r/askSingapore

I am Singapore citizen and my husband is an Australian citizen. We are married for 7 years and have a 2 year old son who is a Singapore citizen.

Hubby used to be a Singapore citizen, left SG around 9 years old as his parents wanted to move to Australia for better opportunities then.

I am wondering if he can qualify for LTVP through myself and ultimately SG PR down the road?

He feels a lot of sadness moving out of SG but the decision to renounce citizenship then was not his; it was his parents.

I am aware that the ICA takes a strict view against those who default on NS obligations; wondering if there is any possibility at all in this case.

Thank you for reading.

Edit : Thank you everyone for taking the time to read and reply to my post. I have done my best to respond individually where I can but also thought of adding here for extra context.

- Understand that this topic can sometimes be a spirited discussion.
There were several comments suggesting that my husband evaded, renounced or absconded from NS.
The above does NOT apply to him as he was a legal minor at the time of moving out of Singapore.

- I did speak to a personal contact of mine who is a lawyer and got some advice on the situation.

My husband’s Singapore citizenship was deprived once his parents renounced their citizenship as he was well below the legal age of NS obligations.

It is stated so in the legal constitution below as well in bold:

Deprivation of citizenship of child of person losing citizenship
130. Where a person has —
(a) renounced his citizenship; or
(b) been deprived of his citizenship under Article 129(2)
(a) or 134(1)(a),
the Government may, by order, deprive of his citizenship any child of that person under the age of 21 years who has been registered as a citizen of Singapore pursuant to this Constitution and was so registered as being the child of that person or of that person's wife or husband.

- Every case is unique and context matters. We will of course be working with immigration experts to guide us on the next steps.

- Comments around living in Australia, why we are looking to move to SG or why we can’t just remain in Australia. Well, it is a personal choice and nothing is ever cast in stone. As someone whose experience in Australia is not limited to only a 2 week leisure trip but 7 years of actively building a life here; I speak with conviction that every country has its pros and cons. However; living abroad as a Singaporean has also expanded my own perspectives and made me appreciate SG deeper in many ways.

Once again thank you to everyone ! 😊🙏🏻

I don't really the story behind the incident. It seems LKY admitted he failed in this project.
The questions are how did it failed? And why did it failed? Was it because the bureaucracy in China was so complicated to deal with? | look forward to more insights from the comments.

Hi fellow Singaporeans. I am a Gen X, my parents are boomers. I left Singapore in late 90s, never returned to live. There are many reasons for that, one of the main ones is to get away from my mother.

My parents were both toxic but my father passed away over a decade ago. It took a while but eventually I let go of all the bad blood.

My mother is still alive and hadn’t been physically well for some time. She may have 5 months or 5 years, impossible to say. The last several years I visited her twice a year coz i wanted my young child to build a relationship with her. But being with her can be very painful for me. My last visit ended poorly- I took her on a holiday (very hard work) but the whole time she only talked about how she wished my brother was there and how I didn’t do enough for her.

I’m visiting again soon next month. But afterwards I have no more plans to visit. First it’s really expensive (I have low income) and also takes up a lot of energy and time. Then I get little joy back from her. My child is school age now I want happy holidays with him at different places, so find that the money spent visiting her is not worth it.

Hence my dilemma. I’m not a young person either (had a miracle baby in my 40s). Life is short and on one hand I want to spend my resources to make myself and child happy, instead of spending on her (she will still be unhappy and so will I). But as a “guai” Singaporean girl I really struggle with just letting it all go. If she passes away after I didn’t see her for a long time, I feel like I’ll feel guilty for a long time.

I could talk about this in a generic toxic parents subreddit but I feel that Singaporean parent child relationship is different from other cultures.

So asking here for those with similar experiences- how do you cope? If you are me but a few steps ahead (I.e said parent had died), would love to hear how it went for you.

Thank you friends 🙏🏼

Edit to add: I am so grateful for all your replies and empathy. Sorry I am not replying to all but I am reading all of them and take them all into consideration. I also hope this post will help future readers as this is a complex issue indeed for SG/Asian parent-adult children relationships.

Hey everyone, I’m looking to get some perspectives on how we view public transport etiquette here, specifically regarding the pressure around seats during peak hours.

