 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Good afternoon. Welcome to Global Report on the House of Liliang. We have with us today Mr. Glenn Van Zuffen, who is the former president of the American Association of Singapore. Welcome to the show, Mr. May I call you Glenn? Absolutely. I prefer it. Yes, thanks Lili. Thank you. All right. Well, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's nice to see you and all the friends in Hawaii. Yeah. That's right. You have a connection with Hawaii. We're going to have to be talking about that later on. Now Glenn, tell us how long have you been in Singapore? This is our 14th year. My wife and I came here actually when we were still dating. And then we ended up getting married here and starting our family here. Did you meet in Hawaii? No, we met in Atlanta. Okay. Is that where you're from? I'm not. I'm from Chicago. All right. So it's a story of skipping around the world. Okay. But let me know where you want me to start. I can start wherever you want me to. I would love to know how you end up in Singapore from Chicago. Sure. Well, it's a long story, but basically I've spent the past almost 25 years in Asia, living in Tokyo and Hong Kong and here a few minor stops along the way. One of those stops was Atlanta. My background is as a journalist and I was working for CNN International at that time, based first in Hong Kong and then based in Atlanta with them. While in Atlanta for a short period, I met my wife and then I had an offer to come here with CNBC, the business network, and we moved here. Okay. So you came here looking for CNBC. Correct. And do you have any children? Yes. We have two children. They are now eight and eleven. Were they born here? They were both born here. They were born here. Could you share with us what it's like raising kids in Singapore? Because it's so different from United States as I can imagine. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people who live in Hawaii have traveled to Asia and have experienced different countries. Of course, people like to go to Bali and go to Thailand and go to Hong Kong in different spots. And I hope those of the viewers today who have been to Singapore would remember what a clean and safe and efficient place it is. And that travels down not only through a business life but also through family life. So for our kids, it's been fantastic. It's very safe. There are no guns. Very little drug issue here. Certainly nothing like you would find in the U.S. And so, you know, it's a small island. It's only five and a half million people about the size of Manhattan. So it's a very manageable, small, clean, safe and organized place. And that's what we love about it. It's a great place for kids. And do your children go to local schools or international schools? Because they're very different. They're very different. Our kids go to local school. And that was a conscious choice that my wife and I made. Based on the fact that our kids having been born here in Singapore we really felt like it was important for them to have Singaporean friends. You also have some really strong strings to pull here because it's very hard for an international person to get into local schools here. Yeah, it's not very easy. You're right. The time we did it five or six years ago, seven years ago, it was a little bit easier. And we also have permanent resident status. It's kind of like the equivalent of a green card in the U.S. So it makes it a slightly easier process if you have a permanent resident card, which we do. And have they tried out lessons back in the United States? Have they gone on holiday camps? Yeah, they haven't done any camps per se, but we go back once or twice a year. And so they hang out with their cousins. We go to national parks. We do all the things that we can do. Last summer we were in Washington, D.C., seeing all the sites, all the national monuments in the museums, which was great fun. So we try to give them as much exposure to American culture as we can. I'm going to shift back the gear to your work. I got distracted by your children. I've got four years. I'm always asking people about their kids. So you came here with CNBC. How long did you work for them? So when we came here 14 years ago, I worked for them for just about a year. And then, sadly, they took 14 of our jobs and they shifted them back to the CNBC headquarters in New Jersey. And at that time there was an option to go back to New Jersey, but we didn't feel good about doing that since we had just pulled up all our routes from the U.S. and moved here. So we decided to stay here. I know that any time you do something for the first time, it's a little shocking. Did you experience any culture shock when you first got to Singapore? Yeah, I tell you, not too much. Have you ever visited Singapore prior to moving here? I had, yeah. I had both when I lived in Tokyo and in Hong Kong. I had come here. I had friends here. And so I had been back and forth on various trips. Of course, anytime you move to a new place, there's some adjustment. But Singapore, as you know, with your background, is a very easy place to get used to. English is widely spoken and everything is, as I mentioned before, very orderly, very neat