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WHEN Ms Dahlia Ho’s family migrated here from Hong Kong in 1996, she was 14 years old and worried about life in a new city. She had heard rumours that Coca-Cola and chewing gum were banned here.
 Today, the bubbly 29-year-old speaks with a Singaporean accent and is married to a born-and-bred Singaporean, Mr Cardin Wong, 29, a relationship manager at DBS Bank.
They met at Tampines Junior College and have been married for 1 1/2 years.
She applied for Singapore citizenship last November and received her pink identity card earlier this year.
“I already considered myself a Singaporean when I was still in school,” said Ms Ho, a medical technologist at Changi General Hospital (CGH).
When she arrived in Singapore as a teenager, Ms Ho worried about fitting in at her new school, Greenview Secondary. She was one of a handful of foreigners there.
Fortunately, her worries were unfounded. She bonded with her classmates over gossip about Hong Kong TV stars. They took her sightseeing, to places of interest like Haw Par Villa.
When asked to cite an incident that cemented her desire to remain in Singapore for good, Ms Ho recalls the help of a supervisor at CGH, where she started work as a fresh graduate.
“He supported me a lot through my mother’s illness, even though I had just started work a month earlier and we didn’t know each other well,” she said.
“His wife made me breakfast every day, and I got time off to look after my mother. He was very patient with me, even when I broke down and cried in the lab.”
Ms Ho visits Hong Kong occasionally to see her family.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said her experience showed that integration depended not only on government policy, but also on forming personal relationships between new immigrants and locals.
Mr Lee added, amid laughter from the audience, that he hoped Ms Ho and her husband would “have many babies soon”.
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