Walk along the street and chances are you will see many couples of mixed race holding hands. Such a sight may have caused stares decades ago but is common today.
Indeed, the latest figures from the Department of Statistics show that inter-ethnic marriages went up last year - from 3,939 in 2007 to 4,113 last year. And the numbers have been going up over the years - in 1998, it was 2,491.
Sociologists say that this is only natural. Associate Professor Paulin Tay Straughan, deputy head of the National University of Singapore's sociology department, says: 'As Singapore invites more foreigners to invest their careers with us, this trend of interethnic marriages will continue.
Now, we are likely to be in workplaces where there is a rich ethnic diversity. These increased opportunities for interaction, together with a more open outlook towards race relations, mean it is inevitable that eventually, racial barriers will cease to be such a rigid divide for marital unions.'
But have people's acceptance levels really changed? Judging by the experiences faced by two Chinese-Indian couples - one pair who got married 28 years ago and the other, just five years ago - whom LifeStyle spoke to, yes.
Lisa Chew, 56, and Eric Alagan, 54
Things were different nearly three decades ago. The course of love did not run smooth for this Indian- Chinese couple, who got hitched in 1981.
Alagan faced threats from his sweetheart's brother and her father ignored him. Chew, in turn, was despised by his mother because of the colour of her skin. However, persistence, and a bottle of vintage XO cognac, changed everything.
Chew and Alagan met through a mutual friend and saw each other often as they used to wait for public transport at the same place.
They worked for competing companies in the aviation industry and initially could not stand the sight of each other.
'Whenever I saw her, I would tell my friend, who sometimes gave us a lift, to just go,' revealed Alagan, who is now a director in a logistics company.
But after the two became more familiar with each other, he asked her out for a get-together with his reservist mates and she accepted. The couple, who had no aversions to dating outside their race, then grew closer and finally dated.
Alagan's horrified mother - Madam Josephine Govinda Ammal, who died at age 75 - caught wind of their relationship and secretly arranged for him to meet several Indian girls in Johor Baru.
When he got there, he realised what his mother was up to and told her he would not be staying overnight because his 'girlfriend' would be coming over to their place for lunch.
He took the train back to Singapore alone but his curious mum, who had never met Chew before, appeared at home the next morning.
She was friendly but distant, the pair recalls. She gave Alagan an ultimatum when he wanted to marry Chew. 'She said if I married Lisa, she would disown me. But I knew she was just trying to bully me,' says Alagan.
His stepfather and siblings - Alagan is the youngest of six children and has another three stepsisters and two stepbrothers - did not interfere in his relationship.
Stronger objections came from Chew's family, especially her father - Mr Chew Teng Kow, who died when he was 87. He found out about their relationship when he caught a glimpse of Alagan as he took her home one night after a date. After that, he ignored Alagan whenever the young man greeted him, and while Chew sometimes visited Alagan's place, he, in turn, never stepped into her house.
When she announced that she was getting married, two years after they started dating, her father's response was: 'Are all the Chinese men dead?'
Her elder brother - Chew Cheng Kang, 63 - threatened to disown her if she tied the knot with Alagan, but the two stood their ground and got married.
Even at the ceremony at the Registry of Marriages, which was attended by Alagan's family and friends, things were almost disrupted by Chew's father.
One of her four sisters, Lilian Chew, 60, who was supposed to be her witness, did not turn up. When Chew finally managed to contact her, she said the patriarch refused to let her be the witness. In the end, Chew managed to talk her round. No other family member turned up to witness the union.
'Everyone was afraid of my father although my mother and sisters were fine with our relationship,' Chew says.
For a year after that, she had no contact with her family. However, she called her father near Chinese New Year the following year and he asked her to return home for a visit. When the couple arrived, he asked her brother to take out a vintage bottle of XO cognac he had kept for years and poured Alagan a glass. To the surprised couple, that was the sign of his acceptance.
It seems he had visited his older nephew in China and complained about Chew's husband but was told he was old-fashioned and that race did not matter as long as Alagan took good care of his daughter.
'That someone in China could be more open-minded than him opened his eyes,' Chew says.
Today, the housewife takes care of their three children, Alicia, 26, Adamson, 22, and Amelia, 18.
On what marrying someone outside his race has opened him up to, Alagan says: 'Before I was married, I used to feel a connection whenever I saw an Indian boy or girl in trouble, but not a Malay or a Chinese. But now, there is no difference. No matter what race they are, they are equal to me.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
