So my childhood friend (let’s call her Denise, 28F) just came back from a 3-week trip to the US. First time leaving Asia in her life. We met up for teh peng at the hawker center yesterday thinking she would talk about Grand Canyon, Broadway, or how expensive the tipping culture is.
No leh.
The moment she sat down, her eyes were wide like standard-size ondeh-ondeh. First sentence out of her mouth: “Babe, I am not coming back to Singapore. My heart and my soul belong to the States now.”
Naturally I thought she found a tech bro job in Silicon Valley or got proposed to by some rich guy in NYC. Then she dropped the bombshell: “It’s the choco bananas. I cannot go back to local guys already.”
Apparently, within 48 hours of landing in Atlanta, she got approached by three different guys at a target and a coffee shop. In Singapore, the most action she gets is a guy accidentally brushing her shoulder on the MRT during peak hour and saying “sorry ah”. But over there, according to her, the compliments were flowing non-stop.
“They call me queen, beautiful, chocolate’s best match… the confidence is next level!” she was screaming at the hawker center until the cai fan uncle stared at us.
She spent the rest of the trip purely on Tinder and Hinge, going out with different Black guys every night. She’s now legit looking into dynamic working holiday visas, master’s degrees, or literally ANY legal way to relocate permanently just to stay in the dating pool there. She even started adopting the slang—called me “sis” with a heavy, unnatural accent that made me want to pour my teh peng over my own head.
Is Singapore dating really that dry until people go halfway across the world, get hit on at Target, and immediately decide to migrate?! Anyone else got friends who went overseas and completely changed their entire personality in 21 days?