'My life flashed before my eyes': Expat recalls why she left San Francisco for the Lion City
She once thought of San Francisco as the “best city in the world”. But after a string of incidents that threatened her safety and well-being, she decided to fly halfway around the world and settle in sunny Singapore instead.
Heather, aka @unicornheatt, shared in a TikTok video how she moved to San Francisco from her hometown of Cupertino City in California to complete her studies in Architecture.
She started her clip by saying that she never expected she would leave San Francisco.
“The dream was always to go there because it’s the best city in the world – or so I thought,” she said.
According to Heather, the city has been on the decline since the introduction of Proposition 47 in 2014. It is a law that reclassified stealing from a felony to a misdemeanour.
She experienced and witnessed first-hand several “smash-and-grab” incidents, like when someone smashed her car windows and stole from the vehicle in 2021.
“That happened to me three times in my first year of owning a car.”
Things got worse, she said, when she was assaulted in broad daylight while walking home from the dentist one day.
“[I was] so shocked… I couldn’t say anything. There were people around me, [but] no one said anything. It just kind of shook me to the core,” she recounted.
@unicornheatt Why I left San Francisco...and moved to Singapore Still love san francisco and left my heart there ?but i think san francisco in 2023 is just too dangerous and not worth the risk. #leavingsanfrancisco #sgexpat #movedabroad #sanfranciscocrime #leavingcalifornia ♬ original sound - unicornheatt
Then there’s the topic of gun violence.
She told a story of how she saw a man running around openly with a gun while she was walking her dog. The man ran within three metres of her and her pet.
“In that moment, I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
Though some women are urged to carry a taser or pepper spray for self-defence in San Francisco, Heather questioned the point of it.
“How useless would a pepper spray (be)? Like, what am I going to do? He shoots me, and what, I spray some pepper spray?”
A week after the gun incident, she packed and moved to Singapore.
Heather told MS News that her husband is Singaporean, and they moved back here six months ago as she couldn’t imagine staying in the US and having a family there.
“I can’t be grateful enough to be in Singapore,” she said in the video, adding that Singapore is a great place for its safety and educational opportunities.
And the close proximity to numerous holiday destinations is a plus as well.
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