First swim at home

In this new luxury life that we are leaving, we have a swimming pool at home.
Actually two: one for kids to play and one for laps. The one we see from our balcony is the lap pool. Just one floor down. If that's not luxury?
After working on the apartment and feeling hot, I grabbed my swimming suit and jumped into the pool. Just the perfect temperature to cool you down but not too cold. The lap pool must be 30m long which is nice for my work out.
After the "effort" came something even nicer: the pseudo jacuzzi. It's a very small pool with jets. If you sit at the right spot you can get a massage of your back and feet or legs.

True the rent is much higher than anything we would have paid in Europe but I'm tempted to say that having a lap pool at home is really worth it.

First night in our new home

And it's too hot in the bedroom. We ended up sleeping with the air conditioning on the whole night. Set for a temperature of 25C which tells you that temperature in the room must have been above 30C.
Also our first guest arrived. Alice stopped over on her way to Cambodia. With her coming we had motivation to get the apartment in a functional status.
It's good to be home even if there is quite some work still to do.

I can't live without it

This weekend I reconfirm with myself that I can't live without a dishwasher. It's been too many years that I rely on one.
Having to wash by hands some of the dishes from the boxes so we could drink or eat something was painful enough. The idea of washing ALL the dishes by hand was scary, very scary.
So scary that tonight, we bought a dishwasher. No more delaying the decision. I even wrote the check.

It will be delivered on Saturday. And it makes me happy.

Now all I need is a cleaning lady and I can relax.

How to make your German husband smile after a tough day?

Take him to Brotzeit, the German restaurant in Singapore.
Seeing Bretzels and he smiles again.

Marche Restaurants

Since we've been in Singapore we've been buying bread every now and then at Marche. The bread they sell is expensive but really good, almost as good as if back home. One day we realized seeing people queuing that there was a restaurant under the bakery.
Tonight we tried it.
We had a good laugh when we saw the decoration. Picture a "typical" Swiss chalet revisited by Disneyland and you have it. I have to say it does make an impression.
Marche Restaurants is one of those places where they give you a card when you arrive and you can navigate between different islands offering all kind of food: pizza, pasta, rosti, salads, crepes, grill, seafood, etc.
After a quick look around, Wolfram went for sausage and I dared the veal schnitzel, for which I had to wait 10min.
The concept of the place is nice, the food is good BUT it's really overpriced. The schnitzel was 18.5S$ and it came all alone. I had the meat on a plate and that's it. No vegetable, no potato, nothing at all, not even lemon which would make sense on a schnitzel. Pretty bare if you ask me. Everything you eat costs money and everything counts. Baked potato with the sausage, 3S$ extra...
Once done with our main course we left the table for desert. It took forever to get my crepe and Wolfram's waffle and by the time we got back to our table we found someone else there. It seems that when we left they considered we were gone for good. This is not exactly smart given the whole concept of the place is that you get your food yourself. Inevitably you will leave the table to get something more.
Which is why there is a sign on the table that says "reserved".

Wolfram got someone from the staff to sort the mess out.
Once I was done with my crepe I realized that my glass was gone. When they cleared the table for the next people they also cleared my drink. Grrrr.
Wolfram once again took things in control and went to complain. A few minutes later he was back with another glass of diet coke. You could argue why such a fuss for a bit of coke? because it was expensive coke and at that price you drink every drop of it.

We tried, I seriously doubt we will go back. But at least we tried.

u.d.d.e.r.s ice cream

Today after our morning swim and before continuing with tidying up our apartment, we braved the rain to reach u.d.d.e.r.s ice cream place for pancakes. We had spotted the place on our way back from the supermarket on Friday and thought it could be a nice place for brunch.
Maybe not. We found out that it only opens at noon, luckily by the time we got there it was 11:45 am so not much to wait.
The place is more of an ice cream parlour than a restaurant. The menu is a long list of sundaes, milkshakes and other ice cream. They do have pancakes as advertised on their windows, but they come together with... ice cream.
We did get pancakes because that's why we came there. They were good although a bit small. We did get very good milkshakes. I particularly enjoyed the dark chocolate one that was just at the right level of sweet and bitter.
I left the place thinking that all the swimming I did barely compensated for the sugar shot I just ate.

Interestingly within 200m there are three ice cream parlours. Obviously we will try each of them :)

Is it rainy season already?

