ALMOST LOCAL · ABOUT
Hi, I’m Daniëlle
Dutch by birth, Singaporean by paperwork, still not entirely sure which one wins on any given day.
Founder, author, mum of three — and still figuring out the rest, one Field Note at a time.
I moved to Asia in 2014 thinking it was temporary — the way everyone does. Twelve years, three kids and one permanent residency card later, it clearly wasn’t. I still get asked at the school gate where I’m “actually” from, usually right after someone tells me I’m basically local by now. I’m not sure either of us is right. This is where I write about that in-between — the part after “expat” stops fitting and before “local” quite does.
Where I’m from
Dutch, born and raised, though I haven’t lived there since my early twenties. I left for Asia in 2014 — Kuala Lumpur first, then Singapore in 2016. Ten years in this one country now, twelve in the region altogether. I’m 185cm tall, which meant I never really blended in even before anyone found out I wasn’t from here — these days I’ve stopped trying to, and started preferring it that way.
By day, I’m the founder of ActiveWomen — a strength and wellbeing coaching studio for women in Singapore, built on the idea that fitness should move with a woman through pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause instead of pausing for it. I also wrote Strength Through the Messy & Beyond, a real-life strength training guide covering the same ground, for anyone who can’t get to a studio.
In my free time
I train most days — F45 a few times a week, plus my own endurance and functional work, currently pointed at a Hyrox race. I cycle to work rather than drive, mostly because fifteen minutes on a bike is the only thinking time I reliably get. When I do sit still, it’s usually with a hard sci-fi novel or literary fiction, and most nights end with inventing a new My Little Pony bedtime story on the spot for my daughters — which, after enough repetition, has basically become its own unpaid creative job.
Why I’m writing this
Ten years of half-formed opinions on school systems, sport choices and being the tallest person at every parent-teacher meeting had to go somewhere — this turned out to be it.
The actual juggle
Running a studio, moving my eldest into a local school, training for a Hyrox race — most days it somehow works out. Some days it’s just a school portal logging me out three times in a row, and I still don’t know what SA1 stands for.
What’s actually here
School systems from an outsider who’s staying. Sport choices without the panic. Fitness that fits around a business rather than the other way around. And the odd honest email when something’s actually worth saying.
Come along
If you’re also somewhere in the middle — not quite local, not really an outsider anymore either — I’d rather write to you than at you. New field notes go up whenever there’s something worth writing down — not on a schedule. Subscribe here and you won’t miss one.
