Data crunching

We got lots of data back for my project at work and for almost three weeks now I have disappeared behind data, tables, more data, more tables and lots of models.

I hope to see the end if it soon because my husband and my son start to miss me.

 ... And even if they don't, I miss them :(

Nail art of the month

Trying something different... Again :)

The long awaited visit to the zoo

There are so many things you can do in Singapore as a tourist and the zoo is usually in the top 5. Yet it took us nearly two years to get there. We always wanted to do the zoo with visitors and let's face it, we don't get so many visitors in Singapore (the place is kind of far away) and not everyone is interested in a zoo (I wonder why).
The Singapore zoo is actually a really nice zoo. It's designed in a way that it feels like walking in the "jungle" and suddenly you discover lions, elephants, monkeys and other creatures peacefully enjoying themselves. No cage. At least no visible ones. I thought we would spend 3-4 hours there and I was wrong. We spent most of the day and have not seen everything.

Here is a collection of pictures I took. I did not take so many because taking pictures while carrying Oskar is a bit of a sport. His little hands are super fast at grabbing anything especially a camera. Net in many occasions, I had one setting and I took lots of pictures hoping that one of them would be good. Sometimes the animal was not fully framed. Sometimes it moved. Sometimes it was too far or too close. Sometimes it was in the picture and still. One can get lucky sometimes. See for yourselves.

The elephants:

The orang utans:

The giant turtles:

The white tiger:

The giraffes:

The zebras:

The otters:

The lions:

It took us almost two years to get there and it was totally worth it. I can see ourselves getting annual passes so we can go spend a few hours at a time and let Oskar discover the "wild".

Green

My rice today at the zoo is green!

That's a first.

11 months

Time is really flying and every minute of it is worth it.

There can never be enough bathrooms in an apartment

For two weekends now we have been viewing apartments in condos with the hope to find our new home. So far with no luck :(

We did learn something though.

In Singapore, in the recently built condos, the developers like to put several bathrooms, a lot of bathrooms, way more bathrooms that you would need.

One bathroom for the master bedroom.

One bathroom for the junior master bedroom.

One bathroom for the common rooms. Sadly this one is to be shared.

One bathroom for the helper's room.

Net in an apartment with four bedrooms, there are easily four bathrooms. In our case that's one bathroom per person in the household.

Regrettably the bathrooms are built at the expense of the room size. The more bathrooms the smaller the rooms which makes things difficult for us as we need space for our king size bed - our European king size bed (Singaporean king size bed is equivalent to a queen size bed in Europe. Shorter people, smaller beds I guess).

The more condos we visit, the more difficult it feels. We really have a great place now. Too bad they wat to build a highway right next to it.

House hunting

I mentioned that we found out that a highway is going to come out of the ground in front of our condo and therefore we should move. Move away from noise and dust.

For the past couple of months we have been visiting condos. One per weekend to understand the market situation these days. Singapore is a very dynamic place with new condos appearing every other day. So far each visit was confirming that Tresalveo is great and unique in many aspects: space, location and price. Yet we have to decide whether we move or not.

And we have to decide coming Friday!

In Singapore you have to inform your landlord if you want to renew your lease. It's quite unusual as logic but again Singapore is all about business. If you stay in your condo for 10 years in a row, there is no negotiation, no agent fee, no moving, no contract registration, etc. 

In our case, August 15th is the day when we have to contact our landlord and tell him what we want to do.

As a consequence we are spending our long weekend house hunting. It's easier than the first time because we know better Singapore now and we also know better what we want and what we can compromise on in Singapore. Choices might be different in Europe. It's also hade because we have to do it ourselves without the help go a dedicated agent.

Wolfram organized for us a series of visit between today and tomorrow. It seems agents love his German accent... Or maybe it's the idea of a western wealthy man looking for a place for his family. If only they knew we are not expat with a company paying insane rent.

Keep your fingers crossed that a will find a new home big enough, well located and that does not cost an arm and a leg. In Singapore this combination is a miracle.