For the past weeks it's been raining more and more often. By rain I mean a thunderstorm showering you with warm water for 30 to 60 minutes, followed by sunshine.
Yesterday and today there were several thunderstorms in the same day forcing us to close the windows of the apartment as rain would come inside. Tonight we had the biggest thunderstorm since we arrived. Temperature dropped. Wind was blowing strong. Rain was heavy. Lightning was both scary and impressive in the sky. And it lasted several hours leading us to wonder whether we were at the center of some tropical storm.
We've been told that there is a rainy season in Singapore, in December and January. That's what they call winter. I wonder whether the rainy season is not early this year, just because we moved to Singapore thinking it would be warm and sunny all year long.
Luckily, my umbrella was delivered with the rest of the container, Let's see whether it will resist the rain of Singapore.

Making the best of the day

Today we went back to our apartment with the objective to put it in shape. Maybe that was over-estimating the task ahead of us given at the end of the day it's still a mess. A little less messy than yesterday but still very chaotic.
This said today we did a lot:
- we removed all the clothes from our bed and put them into the wardrobe.
- Wolfram folded all the bed-sheets and towels which are now neatly stored in the wardrobe of the guest room. In the meantime I organized the storage room.
- all the coats and winter clothes are stored away
- after moving some of furniture around several time we settled back on the first set up. I do feel a bit guilty that I was sitting while Wolfram was moving them around. But he said that's one of the advantages of being married: a husband to carry things for me.
- we explored Thomson Plazza the nearby shopping mall and had lunch in the food court there. This shopping mall turned out bigger than we thought, has a small DIY shop and a big supermarket. While we were there we bought some of our basic non perishables and organized a delivery for tomorrow. As or 150 S$ delivery is free. Something tells me we will make use of that to transport all the heavy things, actually most likely everything that's non perishable.
- we walked back from Thomson Plazza allowing us to explore the different shops and restaurants within 10-15min walk from our place
- we attended the "Oktober Feist" organized by the four Germans at work. A big success based on the number of people who came. Most likely attracted by the free German beer.
- we paid another visit to Ikea to buy a few more things we needed including shelves to transform our shoe wardrobe into shelving. The beauty of Pax is that we can transform them almost indefinitely. Like many people we took a taxi to get back home with our Ikea boxes.
- we sorted out a few more things until 9pm when we decided it was time for a break and maybe some dinner.

On top both Internet and phone are working since yesterday. I have to say I have never been connected to the Internet so fast in a new apartment.

Place is still a mess but we've made progress today. Tomorrow we get back to it.

Moving in - Part 5

Sleep!
After a long day, we are back in Pan Pacific. It is nice to have a separate place away from the mess to rest.
I can't feel my legs anymore or maybe I feel them so much that I can't make the difference anymore.
I am exhausted and yet my brain won't stop, wondering where is the best place to start tomorrow. The kitchen? The bedroom? The living room? The shoes?

Moving in - Part 4

The broken pieces
Overall everything arrived in pretty good shape and conditions. I was positively surprised. Even the mattresses made it without any mould which was our biggest fear.
As the movers were unpacking a few bits and pieces turned out damaged.
A plate was broken.
My beloved Brabantia garbage bin got three bumps. Someone must really hate it.
The mattress of our bed got torn near the handle. It will need some sewing.
The worst damage is on my jewelry cabinet. It was packed with the key in. It got a hit on the key and the lock is broken. Thus means I can't open it anymore. Good thing is that my jewelry were with me but still it's annoying as I really like this cabinet.
Pictures were taken of all the damages and now we will see what the insurance offers.

It's 7pm, the movers have left. 90% of the boxes are unpacked. Now we just need to figure out a place for everything.
But that's for tomorrow.
I'm dead tired and dream of a massage.

Moving in - Part 3

Unpacking is in progress and there is stuff everywhere. Suddenly the place is much smaller.

Moving in - Part 2

It's lunch break. All the boxes have been brought to the apartment.
It's strangely quiet.
Nadine, from the moving company, passed by to check that everything was ok and that we were happy with the crew (i.e. the 4 men carrying everything).
In a bit the unpacking will start and with it chaos :)

Moving in - Part 1

First boxes are being delivered and in parallel workers are fixing the floor scratch and the lose microwave.
And I'm trying to survive my cold.

Out of nowhere there was a voice

At 5:04 this morning, out of nowhere there was a sound followed by a voice: "This is a fire alarm".
Now what? Panic?
It 5am, we were deeply asleep, me even more because of my cold. Are we expected to evacuate? Do we have to wait for the second alarm like in the office? Shall we get dressed and pack our valuables? Obviously we were confused and our brains were not yet operational.
Wolfram checked the hallway to find it empty. I suggested he called the front desk before we start our journey down: better really be a fire before I have to walk down 14 floors at 5am.
Reception confirmed it was a false alarm.
5:15 we were back in bed, trying to get back to sleep.
5:20 the voice spoke again confirming it was a false alarm.

