Women of Wealth Ep 2, Part I | Evelyn Tan’s Boat Ride Through Life
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hey these are my kids to know they came from me i'm not going to let anybody take them away and you know sell them on the streets for whatever well okay so no i believe we only live once and with that spirit i lived my life to the fullest without regrets there were experiences that no one can ever take away from me there were journeys that are uniquely mine so long as we open ourselves to new perspectives the world is our playground [Music] we have all known if linton chen as one of the top television actresses during the good old days but little did we know much about her rather low profile life after she became a full-time mom that includes living on a boat for four years with her entire family hi everyone today's guest speaker if lin tan when i get to know her is because she attended our class to learn how to invest and when i saw her as one of our participants i'm like really if lynne you might ask so what's so great about her singapore audience you might heard of this name chun [Music] hi pauline how are you it's so good to be back in your company again yes thank you for accepting our interview i think our audiences especially singapore audience really miss you on screen so some of you would remember uh ethelene as being one of the top celebrities in singapore especially in the 1990s 1990s i was a sausage semi-finalist yeah that was in 1997 yeah so i went on to do quite a bit before i retired early retirement well at the point of time she's so caught retired she's actually one of the most popular one and there was even a ranking i remember in chinese we term as utier that means she's like the top five actresses in singapore i i always kid people i say i will have adhd i think you know so it's a great idea so no no no i i i thank you for your um the attention that was showered on me yeah but no way am i near the ah yeah so first of all how did you end up in like uh in the past was called tcs our national tv in singapore yeah so how do you end up like wanting to be in star search yeah uh yes when i joined it was still tcs yeah um that was 1997 but you know the strange thing is uh all this while since young i knew that this was something that i wanted to do i wanted to act and uh i i don't know whether you remember but in our days maybe back in my days you'll still be younger than me i think okay but in my days you know while uh it was um uh the japanese craze was on so i had a lot of japanese actors that i like and actresses i like and i know i would always try to imitate them and then you know there was one particular show i remember uh that talked about acting as a career you know and this person choosing acting as a career and so so i was just mesmerized by the actress and you know what she personified for me no it was really i thought me and and and so i really sought out ways and means to make myself hone my acting skills so i remember every time after school i don't come back and do homework yeah i don't come and do homework i just chucked my bag aside and now i'll have a friend usually with me my best friend and then we will hide in the room and i know we will remember the lines from last night's um uh drama cereal and then we'll just get out say okay don't this camera i'll be the father you'll be the daughter no no it'll take turns no playing it out yeah that's right and um i progressively went on to a more serious more professional acting by taking on um by being a member of my uh secondary school chinese literature and drama debate society yeah so that was my jungle and we are quite similar you know because i was from this chinese culture club as well when i was in the junior college like the high school in singapore and uh yes i do acting and all this stuff as well what i did was actually i went to learn how to dance yeah okay and uh i danced in the tcs in the 90s as well we had colleagues before yes we might probably because mine is chinese dance yeah so i always appear in those uh that time in the um that there's still those old chinese drama okay yeah i'm always the dancer inside the court scene and every time there was this assassination so the typical thing that i would do is this i would just dance go in circle and then there's an assassinator and then we have to run yes so that's like that typical scene if you guys remember in singapore you must try and fish out some of these uh you know snippets really interesting so now the thing is you and you make your dream come true that's very amazing because you like it you still do well in school i mean i believe as a good girl of a parent you still do well in school make it to university and you get into star search and of course after that you get quite good results everyone remember you so you know in my short eight years or so i actually did quite a lot yeah like you know from acting to singing and to hosting and then also to newscasting yeah so um yeah so it was quite interesting yeah uh in a short span i've done so much and then i remember also you know now that you talk about it actually the other childhood ambition that i have was to be a teacher yeah you know back in the olden days i remember very clearly i would just grab some books and i would just have a class of students in front of me and i would choose i would give up books and then i'll call the class monitor or imaginary or in my imagination yeah can you please do that so i was part actress acting out the role and then part living out my dream as being a