The Americans head for Woodgrove Estate, the Indians to Meyer Road and the well-heeled to Nassim Hill

The Americans head for Woodgrove Estate, the Indians to Meyer Road and the well-heeled to Nassim Hill

American housewife Lisa McMullen used to be scared silly of her countrymen who lived in Woodgrove Estate in Woodlands, the new American expatriate enclave.

Mrs McMullen, who used to live in Shelford Road in Bukit Timah, recalls: ‘I was told how gossipy everyone was, like wanting to know what you were having for dinner. But when we finally moved here, we found that everyone here leads such busy lives they have no time to gossip.’

Since 1997, the American expat community has flocked to Woodgrove from the longstanding American enclaves of Bukit Timah, Tanglin and Holland Road. This is chiefly because the Singapore American School uprooted from Ulu Pandan to Woodlands Street 41 at around that time. Mrs McMullen’s three daughters all attend it.

Freelance interior designer and Woodgrove resident Cheryl Newman recalls of rentals back then: ‘You couldn’t get anything under $16,000′ - so hot was demand for the neighbourhood among American expat parents.

Woodgrove, to the uninitiated, is a neighbourhood on a slope and comprises some 34 three-storey country mansions along lanes with names such as Ashwood, Beechwood and Cedarwood.

It was completed in 2001 by developer Far East Organization. The houses are between 2,800 and 3,000 sq ft each and there is a great concentration of American families there.

Might Woodgrove Estate be just another name for Wisteria Lane, though, home to the Desperate Housewives of TV fame? After all, the spacious houses with bay windows, lofts and more than four bedrooms each actually mirror homes in wealthy American suburbs, a la the fictional Wisteria Lane.

Mrs Newman, a former president of women’s expat club the Singapore Oilwives Association, and her posse hoot long and loud at this.

Aside from the fact that they are all housewives and love cosying up for ladies-only chats, they’d have you know they are ‘anything but desperate’.

Says Mrs Newman: ‘In downtown condos, everyone tends to keep to themselves outside of the club. Here, if you walk your dogs, you will run into at least half a dozen folks you know.’

And no worries if any of Woodgrove’s denizens run out of eggs - just holler to your neighbour for some. Or get them to pick your children up after school.

Halloween, that most American of festivals, is huge here, with even pet dogs being dressed up as ghouls for fun.

It’s a lifestyle leg-up in many other ways: With more space to play with than downtown, they have their own swimming pools and sprawling Balinese-inspired backyards.

But there’s a price to be paid for such lavish living. Some basic amenities they took for granted when they called Bukit Timah or Orchard Road home, such as wet markets and grocers, are sorely lacking in Woodlands.

‘There isn’t even a Starbucks to be had,’ laments Mrs Janet Andrew, who says the nearby Woodgrove mall and Causeway Point have poor pickings, catering more to heartlanders than cosmopolitans.

‘Even the Cold Storage does not stock food expats are used to,’ she says. So the women of Woodgrove drive to the Farrer Road wet market for ‘good fresh chicken’. For slices of Americana, though, it’s still Tanglin Mall.

Mrs McMullen says: ‘When I was living in Shelford Road, my husband Mike used to ring me up after his workday and ask me to join him for a drink downtown. Now I think of the long drive down in the rush-hour jam and just have to say no to such quiet times we used to enjoy.’

Lucky for them then that they and their neighbours are a tight-knit bunch. They’ve even set up an online neighbourhood bulletin board which has come in handy now that burglaries are on the increase in Woodgrove. The families are extra vigilant after a break-in on April 11, and two other attempted burglaries. They also put up with petty thefts - of bicycles, mostly.

The other downside is Singaporean skateboarders who cause a ruckus with their antics well into the wee hours. The police had to be called in to disperse them.

Despite the spectre of intruders, the going rental rate for a Woodgrove country mansion has now gone up to as much as $25,000 a month, they say. This is by far the largest threat looming over this lush suburbia.

The women point out that their husbands’ companies are not likely to tolerate such a spike in rentals. So, if push comes to shove rent-wise, they may just move out.

Says Mrs Andrew: ‘Our husbands and their colleagues are telling us that Shanghai is the next Singapore, and rents there are lower than those here, so you may soon see more American companies relocating their overseas staff to China.’

Still, the estate’s sorority sister vibe should have most American families staying put in the neighbourhood for quite a while to come.

As Mrs Newman puts it: ‘We’ve eaten together at hawker centres here at 3am in our ballgowns and high heels. It’s the stuff that long friendships are built on.’

‘Sometimes people will act like I’m not there, or they think I don’t speak English. But these are only some Singaporeans, so I don’t let that affect me’ Lena Garcia, 30, a maid from the Philippines who has been here on a work permit for the past three years