I had a situation today where I suffered a minor concussion at work. On the outside, I look completely fine (no visible injuries or bandages). But internally, I was dealing with a lot of cognitive fog and intense dizziness, so standing on a moving train wasn't really a safe option for me.

I managed to get a seat on the way home, and just to be clear, it was a regular seat, not a reserved one. Even so, because it was peak hour and I look relatively young, I noticed a lot of passive-aggressive staring from a few standing older commuters nearby. I lacked the mental energy or focus to say anything, but it got me thinking about how we approach these situations.

Obviously, giving up a seat for someone who needs it is a kind gesture, but it feels like the default mindset on our trains is often one of immediate suspicion or judgment if a younger person stays seated. We don't always know what someone is dealing with, whether it's chronic pain, an invisible injury, or extreme exhaustion.

How do you guys navigate this on your daily commute? For those who stand, do you find yourself automatically expecting younger people to stand up, or do you tend to give people the benefit of the doubt? And for anyone who has had to use a seat due to an invisible illness or injury, how do you handle that unspoken social pressure without feeling like you have to publicly justify your medical state?

hi there, thank you for your help! looking for recommendations for good divorce lawyers in sg and if you have any advice on going through the journey.. would be appreciated.

Hey, I’m an early 20s Singaporean male who’s currently studying in a local uni. I have many hi-bye or casual friends from uni but they are all so situationally based and I just want to find friends that exist outside school. I’m not interested in any r/s so I’m not looking for anything of that sort either.

I have older secondary school/JC/army friends but they have all mostly drifted far.

Not really sure what I can do in SG to find friends for a chat or just a meal. If anyone here is up for a chat, or perhaps feels that they are in a similar situation, just hmu!

Some of my hobbies include sports, geopolitics, puzzles, cue sports, long walks, travelling and cafe hopping!

So out of a blue, my mum decided to open our camera and overheard my dad talking a girl in English/basic Mandarin with a girl.

The conversation revolves around the girl’s visa - which she’s now in Malaysia and will return to Singapore shortly. There were other inappropriate conversations too which one can infer that their relationship is much closer than it seems.

As an adult son, what can I do? While I’m not sure if the girl may have flout any immigration rules/MOM regulations, what can I do to ensure that the girl may be deported or questioned when she return to SG?

On a personal level, what else can I or my mum do?

Hello! I'm looking to learn more about people who have decided (or have ever considered) to make a mid-career switch. Whether or not you went through with it, I wanna learn more about what you considered, the process you took, and what ultimately helped you make your decision. I feel that in Singapore, going off the beaten track and doing things that are "unusual" are met with quite a bit of pushback, so I'd like to learn more about the experiences of Singaporeans who have done so, whether or not you did so in Singapore!

Feel free to answer publicly in the comments, in DMs, or I'm also open to a video call or face to face chat over coffee or something if the timing works out for us 😄

General questions:

- What career were you in and what did you switch to/consider switching to?

- What pushed you to take action?

- Was retraining required?

- What were the key decision points?

- What were the main friction points you encountered during the process?

- Why did you ultimately make the decision that you did?

- Looking back, are you happy with the decision you made?

(This is purely for my own curiosity and understanding, not to be made to publish anywhere etc.)

Hi guys, my kid has started Sec 1 this year and he has been eating out more frequently and hanging out with his friends after school. Used to just give him cash weekly but looks like going cashless is more convenient now. Obviously not keen to link my card or bank account to his phone. Feels like a disaster waiting to happen. Thinking of getting him a sub card, but not sure if that's overkill for 13yo or if there are better options available?

me and my friends are planning on going out on a picnic at BG. what should i take note? i dont know if they allow food or if picnics are only allowed at some specific times

So the general discourse is that shop rentals in malls are way too high, pushing out local, indie/small chain businesses and only foreign (usually China) large franchises can afford. This results in a lot of malls having similar shops.

What's your take on this? Assuming we rule out direct rent control, which seems to not really work.

There are 2 ways I can think of:

• Tax large foreign business to reduce their profitability - Highly unlikely given how we don't really tax businesses to bring in jobs.
• X% of shops in a mall must go to local businesses with less than x amount of revenue - ensures that there's always some indie/small businesses in a mall.

