S1E5: Felicia - Singaporean Finance to Dutch UX Design: Dare to Try, Dare to Thrive

Get ready for Felicia's incredible stories! During our chat, I constantly felt like I was at a fantastic stand-up comedy show (by the way, Felicia is considering doing stand-up).

A finance graduate, language wizard, and talented UX designer, Felicia resides in the Netherlands but originally hails from Singapore. Her journey is extraordinary – it all started with an awe-inspiring backpacking adventure in Europe that sparked her thirst for more. She next embarked on a thrilling 5-month expedition across Asia! Her passion for Japan led her to work there, immersing herself in its delicate and sometimes dodgy (you'll have to hear her story about her first day at work in Japan!) culture. However, her adventurous spirit eventually led her to the Netherlands for a 180-degree career shift into User Experience Design.

Felicia's ability to follow her heart and make her dreams come true is truly inspiring. Let's send her our best wishes as she continues to carve her unique path in life!

E5
SingaporeanFinance to Dutch UX Design: Dare to Try, Dare to Thrive

Welcome to the 5th episode of Season 1 of "My Mental Journey of Migration." In this exciting series, we will be featuring 8 guests who will share their captivating experiences of living in diverse cultures. Today, we have the pleasure of having Felicia as our guest.

About me

Hi, I am Zoe Ye, a human being who failed to live a conventional life. I have a deep interest in people and their choices of life. In my podcast, I will be having conversations with individuals who are open to talk about their mental journeys in life.

Music: "Eyes They're Closed" by Kaytsak

Transcript

I know how you feel. I feel super awkward right now, like when we were just casually talking. It's so fuuuuuuun! And then I was like.

My name is Felicia...

I'm Zoe Ye, a human being who failed to live a conventional life. I have a deep interest in people and their choices of life. In my podcast, I'll be having conversations with individuals who are open to talk about their mental journey for life. This season is called my mental journey of migration. Eight guests will share their experiences of living in different cultures.

Hi, my name is Felicia. I'm currently located in Amsterdam. I'm originally from sunny Singapore. If you don't know it, it's an island, a capital and also a country. Right now in Amsterdam. I am a senior UX designer with a bank. I was a finance graduate and then I decided that okay I'm going to work in a finance job because my friend told me that finance is where I get the money. So I decided that like okay my first job is going to be in finance and I worked in a trading company and after working for a while one of my friends asked me if I want to backpack Europe for a month. So I said yes and we traveled to Europe for a month and I realized that the world is really big. So I thought okay I'm going to plan how I quit my job and just travel South Asia and after that I just saved and do some research on how to I travel across borders and I looked at Google Maps. I'm not sure if Google Maps was there at that time I was just looking at the map and I see okay where can I travel to cross borders to go home to Singapore and then I noticed.

Huh? India is the place to go so I researched the best season to go to India to hike in Nepal and things like that and decided okay I'm going to buy a one-way ticket to India and I just traveled from India and try to get back to Singapore. Did you already quit your job at that point? Yes, I quit my job. I planned my resignation actually so I knew that October was going to be a good time to start. So I thought you know what, I'm going to buy a one-way to get to India. I can hike Nepal in November and I traveled for about five months after traveling. I got back to Singapore and I didn't want to be in finance anymore because that really isn't what I want to do. I spoke to so many people and there's just so many things that is possible for me. So when I was in a full-time finance job, right, I actually studied to become a teacher, to become an English teacher because I've always wanted to join the JET program, the JET program specifically where it brings you to a place in Japan to teach English. So I

