KEY POINTS:
Once, I had a dream. In fact, I had many dreams when I lived in Singapore.
One was to be able to live in a place which had four seasons, and not just hot, hotter and hottest.
Another was to raise a family in a land that offered
space - both physical and psychological - so my children would have space to run around in and be able to think critically.
But most of all, my dream was to own my own house.
Not a two-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor like ours in Singapore, but a house - with a garden - that sat firmly on the ground.
Coming from a country which has a land mass no bigger than Lake Taupo but with a population soon to reach one and a half times that of New Zealand's, it's not surprising 90 per cent of its people live in high-rise apartments. Owning a house with a real backyard was just a fantasy for most of us.
So, exactly 10 years ago this week, I packed my bags and moved to New Zealand with the hope of making my dreams come true.
Then, the houses in New Zealand were really cheap - considering my little condominium apartment, which friends called my pigeonhole, cost more than $500,000.
We bought our house, in fact two houses, even before we moved to New Zealand permanently. One was a house on the North Shore, which was to be our new home, and the other was an investment property in Wellington.
The low kiwi dollar then meant what we paid for the two houses did not even amount to the cost of my 80sq m apartment.
So much has changed in the past 10 years. We sold our Wellington house, and when I had to move to the South Island five years ago, sold our Browns Bay home so we could buy a house in Christchurch.
We made a few bucks from the exercise, but it also turned out to be one of my most dream-shattering actions.
Who would have dreamed the median price of an average home in Auckland would reach a new record high of $430,000, or that an average house in the North Shore where I live will cost $503,000?
The home I sold in the low $300,000s was back on the market last year for $570,000, and Auckland's property market is still showing no signs of slowing down.
Since I moved back to Auckland last year, I have been renting and hoping against all odds that Isaac Newton would be proven right - that what goes up must come down.
It takes an average Aucklander about seven years of earning $57,500 to afford to buy a house at the median price, says this year's Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. But I guess that span of time would likely be a lot longer than seven years if one is Chinese.
Nielsen Media Research found 47 per cent of Chinese here earned an annual income of $10,000 or less. Low pay and inability to find work has forced many immigrants to look for work offshore.
I have met many Taiwanese and Korean families who are "fatherless" because he is working back in their country of origin. This has actually worked out well for some people.
I have a journalist friend who had struggled to find decent work in the mainstream media here after a short stint with the now defunct Auckland Sun, so he went on to become a senior leader writer for The Straits Times in Singapore.
What he earns enables him to afford maintaining his home and lifestyle in New Zealand, even though he has to shuttle regularly between the two countries.
Just as I viewed Auckland property prices a decade ago, houses here continue to be seen as cheap and affordable only by those earning their wages offshore.
One American I interviewed last month thought houses here were dirt cheap, compared to Los Angeles.
Last week, it was reported the British are looking to New Zealand to buy their first home because they were cheap.
So, as politicians continue their debate on whether to turn parents who smack their children into criminals and whether to tear down billboards in the city, little time is spared to talk about our economy or how we can raise income levels.
Kiwi employees, in the meantime, continue to be among the lowest paid in the OECD and will continue to lose out to foreigners and new immigrants in realising their dream and basic right to own their own home.
It is indeed ironic that to afford to live the New Zealand dream, one should have to look at finding work outside New Zealand.
