THE X-PAT FILES

Lion City is all Singapore Slings and sofas for some expats but slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for others stuck in a world where joining a golf club can cost $200,000. Gail Williams reports.

In traveling time, Singapore is roughly the same distance from Perth as Albany, but for thousands of expatriate workers in the Lion City, it might as well be the Planet Tattoine. Their artificial world, complete with obligatory palm-fringed swimming pools and gin and tonics, is viewed as either a hedonistic paradise or a workaholic's nightmare, depending on whom you talk to.

You see, for one in for expats who don't cut the mustard, living and working in Singapore is not all first-class travel, six figure salaries, maids and continuous shopping trips.
 
There's the trauma of being plucked out of one culture and dumped into another, being forced to socialize with colleagues who might not be your first choice of friends, the pressure to live up to your income, and the artificial nature of the whole scene.

Couple that with the omnipresent threat of your partner running off with a local and it's enough to make you choke on your Singapore Sling or head for the shops.

For some expats, the perks are not enough to compensate for the cultural changes, the isolation, the long working hours or just being away from home.

Think of David, from Sydney, who can't come to terms with the Singaporean custom of never losing face. Or Steve Collins, from Perth, who finds the constant travel stressful. There's Judy Audino, also from Perth, who finds simgle life lonely in one of the busiest cities in the world and expresses frustration at the expat men's preference for local women.

And, as Perth film producer Marian Bartsch discovered, there's a story in every one of them, including her brother, Lawrence Grinceri, who has lived in Singapore for 11 years and swears he'll never come home.

It wasn't long before Bartsch had a mini camera in front of all of them, recording their most intimate moments - including a relationship break-up, a husband meeting his wife at the airport, and an emotion-charged Internet hook-up between a mother and daughter.

The resulting documentary, called X-Pats The Alien Connection, will be shown on the ABC on June 7 and - in a major coup for Bartsch's company, Mago Films - it will air in Britain on the BBC the following night.

It follows the lives of several expats and reveals, along with the addiction to the luxurious lifestyle, the other side of the scene that is always portrayed as glamorous.

Viewers will not be amazed to learn about David's $A70,000 salary package, but they will be amazed to hear him describe it as at the lower end of the market. He's 22.

But it fits in with a society where it costs $A200,000 to get into the local golf club, living allowances run at $A15,000 a month and apartment rent for a bank manager easily nudges $28,000 a month - that is, if you want an indoor and outdoor jacuzzi.

Going hand in hand with the bubbles and the maid, cook and nanny, are the tales of most marriage break-ups being caused by the expat man running away with a local woman.

Viewers might find it hard to summon sympathy for the angst experienced by second-generation xpat Pippa who, in the documentary, laments her life as a mother, newly without a nanny. Her husband has just been posted to the US where life will be very different without home help.

"I have to get up at 5.30am when my baby wakes and I have to ask the cook what she eats," she said.

It seems nothing much has changed since the days of the tiger-hunting British Raj.

Bartsch has captured it well, as only a character like Bartsch can. This former media and drama teacher, and mother of two, has a million ideas floating around in her head at any one time.

When she's not travelling, pitching and filming, she lives in Perth with her creative director husband Alun and plays mum.

Perhaps her approach to life is summed up in the stylishly framed photography adorning her office wall.

"It's a pile of s-t, but beautifully lit," is the caption under, well, under a pile of you know what.

Healthy, in your face. This approach has seen Bartsch doing deals with Donald Trump's personal assistant one minute and drinking white wine with Sydney advertising guru Siimon Reynolds the next.

In between, she drives a hard bargain with hard-nosed businessmen in Beijing and parties with expats in Singapore.

She is a woman who branched into film production via a marketing job with a local film company and then stumbled across the documentary idea after dozens of rips backwards and forwards to Singapore doing marketing pitches with Singapore businesses.

"Because I was up there so often I developed networks of friends of locals and expats. You work hard and play hard," Bartsch said. "I knew that there was a doco in the lives of these expats but because I come from a corporate background I had to cross that great divide. I had made a lot of business-focused films, but not a doco."

Bartsch is a persuasive woman, with years of experience pitching ideas to heavies at Cannes.

"Cannes is a concrete bunker, not glamorous at all. We're just the drones behind the sceces," she said.

The ABC commissioning editor liked her expats idea straight away.

Bartsch said that at times when she was interviewing her subjects, during the five trips she did to Singapore with co-producer and director Carmelo Musca and cameraman Ulrich Stephan Krafzik, she had to be careful not to react.

"I wanted this to be non-judgmental," she said. "You can't ask someone a question and then react as if to say 'welcome to the real world' when they are complaining about their plight. It's up to the viewer to say that."

Bartsch is a tough talker who likes to tell it straight whether she's talking mid-life crisis, traditional eastern medicine or feng shui - just three of the ideas she's now working on.

There's no doubt that Bartsch can pitch.

She did it often enough before she established her own independent film company in February 1999.

She had been consultant to several production companies and travelled to Asia regularly securing television projects, documentaries, series and major corporate productions.

Her film-making credits include Appetite for Asia, a 13-part cooking series shot in Singapore in 1998 which has been sold nationally and internationally, a short film titled Pilbara Pearl and a telemovie called The Catch. She's just finished six weeks of shooting - which took her to New York, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Beijing and Hong Kong - on another documentary titled What in the wold is Feng Shui? for the international market.

"Aah, now there's an idea that I've had for about three or four years," said Bartsch, who secured investment for this one from UK TV company Carlton International.

When she discovered Donald Trump had a feng shui master to generate wealth, the production team flew to New York.

"His personal PA, Norma, a hard-bitten New York kind of girl phoned me and said 'You sound like a lovely girl, but Donald's too busy, but you can speak to his consultant, Scott'," Bartsch said. "So we got him and he was really interesting. He decreed when the building should begin and when it could be opened."

Does Bartsch believe in the powers of feng shui, the ancient art of the living environment around us, which is based on the premise that imbalances of energy displace goodluck and bring about internal disorder?

"Not really. I believe in the power of positive thinking," she laughs.

- Gail Williams, Murdoch Press, 27 May, 2001.