was actually getting a teaching certification already when I was in the finance job. So I got into this Japanese school who teaches English to Japanese. I'm not sure what that is called actually the type of school. So I taught students from five years old to 55 years old and I was like, yes, this is going to test my patience a little bit. I'm not really sure if it's going to work out, but we'll see how it goes. I just know that I don't want to go back to Finance again, I wanted to become a finance adviser because I thought, okay, that was where all the money is going to be. And sometimes when I look back, I do think about it. But I like my life now at some point in my life, definitely I did regret. Like, oh no, that's where all the money is, but, what if, what if, what if at some point in my early twenties, I did think about that. But now no, not so much. I really like where I am right now and it's challenging every day. You keep saying that when you were back from the European backpacker traveling experience, you feel the world is big. Like what does that feeling come from? In the past, I used to travel with my friends. You know in my first job I got the money and I'm like yeah, I'm gonna spend this money. Let's just go to Hong Kong, let's go to Taiwan. Oh, let's shop. And it's really fun, right? Like to travel as a tourist and I never knew that. Maybe it sounds very cliche traveling as a tour versus traveling as a backpacker. You see things very differently as a tour you just go and eat and have a good time. And I don't know if shop spend money, just go to cities. And when I was backpacking, obviously in Europe I did go to cities.

But backpacking is very different from just tourist things, right? And backpacking just opened up this mind where I realized that there's just so much stuff going on in the world rather than the things that I already know. Because I think maybe Hong Kong, Taiwan, these places are so comfortable and it's so familiar. And the fact that when I went to Europe, everything is so different at that time, I think it was 2013, 2014 that I went to Europe. I just felt like the world is so big and I needed to explore a little bit more and at that time I didn't have a lot of money, think 4000 Euros and with that 4000 Euros I thought, hey I think I could survive Asia with 4000 Euros for a little bit and see when I run out of money and yeah so I went to India as the first destination. 

How was the experience? Did you enjoy it? Yes and no, I have a love-and-hate relationship with India. I think when I first landed I thought India was like forty years behind or something because they were still using this huge monitor with really bad UI design. I don't even know how they navigate the system. The train system was horrible and there was no clarity. There was so much uncertainty. When you want to try to book from one place to another, I don't even know if I'm going to make it to the next destination. Food was amazing but I got really sick for one day and I couldn't move. You also travel to other countries like Vietnam and Malaysia and how was your experience there? Do you feel the cultural differences between these countries? I think one thing I discovered that's really funny is that when I was trying to cross the border from India to Nepal is that you see the Indian and Chinese mixed ethnicity going on there. I don't even know how to explain what that is. But when I'm here in Nepal for the first time, I was like, dude, this sounds a little bit like Indian but also sounds a little bit like Chinese.

What is going on here? Well that's the memory that I remember for the first time when I heard Nepalese I don't know how you call it Nepalese for the first time you do see certain features kind of blend when you go to Nepal. And then when I go to China I was just really shocked. Oh wow, they are so modern already and I've never stepped foot here. I felt so ignorant. There are a lot of like amazing cheap, good food around at that time. Really beautiful places. Well in Vietnam it also felt a little bit different. It felt very similar to Thailand. I've been to Thailand before. Yes, I made a little bit of comparison culture-wise I'm not really sure. I don't think I really mingled a lot with the locals. But I think I remember in China when I met a group of friends we just randomly met and we decided that we're going to cycle 80 kilometers around a lake. I forgot the name of the lake but we couldn't make it because it was too far. They were so interesting when they made a comment about how I spoke Chinese, they were like Singaporeans speak Chinese at that time. I think Singaporean is not known yet. Every time I meet somebody they would say.

Is Singapore a part of Malaysia, is Singapore a part of China, in Singapore? Where is Singapore? They're just so confused. And but right now people know and have been to Singapore and I was like hmm, so different from when I backpacked years ago that people are still ignorant from where I'm from. And now I hear people telling me, ah, Singapore, you can't have gum. Oh, Singapore, it's so clean and I'm like, okay, I'll take that compliment. Really, really clean country. So do you realize how dirty your country is? That's what I say to them.

