Total madness as people get ready for Chinese New Year

Imagine the crowd of Christmas, just 10 times more.
It's so crowded and noisy, it makes me want to escape.

90 + 300

Today I spent 90S$ for a session with a physiotherapist. Given she didn't know me, we spent 45 minutes talking about my problem and my history. She effectively dud something for 15 minutes. I'm not sure it will help at all but I will give her another session before deciding. Funny enough the physiotherapist has German parents and grew up in Brussels. It is a small world.
Of course the session had to be paid on the spot. At that rate, I need to figure out quickly how to get reimbursed.

Later I spent, well we spent, 300S$ on the installation of our home theater system. Two men came. One of them spent a couple of hours putting rails on the walls for the cables. It's nicely and professionally done. The cables are barely visible. The other man spent about one hour with Wolfram setting up the system.
I have to say it is a whole new sound experience. The quality is 10x better at least and the experience much more alive.
It will be even better once we have our sofa.

While I question the money I spent on the physiotherapy today, I don't regret a second the home theater and its installation. And part of me is grateful that I live a life where I can afford such luxury.

He's back

Today I'm working from home. At some point during the morning I noticed something.
Our little gecko friend was back. More adventurous if I may say as it reached the TV.
I guess we will have to check inside the bed as of now just to be sure we don't have company.

Do you want to have it removed?

Today I went to the family clinic near the office. My back has been painful lately and I feel it is time to get a physiotherapist back in my life.
Step one was to get to a doctor.
I walked in, gave all my details, got a number and waited until it was my turn. Roughly 20min later I was with a doctor. So far the system was quite smooth and efficient.
I explained my case. I had brought with me all the reports from the doctors back in Belgium as well as the scans to save myself the pain to have to do them all over again. 
The scary part is while the doctor fully understood my issue and what was needed, the moment he heard about my lump, he offered to get it removed.
No way!
He knows me for 5 minutes and he already wants to cut me open!
I kindly explained that my lump and I have been living happily together (or so) for the past four years so before we cut me open, maybe we should check whether it grew. If not, it can just stay there.
Anyhow, I walked out of there with a prescription for an ultrasound and another one for physiotherapy. The latter is funny to read. After explaining what my problem is, it says..."Patient is very keen on physiotherapy. Please assist." That's pretty vague instructions if you ask me.
Tomorrow I have an appointment with a physiotherapist in a center on Orchard which is far from home but the only center where there was still a spot in the coming days. I'm curious to see how it goes and hope it will help.

One big box

As we bought our sofa we were entitled to two gifts:
- a red gift box
- tickets for the lucky draw to win, maybe a car.

Wolfram diligently filled up all the tickets and used all his positive thinking to influence the upcoming lucky draw. Who knows, we might win a car and in Singapore that's an even bigger win than everywhere else.

The red gift box was full of air. It contains a few envelopes to be used during Chinese New Year to give money to relatives or acquaintances or helper. If you ask me, that box is a waste of space and carton but again it's Asia. It's all in the way it looks.

A few more steps of settling in

This weekend is the first weekend since we are back from Europe when we have time and are not jet lagged or tired by a trip in India.
Therefore we've been busy:
- we've decided where to put the frames on the walls and Wolfram put them on.
- I've cleaned up all the windows removing the layer of dust and grease left from the construction. It's been bugging me since we moved in but I always had something more important to do (like preparing the wedding). Now we can see clearly and even have more sunlight.
- we've moved the bookshelves from the office to the guest room and consequently the expedit from the guest room to our room.
- we've ordered a sofa. It will be delivered early March. Once we have it we can consider that we are done moving in.
- I've called a cleaning lady. She will come tomorrow. Let's see how that goes. Hopefully well so we can tick that off the to do list.

And we've survived our first day of rain. It started to rain sometime last night and it never stop until 8pm tonight. It was grey, it was rainy, and strangely it felt like home. I guess that the Brittany girl in me :)

Making an appointment to the doctor

It's January and that's usually the time of the year that I do all the medical controls. This way it's done for the year.
This year, I am in Singapore which means:
- I need to find new doctors
- I need to figure out how to get reimbursed
On the first one, we stopped by at one of the approved clinic near the office to make an appointment. And failed. One has to call. I got out of there with one page full of names and specialties and numbers. Better know what you need.
Later during the day I checked online, found a number and called. That didn't work either.
What worked was to fill in the online tool to request an appointment. 2 hours later I had an SMS with a day and a time.
While I'm quite impressed by the online booking system, I'm still annoyed that I couldn't simply talk to someone.
On the second one, we will see tomorrow once I have my first bill. And yes I managed to get an appointment for the following day, which is also impressive.
Let's hope the doctor is any good.