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CHAPTER 8The Long Tail

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing must be attained.

—Marie Curie, chemist and physicist

Just weeks into her move from Singapore to London, England, where her husband had been transferred, Ng “Gim” Choo was already getting bored with her new life. As is often the case when your partner gets a job relocation, Gim had set aside her thriving career as an auditor at EY to keep the family together. Although she was on a senior management track, the move forced her to make a difficult choice. Her son and daughter were just two and four years old, so the idea of one parent flying back and forth from London to Singapore and becoming what's known in that part of the world as an “astronaut” was unacceptable to her. Instead, she settled into expat life, practicing her English with more regularity, taking flower arranging classes, and grabbing lunch with old colleagues when they were passing through town.

“I really missed the corporate world and all the office chatter,” Gim recalled. “I wanted to be a part of something bigger again.”

After a few months, Gim decided to throw herself into her children's education and she stepped up to become a parent volunteer at her daughter's school. She was intrigued by the British education system because it was completely different from anything she'd experienced back home. In Singapore, her daughter, E‐Ching, who was academically ...