Moving to Singapore for My First Job Was the Scariest Thing I've Done

I'm from KL. I studied at Monash Malaysia and got a grad offer from a consulting firm in Singapore. Everyone said congratulations. I said thank you and then quietly panicked for three weeks. I'd never lived alone before. I'd never lived outside Malaysia before. And suddenly I was signing a lease for a room in Tiong Bahru and figuring out how the MRT worked.

The EP process

My company handled the EP application which was a relief because I would not have known where to start. It took about five weeks to get approved. During that time I couldn't officially start work so I spent a lot of time in my room Googling things like "is SGD 4,000 enough to live in Singapore" (answer: barely, but it depends on your lifestyle).

Finding a place to live

This was the hardest part. Everything on PropertyGuru looked great in photos and terrible in person. I saw one room that was literally a partitioned section of a living room with a curtain. For SGD 1,100 a month. I ended up in a shared HDB flat with two other Malaysian girls. SGD 850 including utilities. It's fine. Not glamorous but fine.

The work adjustment

Singaporeans work differently from Malaysians. I'm generalising obviously but the pace is faster, the hours are longer, and there's this unspoken expectation that you're always available. My boss emails at 10pm and expects a reply by morning. Back home that would've been unusual. The good bits: the office is modern, the MRT is incredible, hawker food is amazing and cheap, and my team is genuinely international — Singaporean, Australian, Indian, Japanese. I'm learning more in six months than I did in three years of uni.

Would I do it again?

Yes. But I'd tell my past self to save more before moving. The first month's costs — deposit, furniture, transport card, work clothes — added up to nearly SGD 3,000 before I'd even received a payslip.

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