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Fri, May 15, 2009
The New Paper
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Maddy finds her way home
by Juliana June Rasul

IT SEEMS like forever since we last saw Madeline Tan.

In reality, it's been eight years.

And that seems to have been long enough for the ex-DJ and actress to morph into a full-fledged Bangkok businesswoman.

The last we'd heard of her, she had quit showbiz to head for Hyderabad, India, to be a radio software consultant.

When she left, she was quoted by a local paper as saying she hoped she'd 'never come back'.

The petite 35-year-old swung into town recently on a week-long break, and revealed that she has been living and working in Bangkok for six years.

And now, she's ready to move back home.

The reason?

Why, for the kids, of course, said the mother of two.

Or, specifically, her elder daughter, who bugged her mother to enrol her in a secondary school here.

'She's very patriotic!' said Madeline, laughing.

'She really wanted to come back and have a Singaporean teenage-hood.'

When she left, Madeline - who prefers to go by the snappier Maddy - was arguably at the peak of her career, but feeling very dissatisfied with just being a personality.

Explaining why she had left, Madeline said she was not diplomatic and was never a good team player.

Show business makes one very self-absorbed, she added.

It was a desire to shake up her own life that led her to search for work overseas.

She landed a job to set up radio stations in India.

It was a very technical job, and nowhere near as glamorous as her career here - as an actress on teenage drama Spin and in the Glen Goei film Forever Fever, and as a DJ, first at what was then known as Perfect 10, and then Heart 91.3.

'You know how, when you're younger, you always dream of living overseas? That's what I was looking for, to actually do that,' she said.

On the hunt for adventure, she certainly got plenty of it in Hyderabad, one of the driest places in India, with what Madeline calls 'desert heat' of temperature highs of 45 deg C in summer - and frequent power cuts.

But she persisted, telling herself that 'if you can survive in India, you can survive anywhere'.

She then moved to Mumbai, where it was 'more cosmopolitan, but way more hectic'.

There, she found herself struggling in a love-hate relationship with India.

While she goes off on a spiel of things she had to get used to, like having to shackle her trash bin to a railing so that it wouldn't get stolen, she says the people 'were incredible'.

'You always meet someone who restores your faith in humanity,' she said.

But adventurous as she is, she knew India wasn't 'the end game'.

'It was always meant to be a springboard to somewhere else,' she said.

That 'somewhere else' turned out to be Bangkok, where Madeline moved after being poached by Virgin Radio, which was entering the Thai market in 2002.

'It was a much better place for my daughter to be,' she said.

Her first daughter, Libby (short for Elizabeth), 13, was only five years old when Madeline moved to India.

But, ever the explorer, Madeline started dabbling in real estate, a 'part-time job' she did on weekends off from radio that eventually turned into a full business, BangkokFinder.com, in 2005.

The business is run by Madeline and her British husband, Mr Wez Barber, a photographer/businessman, whom she met after moving to Bangkok.

The couple have a daughter, Alicia, who is now five.

The business, explained Madeline, started off when she helped to find tenants for a house in her neighbourhood.

Soon, word spread that she was the go-to person to help out with rentals.

'I'm good at finding things'

'I'm always very good at finding things,' she said. 'My friends call me all the time and ask 'Eh, Maddy, help me find this or that!'

The website lists properties ranging between 30,000 baht ($1,260) and 150,000 baht.

She calls her approach to real estate 'intuitive and personal'.

Judging from client testimonies on the site, and its top listing on Google search, it's a hit with expats looking for rentals in Bangkok.

But now, after almost a decade away, Madeline is coming full circle.

From July, she will move back here 'semi-permanently'.

Her husband will take over the day-to-day running of BangkokFinder, while she travels back and forth occasionally between Singapore and Bangkok.

Was this the path she expected her adventures to take?

'I always felt that I was meant for other things,' she replied. 'But you see, now I've done it all! I've travelled and I've set up my own business. Now it's time to think of the family.'

This article was first published in The New Paper

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