Home sweet home

I am one of those lucky to call four countries on three continents home.

Born and bred in Singapore, I was 23 when I met my future husband, a Thai, at a party I really did not want to attend but which I did because my good friend, Robert Joseph, a budding navigator with Singapore Airlines, had the unenviable task of "providing the girls" for an orientation party at his house for his fellow students at the Singapore aviation school.

There was Niv, a wannabe pilot, all suave and a real sweet talker, willing and able to teach me how to do the bus-stop!

We got married a year (and countless bus-stops) later in Singapore and I fantasised about this exotic life in exotic Thailand. It was not an exotic life but I suppose it had hints of being an exotic land. However, it did grow on me.

I mingled with my mother-in-law's maids and learnt the most common Thai (which is great if you have to get around on your own).

I found a job at the Bangkok Post with my strongest asset: ability to read and write English  (yaay) and loved my 7 1/2 years there.

In this time, I changed nationalities (because my father-in-law, rest his dear soul, kept insisting that I had no choice as Thailand did not have such a thing as permanent residency!),

To cut a very long story as short as possible, I later joined the then Hyatt as public relations manager (another strong asset: a people person, a good talent if one does not naturally suffer fools gladly).

Allan and Aimee were growing up nicely (he into the cutest fellow imaginable who insisted on standing at attention at 6am and 6pm everyday - he was only 5 yet would go down by himself every morning to switch on the television and listen to the national anthem - and always had to have his shirts and T-shirts tucked neatly into his pants); she into a minx who once shaved her eyebrows and bits of her hair, and at another time raided my make-up, and both times then went promptly to bed, giving me the fright of my life when I returned exhausted from work at about 2am). I adored (and still do) them.

Life was good, indeed it was excellent. We had our own little house, both had great jobs, had good help and an enviable social life. But it was not enough, or at least I thought so.

I wanted Allan and Aimee to have choices and although they would have done well in Thailand, I just felt (and I am sure I could have been absolutely wrong) that the social structure was not quite right for them.

So, using my wits and my wiles, I persuaded Niv to look to Australia, Perth in particular, as the place to nurture our children into young adults. It was the best decision I made - absence of maids notwithstanding.

We packed up everything and we left Bangkok. The year was 1989.

Perth was so different even then. It was small, it was not crowded (remember, we came from bustling Bangkok, which never sleeps), the people were different and even having our rubbish collected by white people took some getting used to.

Children being children, Allan and Aimee took it all in their stride. Their first year must have been horrific, understanding most of the language but not being able to speak it well. Looking at, and listening to, them now, you would  never be able to imagine that English actually is not their mother tongue!!!

Perth became home and we all became Australians.

Then Niv made his way back to Bangkok to work in the airline industry again. I stayed behind, believing that the children needed me more - and anyway Bangkok was just a mere five hours away!

Allan graduated, then Aimee; Allan moved to Dubai for work, Aimee no longer needed a full-time mum. I moved back to Bangkok to work - this time in marketing communications at the incomparable Sukhothai Hotel - and again become a full-time wife.

Today, I am as free as a bird (still have a husband though), winging my way to Dubai, Perth, Bangkok and Singapore - my destination being wherever the urge takes me.

Right now, it is Perth, which has grown in more ways than one. I love the busy-ness of Bangkok, the sales in Singapore (plus my beautiful nieces and nephews, and their parents), the draw of Dubai but ..... I still also call Australia home.