christilouise

I am really just after your thoughts and advice.

We are currently living in London and my partner works in I.T. We have a 20 month old daughter. My partner is soon to be made redundant and on Christmas Eve we received the good news that he had been granted his PEP.
We now have the massive decision about whether to make the move to Singapore, something we have wanted to do for sometime. I have a number of questions I am hoping that someone out there will be able to answer.

For the past two months my partner has been registering his interest with a number of recruiters in Singapore, sent emails and applied for roles that appear to be a very good fit for his skillset and experience. However, we've had very little by way of a response thus far. Are the jobs simply not there or is it because we are not currently residing in Singapore?

The plan at present would be to travel out with a view to staying three to four months. My partner would then be going to meet with recruiters and apply for jobs. What would our accommodation options be? We don't really want to be in a hotel with our daughter for an extended time. Are short term lets common and if so can anyone point us in the right direction?

How feasible is it to live across the border and commute in to Singapore? I have read some people base themselves in JB. Is this an option? What would the commute be like? What would the visa situation be?

As we are not married I think I get a long term visit pass??? My daughter will obviously get a dependant visa. Do these have to be applied for before we arrive in Singapore??

Obviously we do not have an unlimited pot of cash. We will have a budget of around 20000-25000 SGD for 3-4 months. Do you think it's possible?

Any advice is much appreciated.

Christy

bakedbean

Hi. I was going to say Welcome to the forum, but I see that you used to post on here many years ago. So.... welcome back

Hopefully some of our resident posters in Singapore will be along to answer your queries, though bear in mind that it's Christmas holidays so some folks will be away currently.

As I understood, jobs are difficult to find for foreigners unless you have exceptional talent. Though as your husband has been successful with obtaining PEP, then I guess he does have the talent. I imagine that you follow the politics in Singapore? They will always give a job to a "local" if they can, so I imagine it's not going to be an easy thing to find a job. But.... maybe I'd better leave the resident posters to comment on that.

Re working in Singapore and commuting from Malaysia. There's a couple of threads already on the subject. This one is in the Singapore section:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=738029
I would suggest reading that thread, then maybe adding your own questions.

There's also quite a lot of threads in the Malaysia section re Nusajaya and JB. Here is one about living in Nusajaya.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=772580
Again, have a read, then put your own post. Putting your post will alert the other posters that there's some activity on the thread, and you may get some info from them.


All the best

Harlow Lad

Hi Christy welcome to the forum. I have to agreed with the difficulty of this big decision. I would suggest your partner to go out there first for the job hunting. It will be a lot cheaper that way in regard of accommodation. Try propertyguru.com and stproperty for room rental.

Try to register CV in reputative recruiters and international firm. You probably wouldn't get reply from local firms.

Living in jb is feasible and lots cheaper. However we notice that the Malaysia immigration do check our singapore immigration status every time we pass the border lately. I'm not quite sure about the short term visa in Malaysia.

Please do check with mom.gov.sg or ica.gov.sg for more info in regard of the dependent passes.

We do wish you all the best for the move. Good luck!