6:30am... when the alarm went on to wake us up, I knew it would be a difficult day. It's never good to go back to sleep and wake up when your body is in deep sleep. It makes things probably worse than waking up 1h30 too early.

I'm gonna need caffeine...

2nd cold in 6 weeks

I'm suffering from my second cold since I'm in Singapore. In only six weeks I had more colds than the past two winters in Belgium.
And let me tell you one thing: it sucks to have a cold in a warm country.

Thanks Mr Air Conditioning!

Keys

We've just completed the hand over of our new apartment. Everything we asked was there, with even a dryer on top of the washing machine that we didn't ask for.
A few minor issues were spotted. They promised everything will be fixed by the time we moved in.
They did a "cleaning" which I seriously think was a very lousy job. It's one thing that there is dust from the construction. It's another that there are greasy marks on the mirrors and windows. I know what I will be doing until we move: deep "Lamia" cleaning!

All documents are signed and key were handed over. Lots of keys. Keys for the front door, for the bathrooms, for the wet kitchen, for the dry kitchen, for the locks in each wardrobe. All in 2-3 copies. I can't remember receiving so many keys in my life. It feels like being the "key master". We will figure out which ones we really need to use and which one we can store.

We're home :)

Oxygenated drinking water

Every day the cleaning lady refills our fridge with small bottles of water.
Every morning we each take two of those for the day but also because we took it as a challenge to drink all the water we receive every day.
Consequence of drinking so much water, I have to go to the bathroom extremely often which given the fact that there is always a queue in the office, makes this whole drinking challenge extremely time consuming.

I realized this week that they are feeding us with "oxygenated drinking water". That's basically tap water with oxygen inside. Value of having oxygen in drinking water is debatable to say the list as a single breathe contains more oxygen than a bottle of oxygenated water.
This makes me wonder whether this type of water is good for the body on the long term. And based on the number of links that a simple search triggered, I'm not the only one.

It's the same

We checked it out today. All the way through. It's exactly the same as in Europe and most likely the rest of the world.
I'm talking obviously about Ikea.
The good thing is that we can now easily get doors to our Pax shoe cabinet. Sometimes globalization is good.

and now two stools

In our search for a new sofa we came across the name of a shop selling teak furniture. Today we decided to check it out.
The shop is located in an industrial area on the east side. It took a long bus ride to get there, followed by 5 min walk. Once we arrived we discovered an industrial zone where it took us a bit of time to locate the unit #01-22. There was simply no logic to how the units were numbered. Once we found it we realized it would not open before another 40min. Yep, we picked a shop located in a warehouse open only during the weekends from 13:30 till 18:00. Quite unusual given how everything is open in Singapore.
We had a freshly squeezed juice in the food court nearby. Surprisingly good and fresh.
At 13:30 we were able to access the so called shop. It was more like a caverne d'Ali Baba, with four different areas packed with teak furniture. Some really nice pieces I have to say. Sadly no sofa nor desk which is what we need. But we bought two stools, Chinese style that will look great next to the island near the kitchen. Much nicer than the Ikea stools we have now and much more comfortable.

In case you wonder, we did call a taxi to take us and the stools back to Pan Pacific.

Dinner at Holland Village

After a long day (and week) of work, we went to Parisilk to buy the TV and dishwasher. This shop has been recommended to us by Jin and Wolfram had already checked with them via email that their price were indeed cheaper.
Unfortunately for us the dishwasher was not in stock so we have to wait until the end of the month to buy it. In the meantime Wolfram kindly offered to do the dishes in our new apartment. I have the shop-assistant as witness.
We did buy a new TV. The 46 inches TV, not the 55, despite Wolfram begging for it. We might have scored a big apartment compared to the standards, BUT the living room is not big enough to justify such a big TV. Not to mention that our budget has disappeared into the wedding rings.
Once this was done we explored the streets of Holland Village looking for a place where we could have dinner. Holland Village is very popular with expats in Singapore and it shows. Instead of being surrounded by Asian looking people, suddenly it was more a 60 expats / 40 Asians. I have to say that after now six weeks in Singapore it felt weird. I'm glad we are not getting a place in this area as it felt too touristic for me.
One can find pretty much any type of food in Holland Village, but tonight I wanted pizza. I have to confess that every now and then I get tired of eating rice. I am not complaining, so far the food we had was very good or even excellent, but every now and then I feel like eating like at home.
We decided for Crusty pizza. This place serves pizza "a la plancha" with very creative combination of ingredients on top. We tried, a bit skeptical. It turned out to be very good. And even better, they deliver and they have another restaurant in our new neighborhood. Perfect, we might have found our pizza deliver.

