Mr Frederic Maury (right) with (from left) his wife Madam Yuko Arai, and daughters Sawako and Ayano at the Singapore Institute of Management Performing Arts Theatre on Aug 18. SINGAPORE - When Mr Frederic Maury told his parents that his family had decided to settle in Singapore a year after he had started work here in 2012, they were puzzled why he would want to live so far from their home in Toulouse, France. Mr Maury, 55, a management executive at a global tech solutions company, said: “My parents were hard to convince.
They were a bit sad that we’d be so far from them.” Then his parents, now in their 80s, visited Singapore for the first time and “they saw why our family wanted to settle here”, he said. “They called it a ‘beautiful garden’,” Mr Maury recalled, referring to the abundance of greenery in Singapore’s urban landscape.
His family also enjoyed the safety they felt here and, given that their children had been enrolled into local schools, they decided it was an ideal home for them. On Aug 18, Mr Maury’s wife, Madam Yuko Arai, 55, and daughters Sawako, 15, and Ayano, 21, were confirmed as new Singaporeans. They were among 177 new Singaporean citizens who received their citizenship certificates at the annual National Citizenship Ceremony held by the People’s Association at the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) Performing Arts Theatre.
New citizens are required to receive their citizenship certificates either at the national ceremony, whic.