I like that. I like it when I was traveling around Asia, right? It took me about five months and I thought okay I really couldn't finish the Malaysia plan that I had for myself. I was just so tired. So I did mention that I wanted to cross all the borders and get hold right. So crossing the border from Johor Bahru, which is in Malaysia to go back to Singapore. That was my initial plan and obviously also see a lot of different places in Malaysia that I never explored before. When I was in Thailand I thought dude I'm just so tired. I want to just go home, lie in bed, spend time with my family and have some Singaporean food. You know after five months I was just so tired and then when I got back I decided to give the teaching thing a shot. I worked there for about a year. Um, I thought I missed the spending power that I used to have. So I don't really have a lot of money now and then when I spend money with my friends I felt a little bit stressful so I was like oh no, like I can't spend as much because I don't earn as much now because I was a freelance teacher teaching English at that school.

So whenever there's a student, I earn money by the hour. It's quite okay. It's a relaxing job. But I think like being too relaxed for a year is not really for me. And then I started thinking, okay, what's next? And somehow my previous client from the finance job, he kind of brought up the idea of me working for his startup and we get along pretty well. So somehow he got this Visa for me to go to Japan to work. So I worked for so his startup is in Japan.

Yes, his startup is in Japan, so I decided to hey, okay, I'm going to join his startup in Japan, let's see how it goes. And when he got the Visa for me and I finally was confirmed that I will move to Japan. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do because I've never been to Japan, despite speaking the language for the past ten years. I was screaming in my head even though I looked really calm and you know, but then of course I was also confused and scared because I've never lived abroad my entire life. I thought, you know what?

I'm just going to give it a shot. I'm still young I can still freely experience around. When I was at that time I think I was I was 25 I'm not really, I don't really remember um yeah Mid twenties right? Oh you're going to live in Japan? Oh it's going to be exciting and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the experience and when you first ar rived Japan basically what's your first impression of Japan when you arrived there I was overwhelmed by the crowd. It was so many people I was shocked so I went to all the famous spots. I went to Akihabara, I went Asakusa and I was yeah all of these places I've seen it in the TV I'm gonna go try them out. I'm gonna go explore walk around and I was just so excited it was. It felt like I was backpacking again. I was like oh yeah I'm gonna try this and that and eat this and that and obviously it was 美食天堂, the heaven of food. Yeah, so obviously visit places

Where there is a lot of amazing food when I arrived that time, new things to try. I wanted to try everything and the first day of my job was interesting. Oh now we are talking about work, it's not just playing around and spending money and yeah I was really excited to spend money though even though I didn't have much obviously when I was a teacher but I was very excited to try things out well cheaply. But yeah, we're talking about work. Tell us what happened during your day one when you joined the startup well so I was young and naive. I didn't really research much of the startup. I just knew well it's a IT corporation that helps entrepreneurs who are selling items on Amazon. It was a platform to help them manage their inventory so it's like an add on it platform. So I thought okay it sounds interesting it's going to be in web design and I think I've already thought about web design for a really long time but I didn't really get into it. I thought like it was really intimidating. So I think okay, sure.

Why don't we start with something small? It's a startup we're going to start and I thought the first day at work, wow fancy office on the tenth floor, isolated office. You need your access card to get to level ten and then there's this glass door and then it's a small company and I was, oh, I'm used to small company, like the English Teaching Japanese school back in Singapore is also a small companies. I'm not really foreign to working with the Japanese person. So my boss, my teaching school boss was a Japanese and now my boss and my colleagues are Japanese and that was this package that was delivered to the office and I was curious, I was thinking.

What up? Why is everyone so excited about this package? When they opened up the package, I thought, hey, it looks familiar. I've been to Amsterdam during my one-month of Europe trip. I think I know what it is become a bit dodgy. Okay, this story is very graphic because I remember it very, very clearly at the top of my head because I tell this story to a lot of my closer friends. Sounds unbelievable, but.