After a nice night out in Holland Village we decided to try to come there every Friday after work and try all the restaurants. After all it's 2km away from the office and on a direct subway line to our new home. I'm looking forward to trying a new restaurant next week.

More K Pop

Tonight we had MTV Asia playing and at some point it was one K Pop song after the other.
I thought we were done with Boys / Girls bands but apparently I was wrong. 3, 4, 5 up to 7 boys or girls "singing" to some"techno" beat.
The scary part is that they start to sing in English as well. They will invade the Western world soon.
Get ready for it.

Slow Slow Slow

A bit more than a month in Singapore and there is something that annoys me more and more every day: people walk slowly.

Fair enough people are shorter than in Europe. Shorter people = shorter legs = slower pace. It's no excuse but I can understand.

Fair enough the weather is warm every day and by walking slowly people avoid sweating. I can relate to that.

BUT those very valid reasons are not the cause of their slow pace.
The one and only reason why they walk so slowly is because they are texting, watching videos, playing, reading... all of this on their smartphones. If you watch the crowd coming out the subway or the bus, more than half of the people are looking at the screen of their phones instead of where they are putting their feet. Thus their slow pace.

I'd rather spend my time on a terrace or at home or by the pool than queuing behind a crowd of slow walkers.
Now I understand why so many people chose to have a car independently of how expensive it is.

Motivation

While having a Coke zero today, I noticed a little message on it.
20 minutes of moderate exercise will basically keep you happy.
20 minutes is about what we walk from the bus stop to the office morning plus evening.
If that's not motivating, I don't know what else to ask for.

Smart cover

It took a bit of time but I finally found a smart cover for my iPad.
And it's pink :)

Stressful hairdresser experience

It was time for my hair color to be renewed. Obviously this meant a difficult decision to make: where to go? Where to find a hair salon that can handle Caucasian hair?
After two weeks of asking the different salons that crossed my way and assessing how much it would cost me (a lot more than in Belgium), I decided for Essensuals.
They claim to be a spin off from Tony & Guy. Hopefully they should know what they are doing. And they use Wella products, the same as my hairdresser in Belgium. Anyway I have to go, so let's give it a shot.

Today at 4pm I had an appointment.
I got out of there at ...19:40
What happened in the meantime?

There was an assessment and alignment on the color target.
I had a cup of tea.
There was application of the color.
There was waiting while the coloring product acts.
There was washing and head massage - that was the best part of it.
There was drying and realization that the color was not what it was supposed to be. My hair were significantly more orange than expected.
The hairdresser decided to go for another round of color with more "natural tons" because my hair didn't "take well the first color". That was a bit of an understatement. I think my hair absorbed the color pretty well... it was just not the right mix.
There was color application. Again.
And little chat with the stylist. This time he did it himself instead of the color girl the first time.
This time there was chatting and I learnt how he started to work at 15, how things are getting more and more expensive which makes it harder for "local" people. I believe he thought I was some expat's wife following her husband to Singapore, loaded with money that she can spend on designers. It was quite interesting to hear how worried he is about the future and how he will manage. Strangely so far he is the first person I met in Singapore that's openly admiring that life is hard "under the surface". This touch of reality worried me a bit but at the same time put things back in perspective: Singapore like any other country has poor people struggling. Even in paradise there are poor people.
There was washing again.
And finally cutting with some discussion on how hair behave differently in new climate. By the way the color at that stage was looking much more like it should have been.
There was drying again and comments on how dry my hair are.
Almost four hours later I was looking like me with the right hair color and was leaving the place, after spending 200S$.

Note: the hairdresser mentioned three times not to wet my hair in the next 24h. Usually I take a bit of freedom with this principle but given it took so much effort and money to get to the right place, I'll keep my head dry.
And I bought a swim cap to protect my hair when I go swimming. I will look ridiculous but hopefully it will protect my expensive color.
Let's see the status in one month.

Grrrr

Last night there was a global call. Yep, another one. The topic I needed to attend was scheduled at 9:45 am in the US, that's 9:45 pm in Singapore. I had my boss in the discussion and told him to let me know when they would switch topic. Those meetings always run behind on the agenda and I didn't want to waste my time.
After a long wait and a bit of desperation my topic was finally on at 11:15 !!!!!
I connected but only to find out that people were tired and key decision makers had to go to other meetings.

Net, no decision was made. I wasted my evening waiting for nothing. I had a bad night because going to bed right after hanging up a work call is not good for sound sleep.

This morning I'm dead tired and I'm thinking it's not worth it.
Grrrrr.....