Years spent in Singapore create cultural bridges and understandings

Junior Neythra Srinivasan remembers her first days as a 6-year-old in her new home of Singapore. Dressed in her pink cherry-blossom embroidered tunic, she took in the full experience of the Chinese New Year festivities on a crowded street. Her eyes glistened with the vibrant glow of the festival lanterns, as a red dragon dashed through her peripheral vision.

The bustle of the busy street and the cheers of young children packed all around her brought a wide-eyed smile to Srinivasan’s face.

Coming to accept her new home, however, was a long journey.

During first grade, when all her friends were just getting used to their new elementary schools back home, Srinivasan moved two times within one year because of changes in her father’s job. When she moved from Saratoga to India and then to Singapore, Srinivasan was thrown into a world foreign to her and her family.

“People who live here [in America] their entire lives don’t get how different it is in other parts of the world,” Srinivasan said. “It’s not just the language that you speak or the food that you eat [in other countries], but also how people interact with each other.”

Initially, this stark difference scared Srinivasan. She remembers feeling daunted by a new world 4,000 miles away from India, and angry at her parents for moving a second time so quickly.

Nevertheless, Srinivasan’s integration into the Singaporean lifestyle was simplified after she enrolled in the local international school, Singapore American School (SAS).

There, she attended Mandarin classes every day and played the Indonesian Angklung drum during music class, but also took English classes daily. In addition, many of her classmates were native Singaporeans, but Srinivasan said she related to other students without difficulty because they communicated only in English.

“American and Singaporean culture were really fused at [the] international school,” Srinivasan said. “I made friends from countries all over the world like India, China, Korea and Malaysia, but we were all American in a way.”

Many of the international school students came from an American background, “whether it was living in America in the past or having American culture somewhere in the family.” Srinivasan also faced an unexpectedly culturally diverse atmosphere outside of her school: In one instance, she remembers meeting a Singaporean taxi driver who spoke Tamil, Srinivasan’s native Indian language.

Her new friends also helped Srinivasan accept her move to Singapore, she said. After a long day of school, which she remembers started “before the sun rose,” Srinivasan felt grateful for the friendships that lasted even when she got home.

“All your friends were just a buzzer away in Singapore and everyone knew everyone,” Srinivasan said. “A lot of my friends sat on the bus to the apartment complexes together, and when we came home we played on the playground downstairs.”

One of the major differences Srinivasan saw was that Singaporeans often didn’t need items most Americans saw as essential. In the densely populated city-state of 5.4 million, her family did not own “a car not because we couldn’t afford one, but because we didn’t need one.”

Furthermore, Srinivasan said that even though she lived in a relatively small apartment, “nobody thought it was too cramped because everyone lived in relatively the same apartments.”

In this tight-knit community, Srinivasan said everyone around her seemed to be part of an extended family. Even during holidays such as Chinese New Year, Srinivasan participated in school-wide festivities, united with her peers no matter their ethnicity, heritage or background.

Even though Srinivasan moved back to America in 2009 for fourth grade, she still holds on to traces of her Singaporean childhood. She stays in touch with her best friend from SAS, who now lives in India, and she knows two other former SAS students at SHS: junior Sarah Jin and sophomore Daelan Denenberg.

“After coming back to the same friends [in Saratoga that] I had known before I left, I sometimes feel like I might have missed out on some memories with them while I was gone,” Srinivasan said. “But I have experienced so much outside of the ‘Saratoga bubble’ that makes the [missed] time worth it.”

Srinivasan returned to America with a better understanding of other cultures, an outlook she said has caused her to have a more outgoing personality and willingness to try new things.

“The sense of community in Singapore is something that has stuck with me throughout the years. [There,] you knew people by who was around you, and everyone was so connected,” Srinivasan said. “Being in that society where you could make friends so easily — why not meet new people?”