Here it goes. So the package arrived. It was, it looks like flashlight. So it's not f-l-a-s-h with a flashlight that has lights that you know of, but fleshlight thing that you get off with for men. Thank you for explaining this and I'm getting more and more excited about the story, I doubted for a while doubted if I've seen something wrong for a while. But then one of these guys was telling this other colleague of mine go to the convenience store, go get batteries. We should test this baby out right now and I'm like

Test what, what's going on here? Like, what is this? He got the batteries and these other colleague was pumping up an air mattress in front of the elevator. Remember the elevator? You needed some private access in order to get on. So I don't know why. He was just pumping an air mattress right in front of the elevator, right in front of the front door with the glass door over there. And then this other colleague was taking out the huge, huge TV that we have, pushed it to the door.

And started playing porn for this dude who came back with batteries. So yes, he was ^&*% there with the $%*& turned on. And I saw the p^&* on the reflection of the glass door and I was, shook it. I did not believe what the heck I just saw. Wait, what? What just happened? So I remember this story because oh my god, oh my god, I'm shocked.

Yeah, so I remember this story because I used to work with my colleagues at the Japanese school, right, the English teaching school with Japanese people. And I have a colleague there who knows Japanese full, who speaks a lot with who interacts a lot with Japanese people. So she was not even surprised. She was just laughing when I told her the story and I took a self, not selfie, but sounds bad. But I just took a sneaky photo of the reflection of the window. Obviously, he is not in the shot. My colleague was not in the shot because no way I'm going to see that, but yes.

I remember this story clear as day. Well, how did you react? You took a selfie and then you left the place. What happened next? It sounds, I don't know if you're very uncomfortable and I don't know what you feel back then. Well, I was in shock obviously. I couldn't believe what I just saw No! No way. Like I I feel I'm just listening to a story that can only happen in another universe. But no, I am kind of surprised but also kind of not because I heard about the Japanese culture a little bit already. They're more repressed ET cetera. But the fact that I've seen it firsthand, I just, well as long as that person is not harassing me or whatever and he's doing his own thing, I was just laughing it off because yes, I wasn't really offended. I was shocked. I wasn't really offended.

Maybe it's a weird reaction, but to me I don't really care. He's not fleshing it in front of me. That's fine. Yes, I thought it was really funny. I'm sorry, but I think it's really funny and gross at the same time. It's really funny. I was just laughing when I was telling my friend I was like, what the heck just happened? No way. Ah, it's so weird. Ah, but yeah, I stayed away from that colleague for a long time. I just did not want to interact with him much because it's just so weird. That doesn't sound like a very nice place to work and I'm happy that you left at that place. I sound quite problematic if I didn't leave because of that, but I realized that I was the only woman when I was there. I did not ask about the company's size. I did not ask much, at least I did not remember I me asking these questions. I just was so excited to work in Japan. I know I was just young and naive. I left the place because the company didn't really have a focus. I think that startup wanted to do too many things at once and at that time I was not a UX designer. I didn't know lean startup.

I didn't know all of these methodologies right? So I'm just doing my job as I was told. I mean obviously in Japan culture you're just given a job and you do your job. So I was basically a marketing manager. I also manage their website, so they wanted to do the Amazon thing. They wanted to do a Halal thing. They wanted to do Dubai business. It's just too many things going on at the same time so they don't have a specific vision that they want to go. So I didn't want to be lost and I found an English-speaking job which is a headhunter in Tokyo because speaking Japanese every day at work works a lot of my brainpower and I worked there for a bit. Do you have a better understanding of Japanese culture out of 1.5 year working there? Does that fit in our stereotype of Japan or you have new discovery about Japanese culture?  There's an interesting question. So growing up at some point Japanese drama is like a thing. Obviously I watch Japanese animation. I really love it, like it's so creative.