I’ll be visiting Singapore from 5th June and staying near Orchard Road. IMM Mall is a bit far, but I mainly want to buy Nike shoes. I’ve heard the Nike outlet there has cheaper prices. Is it worth going all the way to IMM Mall, or are there other stores or malls where I can get Nike shoes for cheaper prices?

Long story short, I found out one of my family members have stolen my gold jewelries and my money (both from my bank and from my drawer). The gold is estimated to be in the $1k value, while the money from my drawer is in the $300-$500 range. I cannot give an estimate on the money stolen from the drawer because it was a mix of my loose change as well as my angbao money.

I was looking into filing a police report, because I found out that they have been taking money from other family members as well. However, after looking it up, I realise I need documentations on the items I have lost - which I do not have. I do not have a documentation of the money I have in my drawer (except for the empty angbaos) and I did not keep the receipt of my gold purchases.

Please advice:

• Can I still file a police report despite the missing documentation?
• Will action be taken from the police side? Or is this minor issues that will just be written as a report and no further actions will be taken?
• Or perhaps I should reconsider filing a police report?

Been considering leaving my job for quite a while but seeing the feedback here about the job market is scaring me. I am not sure which is worse staying and just feeling like i have no soul or be unemployed for who knows how long. I have never been jobless before so it is terrifying to not know when the next paycheck is coming.

Coming here to seek some encouragement and motivation to push through another year until the next round of bonus (at least)...YR2027 (crawling)

As above. I wonder how all of this works and whether it should be a factor when it comes to selecting an ID. Recently I went to a Reno festival to get quotations because I went in with the impression that I was speaking to 7 different ID firms. To my surprise, when one of the IDs was trying to hard sell me to put in a refundable $500 booking fee to get perks such as vouchers and lucky draws, he told me that 6 of the firms were actually an umbrella group of the 7th firm like an MLM (yes, he actually used the word MLM 🤡). I thought it was very scammy because they were giving you the illusion of talking to different people when that wasn’t the case. I just left that event lol. They kept on emphasising that they were all CaseTrust accredited to show that they were credible. Turns out that 2 of the ID firms there were part of a blacklisted list created by another redditor sometime ago.

Just wondering, is it hard to get CaseTrust accredited and does it have any value? Vice versa, if an ID firm isn’t CaseTrust accredited, does that automatically mean they are not trustable?

Hi all, just wanted to ask if anyone here has experience with this.

I’m Singaporean and the girl I’m planning to marry is a Malaysian doctor with around 5 years of experience in government hospitals and GP clinics. Problem is her medical degree isn’t on the SMC recognised list.

We’re trying to understand what realistic pathways there are for her to eventually work or practice in Singapore somehow. Could be as a GP eventually, or even healthcare related/adjacent roles first.

Has anyone here gone through something similar or know someone who did? Would things like UK qualifications, AMC, MRCP/MRCGP etc help in the future?

Also curious what kind of healthcare related roles non recognised foreign doctors usually end up doing in Singapore.

Would appreciate any advice or real experiences. Thank you 🙏

planning to go there for a workout this weekend and wants to have my dinner in that area too! please drop some good recommendations, open to any cuisine/price point!

thanks all in advance!

edit: or teckwhye/keathong also can!

I have a G Shock Mudmaster Gwg1000 that is radio controlled.

Which Asian city would yall use to match the time closest to Singapore?

Hong Kong sets me 1 hr back, and Sydney is +15 mins faster even when my battery is fully charged.

Just bought a switch 2 for the kids. Console and games already so expensive and need to look for budget controllers coz ori controller is like $100 and I need 2. Shopee has quite a few for around $15 to $20. Any recommendations?

Just curious as I’ve been seeing news about massive layoffs happening here and there, and it got me wondering what the current landscape is like and where are we heading to.

I understand that there are rising costs, and being mindful with our expenditure is beneficial for us (invest or not is up to you) but it does feel like things are gloomier /getting harder altogether (like the weather).

Do you think we’re heading towards a recession? Or are we already in one?

Do share your thoughts ✨