and very easy to get around. So it wasn't too bad. But it's a different type of English. We have a lot of different Malays, Tamil and Chinese all jam inside one centre. Is that a challenge for you? Are you getting used to that? I tell you, that's one of the things we love best about Singapore is the multicultural nature of living here. And what we've seen, especially in North America, is a tendency to push away foreigners, to push away different ways of thinking, different religions, and by some groups in the U.S. And here it's exactly the opposite. The government actively promotes and really enforces everyone to get along. And while that has its own set of challenges, you see people that understand, our kids, for example, they celebrate all the major holidays for the religions here. So they will celebrate Ramadan with their friends at school. They will celebrate Diwali with their Indian friends. They will celebrate all the different holidays. And we feel as a model for them going forward as adults someday, that's who we want them to be. And as with all places, I mean there are pros and cons. What are some of the negatives that you can find living here in Singapore? It's always hot. I know. It's always hot and always humid. Well, as some of your viewers may know, living here on the equator in the tropics, it's a steamy, it's a jungle basically. And if they didn't trim back the trees as they do all the time, the place would overgrow in about two months, I think. But you know what, that's okay. It's akin to a lot of places like Florida in the summertime, for example. It's just that it's year-round here. But the one thing we love, really love about it, is from an environmental standpoint, is that every day you have about 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night being on the equator. So the sun rises at seven in the morning and basically sets at seven in the evening every day of the year. So you really get a full day every day. Now you mentioned the prohibition of gun ownership as one of the safety measures here. Share with our viewers, what does it feel like living in a country that prohibits guns? You know, we have to remind ourselves every time we go back to the states to be careful, right? Because you just don't know. For example, you see a lot of cases of road rage, somebody's driving, they don't like what you did, like literally people get shot, right? Or, you know, any of the other horrific things we've seen, especially recently in the news with shootings at schools and of individuals, right? So I have to say there's a big burden that's taken off you when you can just sort of live your life and know that, you know, there's a lot of things to worry about in life, right? You know, don't step off in front of a bus and get hit or whatever. You know, not having to worry about being a victim of gun violence and generally violence in general here is fantastic. And that's the way we want to raise our kids. There's actually two schools in Pennsylvania. One of them is going to equip the children with buckets of, I don't know if you've read about stones, gallons of stones. So if there's a terrorist or shooter, they are expected to be tossing rocks at the terrorists. And the other one is going to be equipping teachers with mini baseball bats. I'm not sure how far that's going to go. Time will tell, but I tell you what, I wouldn't want to be the one staring at somebody with an automatic weapon with a stone in my hand. You know, I would want to be somewhere else. And when you hear news like that, does it feel like it's happening in another world or does it still tuck at your heart's strength? You know, you still... Absolutely. You know, we know a lot of Americans here in Singapore and there's about 25,000 Americans living in Singapore. So it's a big community. And of course, I won't or can't speak for all of them, but our friends and people we talk with, you know, everyone is... Anytime something bad happens in the U.S., it affects all of us, whether it's a school shooting or whether it's whatever. And so we definitely feel it. And we also have the, I think, the advantage of living far enough away that we can sort of see things at a higher level, perhaps. And whereas when you're in a situation, let's say in the U.S., you get kind of bogged down in all the noise of a topic. But here we can kind of turn on and turn off the news and hone in on important elements of whatever the story is. So in some ways, I think we have a better perspective on things that are happening back in the U.S. Unfortunately, we can do very little to impact what's happening in the U.S. Are you still voting? Yes, yes. And most of the friends we have here all vote. All vote, yeah. What about, well, talking about voting, because I live in America, so one thing I get asked a lot is, you know, what happened with the last election? So when the last election results came out, what was the reaction of the Americans here in Singapore? Well, it's funny because I was emceeing the annual or the election watch and election party for the American Chamber of Commerce here. So we have about 400 people in a ballroom at a hotel here. Well, there was quite a mix, actually. You'd be surprised, but certainly a