Slam Dunk was one of the anime that I watched, pokemon and ET cetera, ET cetera. You have this image in Japan like also in Japanese drama that you're so Teinei means like very polite, very ah, formal, very nice to everyone. I obviously like Japanese services are top-notch, no doubt, no doubt. I do also notice that they are also human right? They they are not nice. 24/7 of the time when I was in the train I didn't know that I could not speak on the phone at that time. So I did speak on the phone and you do see people look at me weird but nobody stepped up and told me that hey, you can't speak on the phone in here and I missed the memo. I was new to Japan. I didn't see that there was a sign that says no talk on your phone or like you can't speak loudly with your friend. And then another thing is when you're in the crowded train, they don't care about personal space. Come on, they just want to get in the train. They just want to go home and the crowd in the train is not.

Fun like it's really not fun and at eight o'clock when you when you are done with work at 8 PM by the way in Europe 8 PM you're already with your family chilling out. That's really long hours. Yeah, so like 8 PM I would go there ah on the train and it's super crowded and you're like oh my gosh I thought if I left later it wouldn't be so crowded but I was wrong sometimes it still can be quite crowded you don't get a seat. Well it's not new to me and I know there's 飲み会 (Nomikai) which is they call it Nomunication. So No means to drink like Nomimus means to drink and Nomikai is a gathering where you drink together and nomunication is basically you communicate through drinking and sometimes after work I'm just drinking beer and that's where I grew a love for beer at that time. When I first moved to Japan in my first month, I think I drank more beers than I ever drank in my entire life. So what made you decide to leave Japan and then come to Netherlands? So when I was in my head hunter job I really enjoy the aspect of interviewing people, getting to know people and then understanding where they want to go. But in general I don't really like to do the research part where you find candidates and when you find candidates you really have to make some calls and get your way into the company and find the candidate and it's not enjoyable. From then on I realized like hey I really have to find a job that sticks and a job that I enjoy 40 hours a week and not just be in Japan just because I like Japan and I started researching and I found this book called the design of everyday things by Don Norman. It's amazing. I just realized that oh user experience actually exists in this world and then I started researching right at that time I was thinking oh maybe I don't want to do marketing. O, maybe I want to do PR. Maybe I want to do a master degree in business since I don't know what to do next. But then I realized that hey, UX design seems pretty nice and it pretty cool and suits my personality I think. And then I found this a day in life as a UX designer and I thought oh this is what I want to do. And then I started researching courses for our UX design and I found a couple of courses in the United States and it's so expensive I think it's about forty grand a year. So what struck was a course in the Netherlands apparently was brand new and I'm going to be the first badge graduatingating from that and I did a little bit of research. The fact that I can work and study at the same time in the Netherlands seems like a good deal and a good start and I thought okay, I'm just going to pick the nlands and then you come to Netherlands and you never leave. Do you really enjoy Netherlands? Honestly, this is the last place I thought I would be in, obviously I traveled to Europe for a month and when I was doing research it was my first time knowing that Netherlands exists. And then the first thing that I remembered about Netherlands was the w(&^ and oh okay, it's a super liberal place and obviously the first year when I lived in Scheveningen which is in an Antikraak house it's super cheap by the way. It's like 200 Euros per month in a villa. What is Antikraak house? Antikraak is a house where they need somebody to protect it and prevent squatters. The villa was going to be inherited by eighty people and at the time I think the accountant or the lawyer is trying to work things out. I don't know the details. They needed somebody to just protect the house from squatters from taking over.

Yeah, sometimes squatters take over. Ah, an empty house in the Netherlands. Apparently that's the first time I learned about it. Sounds very scary but ah, they're nice people because there were squatters opposite my building. It was hilarious. They borrowed water from my house before and I I I allowed it and they were like, can I have some water? And I was like yeah, sure, you have some water. Yeah, first it was like, oh, it's a nice change. I have my own brain space, ET cetera. But then.

I think in hindsight now that I reflected on it, I would like more social life rather than being so alone and quiet in that house. And then somehow I made my way to Amsterdam. How come I stayed so long? I don't know my job. I actually like my job right now. And then the work-life balance here in the Netherlands. I do like it. So maybe that's why I stayed. I really don't know where I'm going next. I don't know if I'm going to stay here.

