As a 'third culture kid' (TCK), I never quite felt at home anywhere, patriotism remained a foreign concept and while it was easy to state, 'I am half English and half Singaporean (or Indonesian, technically speaking)' whenever people asked, I never felt like I fitted in with either 'cultural identity'.

In England recently, I felt distinctly Singaporean and on my return to Singapore, vice versa. I even earned the nickname ‘Coconut’ at my first job out of university because while I was ‘brown on the outside’, my colleagues considered me ‘white inside’.

It is a difficult feeling to wrap your head around and become comfortable with but despite the slight struggle, it always felt like it put me at some kind of advantage. Not having one fixed cultural identity made it easy to segway into others. Local customs that would seem shocking to some never seemed overly bizarre.

Like a cultural chameleon, becoming a part of my surroundings but still being able to observe as an outsider, has always been of great benefit to me as a traveller.

I had never really considered it a quality that could translate into a business opportunity until I found myself sitting in a beautiful garden café of a hotel in Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka, run by two ‘TCK millennials’ (like myself) of Sri Lankan origin but with hospitality experience gained in both the USA and Australia.

Their business was unlike any other establishment in the area. They seemed to know exactly what people wanted, striking a balance between providing all the comforts and familiarity of your local hipster café from home but accented with motifs of your current surroundings.

Hammocks hung limp between short palm trees and customers ranged from topless men and bikini-clad surfers to young families. It felt bizarrely familiar but foreign, all at the same time, like you were just spending time in your favourite coffee joint but somehow totally translocated to a totally different part of the world.

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