Interviewing For A Guest Blog During My Pacific Travels

Index

Singapore First Stop In The Pacific

Interviewing For Blogs Outside Of The Netherlands

The Chinese Neighborhood In Singapore

The Peer Mental Health Project

Small Talk In Singapore

Visiting The Chinese Mental Health Hospital In Singapore

The First Guest Mental Health Blog

Related blogs on my website

Singapore First Stop In The Pacific

My first stop on my 5,5-month journey through the Pacific was Singapore. I asked a fellow traveler I met in Jordan when I visited her in Ghent where I could stay in Singapore, because Singapore is divided in ethnic neighborhoods. She knew someone living there in a secured compound also from Belgium. And it was decided that I could stay there.

Interviewing For Blogs Outside Of The Netherlands

I was happy I could stay in a safe neighborhood and go to the interviews I had planned for my guest blog. I had arranged a guest blog in The Netherlands about mental health peers. They provided the first contacts. Through these contacts I arranged an appointment with peers with the Chinese ethnicity. The project and the hospital I visited was for people with a Chinese ethnicity. Almost all neighborhoods are divided by ethnicity and with that also the schools, hospitals, etc.

The Chinese Neighborhood In Singapore

I took the bus to the Chinese part of Singapore and looked around for lunch. At a traffic light I was looking around and someone tapped me on my shoulder and told me I wasn’t allowed to cross here. I was 2 m from the traffic light to cross the road. Singapore is very strict with traffic rules and littering.

The Peer Mental Health Project

After lunch I went to the project and met two enthusiastic peers, who showed me around and even wanted to show me around in the Chinese mental health hospital a bit further. They wanted to show me how the care is arranged there. I agreed but was a bit scared with my experience with the mental health hospital in Mongolia and The Netherlands in mind.

Small Talk In Singapore

I headed there and in the elevator they asked me what I had eaten so far in Singapore. And told me what I had to taste before leaving Singapore. Food is an obsession for people living in Singapore and they have a good reason to, because all of Asia can be tasted in Singapore in the different neighborhoods. It is like the weather obsession of the Dutch. The Dutch including me talk a lot about the weather as small talk.

Visiting The Chinese Mental Health Hospital In Singapore

I was shown around in the mental health hospital for ethnic Chinese in Singapore and introduced to the staff. One of the peers even got out an infographic showing me a plan with the work they were doing there as peers. In 2013 when I was in Singapore care was divided by ethnicity like the neighborhoods. This has to do with the languages that are official in Singapore. Chinese is one of them and speaking the language of the patient can help.

The First Guest Mental Health Blog

In 2013 after leaving Singapore the first of a set of guest blogs about mental health projects was published. I also encountered my first problem with guest blogging from far away. I promised the peers I interviewed to keep as much as possible to the Singapore English they used, but the editor wanted correct British English. My first guest blog almost got cancelled, because of this. It is a dear lesson to me, because a few years later when I was interviewed I encountered the same problem, but now as the one being interviewed. It is the one being interviewed who decides if the guest blog based on the interview with them is published. It is al in the formulation, because when the one being interviewed doesn’t agree with the way the words are put the purpose of the blog is gone. With my set of interviews I wanted to get to know how mental health projects are being arranged in the Pacific and what effects they have on the peers participating. The guest blogs are not online anymore, but the original version that was approved by the peers, staff and Ethnic Chinese mental health hospital of Singapore was published back then. The set of guest blogs consisted of interviews in Singapore, Melbourne (Australia), Adelaide (Australia), New Zealand and one other city in Australia I don’t remember the name.