But, yeah.

One day at a time, are you still in the exploration stage or? I'm not really sure. I think I'm somebody who likes multiple things and the world I grew up in at least a decade ago, the world teaches you that if you are in finance, you better bloody stick in finance for the rest of your life. But now, you know, with the growing technology and the different mindsets that maybe the Gen-Zers are setting, I don't know. It's okay to like more than one thing, right? It's okay that you're multipassionate I used to want to be a comic book artist, but who knows? Maybe when I'm in my fifties I'm going to draw my first comic. I'm not sure at this moment. I really like being a UX designer and I'm thinking about maybe mentoring younger designers moving forward. I'm not really sure yet, but I do my current challenge at the bank. That's very nice. Yes, if you compare that culture with, say, Japanese culture and Singaporean culture, do you see the difference?

Do you enjoy the differences? I think there is a lot to talk about in culture. Communication is very different, like in Japan. Obviously, people are more closed off but they are still very nice with you. And then when I first came to the Netherlands, the service was so bad I was in shock. Why do you talk to me like this dude? I was treated like a freaking king in Japan and then when I came here I was obviously so ignorant that I came here. I was, oh yeah, it's not my first time here, but the fact that you are so used to the Japanese culture for a year and a half and then you move to a culture where they don't really give two cents about you, it's really &^%*.

As you live here, there are still nice service people, not as extreme as Japan. And one thing is also in terms of language, there's nuances. You can't really make jokes unless you really, really know the language. And dut jokes are are not really my thing. I'd say not funny, not funny at all. Well, I don't know, maybe some. Maybe I'm just generalizing right at this moment, not so much. Some Dutch humor you can really spot. It's just really, really Dutch humor. Okay, so we don't say bad humor, we say it's

Dutch humor? Well, it's a different type of humor as I might say in Japan. It's very interesting because they can still be super nice to you but you don't really get into their community. I have a friend who joined their I think school club for a year but she can't really make close friends in that club. Even when you speak Japanese so fluently, you can communicate with them in Japanese, but they still they don't really care. They have also quite closed off. They have their own friends. I mean one example is I don't think I have any Japanese friend at the moment that stuck throughout my years living in Japan to be honest. But I have expat friends that I made in Japan that stuck until today Japanese friend or Japanese group. I don't have that. Maybe I didn't make an effort enough, but I just felt it's quite difficult to have a circle of Japanese friends. Personally I'd say sad and what about the working environment? So you have been working in Netherlands for like six years. Is there any difference in workplace? Definitely, definitely so.

That's what I noticed. Well, I'm not very experienced in working in Singapore.

I do recognize in my past experience I'm more used to the boss telling me what to do, what things I need to get done because it's quite hierarchical right in Asian culture. So I was more used to that. I'm like okay, you tell me what to do, I will accomplish that task. But in the Netherlands when I was an intern within my first year of studies I was being treated as an equal which really shocked me. They value my opinion. What? You care about what I have to say. So yeah, so that was really refreshing and the fact that you have really direct and voice out what you want. I love that. I'm not sure if in Japan you can do that or I'm not sure if Singapore you can do that. I really don't know. But over here they really hear opinions in the Netherlands. Definitely more work-life balance. It's so nice to give you so much trust that you will accomplish your job and I love that because it gives me motivation to actually want to work for you if you trust me that much. And I really like that. I really like my hybrid working style.

When I have to go to the office I make sure I show up and when I don't I can complete my work at home and I love that. That's great to hear and I think we are going to say bye to our audience because we have been recording so long and you can pick whatever you want. I think we've been recording so long and I've been trying to be myself even though I'm very, very self-conscious with a microphone and this is my very first time recording your podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you so much for being here and I love your stories and thank you for sharing them. You're welcome. You're very welcome.