So the time finally came to head to New Zealand (NZ) and kick off my working holiday visa (WHV). The plan was to attend Jeremy’s wedding in Melbourne at the start of March, and then make my way to Auckland to start my working holiday. I figured this would be a good way to say goodbye to my friends for a while and ease the transition into moving alone to NZ.
Melbourne was an absolute blast, and definitely one of the best holidays I’ve had in my life. The wedding was lovely, and it was great to hang out with everyone uninterrupted by work or conflicting schedules. That only made the parting of ways more bittersweet, but I had my journey to embark on.
I arrived in Auckland on 10 March, early in the morning. It wasn’t difficult to navigate my way around, and soon enough I was on a bus towards the city centre. I intended to only carry 2 bags to NZ, but ended up with 3. It was quite the ordeal to lug 3 heavy bags around a bus and a taxi, so you can imagine my relief when I finally arrived at my accommodation for the next 3 weeks.
The accommodation was nice and cosy, and they even had a cat. I settled in, showered and promptly headed for the bed. As I dozed off, it dawned on me that the past year of planning, fear, excitement, and daydreaming had coalesced into reality. I was finally here.
Over the next few days, I had a look around different parts of Auckland, interspersed with the administrative tasks of sorting out my bank account, looking for a car and applying for jobs. Auckland as a city didn’t catch much of my attention, to be honest. To me, it felt a lot like another ‘big city’. The streets were crowded, there were plenty of buildings, and people seemed to be in a rush. As someone from Singapore, this was what I was trying to get away from in the first place. Nevertheless, I was going to be here for at least 3 weeks, so I wanted to make the most of my time in Auckland.
Having moved NZ on my own without knowing anyone, it was daunting to figure out how to settle in. I would have to step out of my comfort zone by finding communities and making new friends. Thankfully, my host in Auckland was a nice lady who invited me to her weekly running club. This helped a lot to stave off the initial alienation and got me exercising. There was also a very useful Telegram group for Singaporeans who were in NZ doing the WHV, so I met some of them who arrived in Auckland around the same time as me.
I know there’s that common trope about travellers who move to another country just to end up hanging out with their fellow countrymen and I intentionally wanted to avoid that. But there’s a way to strike a reasonable balance between those two positions and it’s only normal to cling onto the tethers of home that you can see, even if it is something as subtle as hearing the Singaporean accent in a foreign country.
Prior to arriving in NZ, I attended a few meetup sessions organised in Singapore by this Telegram group for those of us who were planning to do the WHV. What struck me was seeing how many of us were actually in our late 20s. Most of us had worked for a few years, then realised that we were either burnt out or wanted to try something new, and thus sought to take advantage of this opportunity while we could (the WHV is only available to Singaporeans 30 and below).
It’s well-established that Singapore is a competitive environment to live in. Most of us are risk-adverse and prefer to take the path of least resistance, avoid uncertainties and tick off the standard goals that have been laid out for your entrance to adulthood (study hard, get a well-paying job, find a partner, BTO, and have $x amount in the bank before turning 30). The idea of taking a gap year sounds intriguing in theory, but runs counter to many of the aforementioned goals, especially for those of us who have not hit these “check marks” yet.
It is easy to claim that you can just choose not to follow the prevailing narrative and define your own goals, but societal pressure is very much real and much more powerful than one’s ability to actively resist it. There were numerous times where I wondered about whether I was going to be behind my peers financially if I went on a WHV, what employers would say about this “gap in my resume”, and how it felt safer to stay within my comfort zone.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am still very much privileged to be able to quit my job and move to another part of the world in the first place, knowing that I can always come back to Singapore if life gets hard. It was just nice knowing that I was not alone in thinking about doing the WHV, and that there were others in a similar position. It doesn’t make me morally superior than someone who didn’t do it. If anything, my two cents is that the journey of deciding to go on this WHV afforded me the mental clarity to differentiate between what I think society and others expect of me, versus what I actually want to do with my life.
Having opened my bank account and settled in within my first week, it was time to now apply for jobs and find a car. More on that later…
outtakes from jeremy’s wedding
