would need to first explore and get to know a lay of the land. I am trying to level up in a bunch of different areas to make the most balanced character as possible.
If you’re an entrepreneur that wants to come to SEA and find yourself in a regional hub without compromising on comfort, I’d say Singapore is a fantastic place to start. One of my housemates told me something that stuck with me for my first 100 days — he said that he loves games that are “not too hard, not too easy,” which is a philosophy that has transpired throughout my Singapore onboarding.
Amazing happens when you “put your ass where your heart is;” and I am super lucky to have a partner, family, and friends that supported this exploration. Hope this read helps you take the plunge to come smell the durian!