teacher that's the reason why i'm sorry i believe you have acted quite a number of roles but the two that always remember is your image in those period drama in the old chinese those period drama and the other one is actually being a teacher yes yes yes you are so popular as being that teacher character yeah that i can still remember right i've been practicing since young yeah so it's so nice to see to see you know women pursuing the dreams that we have since young and you managed to do so and do it quite well being one of the top actresses top celebrity in singapore now the question is why is it that at the peak of the career uh you stop doing this yeah should i quote my dear friends just kidding okay so what happened was actually you know uh from mediacore all right i went on to mediaworks and after a four-year stint over there um well the market conditions just didn't allow that company to continue and so we merged and at that point in time i was newscasting for a year and i also had a baby in tow yeah we were just newly married and then you know the honeymoon baby came along so uh 2 5 january 1st my daughter came and that was exactly on that day i was out of job so i was retrenched your your daughter's born on the first dress yes that's right that's right yeah so now that on the on the first day of the new year when i'm officially out of job i have this new task you know new responsibility being placed on me okay it's almost as if you know actually like i was not retrench you know i just moved on to a new career you know in a different vocation yeah subsequently not only you have one followed by the second it was so fun [Laughter] so have you like is this is this part of your planning together with your hubby darren ah well he wanted six you know so i i'm so sorry i had to disappoint him i still produced producer's eyes open wide yes that's right so we we actually plan to have a big family yeah but you know i i told him i said okay we just try that nah let's not just give ourselves a target it's not like you know oh you have to earn this much money but when right okay or it don't save up this much to go what it's really um as we go along we felt that you know it was uh also our calling we were also really living out um the role of a parent and enjoying every moment of it yeah so after christian my first one i went on to have jairus my boy two years later and then way and uh two years later and then that was when you know oh it started to take its toll already quite a lot now three is a crowd right yeah yeah yeah yeah too so so for us we we kind of like you know waited it out to decide whether okay shall we have a fourth yeah because um we really wanted a big family yeah we we enjoyed that kind of uh relationship that we had with them yeah and then okay alec came along four years later [Music] so when was the year that your family decided to live on boat uh okay so the story has to go back backtrack a bit okay all right now darren is a hainanese so being a hainanese i think you know they have this saying that you know hainan men they are all seamen because i think you know many many years ago they started that way they were taken out to sea by merchant ships you know and many of the people who took on this uh role they were taken on as chefs on board the ships yes so um so darren somehow you know even though his grandparents his father is not a sea man and um not a chef all right but somehow you know it it's just i don't know what it just went into his dna so he loves to see he loves to cook and that was how he won my stomach and my heart and and because of that you know so he actually started talking to me when we started seriously seeing each other dating he said no hey next time let's not live on a in a house shall we just go buy a boat and then you know we live on board and we have a family there you know look at him i'm like are you sure you want to do this it's so hot and my goodness where where where to go to in singapore you know it's just local waters not much to see right yeah so i told him i say no i think you know it's okay yeah but he was very persistent you can see that you know he has sea water as his blood yeah so he was very persistent and many years later as we started growing our kids and uh we we came along into homeschooling our children we started them quite young we thought that actually that was a wonderful place to be and a wonderful season in our life to take our children on that adventure together and then to live on board and to show them that you know learning is so fun and because we're schooling them right so it doesn't have to be restricted to four walls it can take you beyond the books that you read and to really experience different cultures to see people to experience new things and to just really set their eyes wide yeah i had the opportunity to bring our v college graduates yes to go on this board trip which is really fun do you know the moment i stepped on board i was like oh my god how did evelyn and darren's children survive on this boat because the first thing i thought was danger i'm sorry ah yeah because when i go on it i was like holding on to this and it was not moving yet right now and when we were actually the boat was moving there are waves you see and okay we're talking about singapore water still not so bad but you you guys are not just in singapore water you went over to the big sea i'm not sure even the ocean yes right yes so what how how's the safety like didn't you occur to you that it's dangerous for the children definitely so that's why i told you