As they walked down the long flight of red-carpeted stairs, Rachel asked, “Where are we going for lunch?”
“My parents have invited you to our house. They are so excited to see you, and I think you’ll enjoy some traditional home cooking.”
“That sounds great! But if I’m going to be seeing your parents, should I change?” Rachel asked. She was wearing a white cotton blouse with a pair of khaki slacks.
“Oh, you’re fine. My parents are so casual, and they know you are traveling.”
Waiting for them at the entrance was a large metallic-gold BMW with tinted windows. The driver quickly got out and opened the door for them. As the car left the hotel grounds and turned onto a busy street, Peik Lin began to point out the sights. “This is the famous Orchard Road—tourist central. It’s our version of Fifth Avenue.”
“It’s Fifth Avenue on steroids … I’ve never seen so many boutiques and shopping malls, lined up as far as the eye can see!”
“Yes, but I prefer the shopping in New York or LA.”
“You always did, Peik Lin,” Rachel teased, remembering her friend’s frequent shopping jaunts when she was supposed to be in class.
Rachel always knew that Peik Lin came from money. They met during freshman orientation at Stanford, and Peik Lin was the girl who showed up to 8:00 a.m. classes looking as if she had just come from a shopping spree on Rodeo Drive. As a newly arrived international student from Singapore, one of the first things she did was buy herself a Porsche 911 convertible, claiming that since Porsches were such a bargain in America “it’s an absolute crime not to have one.” She soon found Palo Alto to be too provincial, and tried at every opportunity to lure Rachel into skipping class and driving up to San Francisco with her (the Neiman Marcus there was so much better than the one at Stanford Shopping Center). She was generous to a fault, and Rachel spent most of her college years being showered with gifts, enjoying glorious meals at culinary destinations like Chez Panisse and Post Ranch Inn, and going on weekend spa trips all along the California coast courtesy of Peik Lin’s handy American Express black card.
Part of Peik Lin’s charm was that she made no apologies for being loaded—she was completely unabashed when it came to spending money or talking about it. When Fortune Asia magazine did a cover profile on her family’s property development and construction company, she proudly forwarded Rachel a link to the article. She threw lavish parties catered by the Plumed Horse at the town house she rented off campus. At Stanford, this did not exactly make her the most popular girl on campus. The East Coast set ignored her, and the low-key Bay Area types found her much too SoCal. Rachel always thought Peik Lin would have fit in better at Princeton or Brown, but she was glad that fate had sent her this way. Having grown up under far more modest circumstances, Rachel was intrigued by this free-spending girl, who, while being filthy rich, was never a snob about it.
“Has Nick filled you in on the real estate insanity here in Singapore?” Peik Lin asked as the car zipped around Newton Circus.
“He hasn’t.”
“The market is really hot at the moment—everyone’s flipping properties left and right. It’s practically become the national sport. See that building under construction on the left? I just bought two new flats there last week. I got them at an insider price of two point one each.”
“Do you mean two-point-one million?” Rachel asked. It always took her a while to get used to the way Peik Lin spoke about money—the numbers just seemed so unreal.
“Yes, of course. I got them at the insider price, since our company did the construction. The flats are actually worth three million, and by the time the building is completed at the end of the year I can sell each of them for three-point-five, four mil easy.”
“Now why would the prices shoot up so quickly? Isn’t that a sign that the market is in a speculative bubble?” Rachel inquired.
“We’re not in a bubble because the demand is real. All the HNWIs want to be in real estate these days.”
“Um, what are Henwees?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re not up on the lingo. HNWI stands for ‘High Net Worth Individuals.’ We Singaporeans love to abbreviate everything.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”
“As you may know, there’s been an explosion of HNWIs from Mainland China, and they are the ones really driving up the prices. They are flocking here in droves, buying up properties with golf bags stuffed full of hard cash.”
“Really? I thought it was the other way around. Doesn’t everyone want to move to China for work?”
“Some, yes, but the super-rich Chinese all want to be here. We’re the most stable country in the region, and Mainlanders feel that their money is far safer here than in Shanghai, or even Switzerland.”
At this point, the car turned off a main thoroughfare and drove into a neighborhood of tightly packed houses. “So there actually are houses in Singapore,” Rachel said.
“Very few. Only about five percent of us are lucky enough to live in houses. This neighborhood is actually one of the first ‘suburban-style’ developments in Singapore, begun in the seventies, and my family helped to build it,” Peik Lin explained. The car drove past a high white wall, over which peeked tall thick bushes of bougainvillea. A large gold plaque on the wall was engraved VILLA D’ORO, and as the car pulled up to the entrance, a pair of ornate golden gates parted to reveal an imposing façade that bore a not so accidental resemblance to the Petit Trianon at Versailles, except that the house itself took up most of the lot, and the front portico was dominated by a massive four-tiered marble fountain with a golden swan spouting water from its long upturned beak.
“Welcome to my home,” Peik Lin said.
“My God, Peik Lin!” Rachel gasped in awe. “Is this where you grew up?”
“This was the property, but my parents tore down the old house and built this mansion about six years ago.”
“No wonder you thought your town house in Palo Alto was so cramped.”
“You know, when I was growing up, I thought that everyone lived like this. In the States, this house is probably worth only about three million. Can you guess how much it’s worth here?”