We are supposed to be here 2 years...but DH's contract is open ended. My condition is that we are back for DS to go to school. As you'd noticed schooling is VERY VERY expensive here (my neighbour with 3 boys in the Aus school pays $77k per year for their schooling!!!)

I felt the same as you too, I find making friends easy, but with everyone in the same situation, you can't get really close because they can up and leave at any moment. The lifestyle here is quite pretentious.....which I am not, so I don't really fit into that norm. I don't dump my kids with the maid and go out for Coffee and cake! If I leave Max with our helper it's only coz I want to do the food shopping and not let her do it (coz she spends more than me )

We kept our house in Aus just in case something went wrong we would have something to fall back on. I want that tie to Australia too.

Moving up here is also a pretty expensive exercise. That would be another thing you'd want included in a work package. We had an allowance of $15k to do it, but we got the company to give us the money instead and bought new things with it. Our furniture we had wasn't worth taking on a trek around the world with. We also have in the contract that we get 2 business class trips for the whole family back to Perth per year....but we are able to downgrade ourselves (or family members from home) and do more trips or bring people to visit us. Can't let it be too much of a habit though...people take advantage!

Where we live is a pretty expensive spot coz it is so close to town, but you do pay less that what we pay in rent. We wanted a bigger place, and we are on the ground level so we have an outdoor area on our apartment which is pretty hard to get. We get to BBQ, so keeping that outdoor Aussie lifestyle, and because DH and I are pretty homely, we don't always like going out where everyone else is sitting, swimming etc. It kinda feels like you have people in your backyard ALL the time, which can be great on some days but not so great on others.

There is also loads of 'Singapore Red Tape' so the simplest things to us always end up such hard work to the Singaporeans. They never step outside the square or do anything to break the rules, even if it wouldn't hurt anyone (like the time I wanted a ****tail glass for my lemonade - that was a 'no can do'). This can be very very frustrating!

BUT...it's good money, good experience and a life change that you should probably snap up if you get the opportunity. You'd be silly not to really.