damn is a very persistent guy so you know um as we talked about it as we broach the topic about you know um taking the children on a journey to uh discover the world together we went through many many discussions and we actually talked about you know things like piracy right here these are my kids to know they came from me i'm not going to let anybody take them away and you know sell them on the streets for whatever what okay so no and uh and what about storm yes bad weather conditions right so actually what we did was then we actually went on to find out more about what it entails to sail because we've heard stories of families all right even with very young children who have done that so we're thinking to ourselves you know well it's something that i think we want to pursue now that we have set a goal then we just have to make sure that you know all that all that all that uh dubs are can be allayed but if they are reasonable uh solutions to all these dubs that we have then i think you know why not let's give it a chance let's give it a shot right this is something that it's all about pursuing dreams right yeah if you have a dream and you set your goals to it then you know you just try and find ways and means to to materialize that elliot was just less than two at that point in time when we were sailing and so we had to bring the car seat put it in the boat and then strap the car seat onto the boat pole and then strap him in when the waters got a bit choppy yeah so he was really under 24 7 surveillance by me how about the rest but the rest are already older so these kids they are um also water safe so water confident yeah but we explain to them and we tell them that you know this is really your life at stake and we're going on this journey we're bringing you to see the world and we do not want to miss you halfway all right yeah so and i think because of that you know they have that they have that maturity that came along because of the circumstances that needed that maturity so they they rose up so how were you on board so we stayed there for about four years so four four years is always on the boat or sometimes it's like uh certain months on land and then back on board so we had to acclimatize first and also we had to you know suss out whether this was really something for us so we initially we just bought a small boat so it was a monohull that means you say just one body only yeah with a keel below and we live on board so living space was really really tight it was even smaller than smaller than a soho apartment i think yeah there were only two rooms so we had three kids because it was too small right that time three kids at time we squeezed them in one room the bigger one and then us on the bow so that one was smaller but you know good for two people but we have everything inside our computer whatever whatever whatever you know even the toys you know we were able to have some toy space for them then later on we realized that okay after nine months i think we can we can do it all right uh thing seems to be doable but we thought okay maybe then we upgrade to a bigger boat okay so we went on to get a katamaran so a katamaran is actually a boat with two bodies so we have a more living space and there is a platform in between that joins the two bodies yeah so with that that was the one that you went out yes yes [Music] after taking the trip up to phuket we came back we let the season change we waited for the season to change the winner to be in the direction that we wanted to go we went up to koh samui which was a little bit further so up the other uh the other side of the peninsula of malaysia to go to koh samui and that was when we met with the our so-called spiella you know that was a big terrible storm yeah so okay so that was the other concern that you know we needed to be addressed right yeah before we set sail so we talked to sailors you know who have been there done that and they assured us that you know during the season you choose the right season to go you would hardly meet with any bad weather all right so we went there and then um i think just a week before we set off we even asked our friend who worked with uh the navy yeah i asked them so how was it just came back from south china sea how was the condition oh don't worry it's pristine clear it's like you know like mirror you know it's very calm dory but then it struck us no freak weather conditions do happen and you know we were so lucky uh to be met with i think eight storms in the 24 hours so it just came very suddenly darren saw the dark clouds told us okay brace for bad weather all right so all of us close our doors and everything and then you know we not went to hiding but then you just make sure that you know everything was secured so and i had my baby with me right so this time around we cannot put him on the pole outside with the car seat already because you know it's going to be wet and uncomfortable so okay come in elliot so you know i had to entertain him find things to do with him and it was 24 hours can you imagine so it was like choppy it was choppy yeah it was uh i think the waves reach about four or five meters and it was just very uncomfortable sorry i just imagined this as a pardon my imagination and my ignorance on about boat leaving have you ever thought what if the boat capsized okay that gave us the confidence that you know we'll ride it through but even then i must tell you frankly like no back there when we were in that ship i was praying i was really crying okay please don't let this be the last day and not on earth