lot of Americans. And when the final tally came in, honestly, you know, people were not necessarily in love with Hillary or in love with Trump, but everyone was visibly surprised that Trump won. And I think... And after the surprise subsided, what was, you know, where were they emotionally? I think people were hoping for the best, you know, hoping that perhaps, you know, he would turn into a different president than he was a campaigner with all the name-calling and all the kind of nasty tweets and things going on. People were hopeful, but... And do you feel like you're facing some of the residual results because being American, you know, you get asked, you know, what happened, why was Trump elected? Do they look at you differently? Do they look at that even as a non-American living in America? It's a great question. One of the things that I think most Americans try to do who live overseas, not in Singapore only, but everywhere, is try to represent our country in a positive way. America... And I think Americans have big hearts. They try to help with charity, with volunteering, with, you know, trying to reach out and bring people together in a way that I think is very uniquely American. And people have certainly, you know, over the decades done that here and been very effective. Representatives for America, even though they're not government officials. So your question is right on target because all of a sudden, I'll give you an example. I was, you know, riding in a taxi a couple of months ago and the taxi drivers here, the taxi uncles, we call them, or aunties if it's a woman, they're, you know, mostly very sharp. They know what's going on and, you know, if you want to know what's happening in a country, ask a taxi driver because they usually have their finger on the pulse of what's happening. But this one particular driver, he had been a businessman for many years. He lost his job so he started driving a taxi. Very smart, very educated. And he just, after saying hello and, you know, where you want to go and all that, he looked in the mirror and said, where are you from? I said, oh, the US. And he goes, what happened to your country? Like just like that. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that just, you know, it was almost like a knife, you know. Just straight up what, you know, what happened, what is happening with your country? What is going on? And while I think, you know, I appreciate that there's a large, you know, Make America Great again contingency in the US, you know, Singaporeans here, when they see that, they really wonder, and some of the issues around it, they really wonder what has happened to US ideals. Now, don't forget, I mean, Americans have been coming to Singapore since probably about the 1840s or 1850s. US warships called on Singapore in the mid 1800s, right? So we have a long, our whaling ships came from the east coast of the US and spent time here on their way, you know, looking for whales around, trade, all that sort of stuff. The first ice in Singapore came from lakes in New Hampshire and Maine, and it was put in the bottom of the clipper ships, the sailing ships, and then packed with sawdust and sailed all the way around South America into Singapore, you know, two, three months later, the ship arrived. And that was the first ice that came to Singapore. So, you know, we have a hugely long and deep connection to Singapore. So when Singaporeans see things happen, you know, they know America, they know Americans, many of them have studied there, have friends there, maybe a partner or a spouse from there, so they really want to know what's going on. You know, why have we gotten to this place? I would say that the external audience just baffled. I mean, I was living in states but I was quite baffled myself as well. It was interesting, just in the news today as we sit here in April watching this, today the president announced that he's going to look again at joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP, right? And everyone is speechless, right? Because, first of all, this is a trade negotiation that would have put the U.S. in the center of making trade policy with, I think, 11, 12 other nations across the region that would have vastly helped Americans and American businesses. And now, and one of the first things the president did when he got into office was say, we're not doing it, he ripped it up, you know, after 10 years of negotiating it. And now, all of a sudden, he's decided, oh wait, this would actually really help some people in the U.S. Well, I think because now he's in a trade war with China and he needs his allies back. Sure, but I mean, regardless of a trade war, it would have been good for Americans all along, you know, and there were so much misinformation hyperbole, because I followed the TPP very closely that, you know, before the election and stuff, there was a lot of wrong information put out about what it was. It would take away American jobs, etc., which just wasn't true. It would expand American markets greatly. So now yet again, people are shaking their heads saying what's good, what, you know? I don't mind. I don't know, it's not a consistent message we're getting from the U.S. government on many issues.