Happy new year. I have been a frequent follower of this subforum regarding pr for more than a year and learnt a lot as i might have read almost all the posts since the beginning. It helped me to remain calm and reduce my anxiety by letting me know the ground reality of the difficulties in getting the pr. Yes, i too have applied my pr long ago.
Although a few in this subforum has been a bit insulting towards indians, i still feel im obliged to give back to this forum by sharing my application story as i think it is not a common case/profile and could be helpful to someone else in a similar situation.
Submitted application around march 2022.
race/nationality: indian
age: ~30
Marital status: single at the time of application.
Length of stay: >9 years now
education: Bachelors in india, masters and PhD in local uni.
occupation / job designation: researcher / scientist in a company under statutory board (in the field related to electronics)
Salary range: ~85k per annum now [ rant: Yeah, quite less than the usual salary that indians post here, but at least around average. Those with 120k or more usually are from IT or finance which do not have large overheads. However, when in the field of physical science, a lot money had to be spend on labs, equipments, fabrication, simulation softwares, etc, which can directly affect our salary though the job is as tough as IT / finance. Anyway, may be let this topic be discussed later

Work experience after PhD: ~2.5yrs
circumstance updates during pending:
- updated salary increment after 4months of application.
- Got request to update family CV at 7th month of pending application.
- got married to an indian from india at approximately 8 months after application and updated to ICA.
- Brought spouse under DP after marriage and she got job after 6-7 months of coming here with a salary >50k.
- updated renewed passport last june and this was my last contact with ICA.
- Upload button missing since mid of Dec 2023
No voluntary activities, no blood donation, no recommendation, no agency. I do make some small donations but not more than 700-800 per year. I did think of doing some voluntary activities but i just feel the following reasons prevented me from doing them.
1) It is quite difficult to manage time for such voluntary activities as being a researcher you may need to study or think a lot after work hours too as its not a 9 to 5 job. So practically not easy to adjust the time where the voluntary activities are scheduled and mostly they are on weekdays. Im not saying its impossible, but need to put more extra effort apart from the job which already needs your peak effort.
2) I did go for such voluntary activities for 2 days last year, but my inner conciousness questioned me "So, you are doing this for pr, right?". And this only makes me uncomfortable and slightly guilty, so i did not have the mind to go again at that time. Also, one can see a large number of indians and other ASEAN participants too, whom i feel are there for the same reason.
3) I see many non-indians, getting pr within few years of coming to sg and dont know anything regarding voluntary activities and blood donation, etc. But they seem to get it without a problem, so i feel if you are under PTS better concentrate on work and not much on these community activities. Ofcourse, i encourage everyone to do volunteering if you have time, but not for the sake of pr.
Ok, coming to current situation, till now its pending. Based on most answers in this forum, usually the outcome will be shown in the app after 1 to 3 weeks of upload button disappearance. Now, its more than six weeks for me which is quite surprising. I feel it is going to come in the next few days, however, its quite tough to go through and live this long waiting period after button missing. A total of ~23 months of waiting on stake. Though I personally feel i would get it this time as they have processed my application for a long time and done my education here and along with few other positives, i have read some posts who waited for 23months and then rejected.
Yeah, kind of mixed emotions now, so i just came here to share my story as it could be helpful to someone in this forum, as the stories in the posts of this forum has taught me the reality. I will share the outcome once i get notified. So right now, i just feel a bit tired after realizing all the life battles (meaning studies, phd, work) that I've fought along with the anxiety of waiting for 23 months. I think i can just share this gladiator picture to represent my emotion, like someone who is tired after fighting a long battle, hoping for victory.
Anyway, sorry for such a long post. Lets see how long the string is.