Our House!

Alrighty, I'm going to write up a bit about the place I've spent most time since I've been here. Not the hawker market next door, not the pool, not the gym (ha ha ha ha ha), but our house! Here is a map carefully annotated to show you what's walking distance around our place. We're really close to the train (MRT) station, and there are lots of malls one or two stops either side of us. Hanging around in malls are apparently a legitimate thing to do here - there are lots of decent restaurants in shopping centres, and it helps that they're air conditioned! The Yuhua Market and Hawker Centre is right next to us, and its get fresh fruit and vegetables, import stores with all of the snacks you could want, a few bakeries, doctors, dentists, hairdressers, and most importantly - HAWKER FOOD! More about that in later posts...

Note: waterslide, monkey, turtle/tortoise museum all still to be explored. Train, malls and hawker stands warrant further investigation.

And now a bit for the inside of our place. First, the caveat that places in Singapore are EXPENSIVE. Anyone who's talked to me since about December has heard me whinge about this at length, but there are basically two housing options for those looking to rent - HDB (government subsidised) housing, or condos (private rentals). HDB are supposed to be available to only Singapore nationals (the owner has to occupy in many cases, so you need to share with them, or leave a locked room for them to "live in"), so are a little harder for international people to find, come with interesting rules (e.g. no cooking, only Chinese, no Indians, only ladies, must stay out of common areas) and range hugely in quality and price ($600-$3500 per month). We went the condo option ($3000-12000 per month) so that we could have a spare room for visitors... and a pool.

Condos come furnished. I say that to explain our lovely matched wrought iron furniture (points for anyone who can tell me how many matching pieces we have), and some of the more... interesting decorations. That said, Eoin has done an awesome job of finding a place that was within our budget, good location, nice and open and comfortable to live in! And now, on with the tour.

First, swipe in at the front door (beep), and walk to the elevators. Head up to floor 3, find apartment no. 303 (the only door without overt religious symbols displayed) and knock. When you first walk in the door, you're greeted by...

Meet Bob (left) and Mary (right)

Ahem. Moving along to the living room...

Comfy couches and dining room chairs that have never been used.

Close up on our lovely weird tall table. PLEASE not that those hanging things light up like falling-snow Christmas lights. That is taste.

Our dining room table/garden.

Off the living room to the left is our bedroom/bathroom - its pretty nice. I feel like a creep for putting up photos of our bathroom, and I'm not quite sure why. Here they are, anyway.

Our bedroom and our sweet Avengers sheets. Theres no such thing as a top sheet in Singapore, so the red is a doona cover/sweat soaker.

Bathroom with a BIDET! I don't know how this works. The hose bit doesn't point up, but forward. This was a surprise to me.

Back through the living room to the other side if the spare room / spare bathroom (which is YOUR bedroom/bathroom when you come to stay. Yes, you). Single bed only for now, needs rearranging when we have guests.

Spare room, with Eoin's favourite curtains in the house, and only one power outlet!

JAPANESE-style bidet. Ahhh yeah, now I know what I'm doing (except it doesn't work well, and Eoin just about squirted me in the face with it on my first tour through the house and now I'm a bit wary)

Last, and almost definitely least is the last room off the living room - the kitchen. From the kitchen you can go out to a little inside balcony thing with a washing machine / hanging space and (wait for it) the MAIDS ROOM AND BATHROOM. I have no photos of those, because in reality, they're a windowless storage room and a bathroom with no hot water (yeah, why would the maid need hot water?) and we have laundry everywhere and you don't want to see it anyway. But I do have a rather terrible photo of the kitchen, which I feel I should chuck in for a sense of completeness...

On the extreme left you can see our THREE STAGE fridge. We don't really know what to do with the middle part, so now we have cold fruit.

OK, thats the inside tour of our place, hope that gives an idea of what a great job Eoin did in finding this place! And why I've been fairly relaxed about getting to too much sightseeing while there is a comfy couch with a fan pointed at it right here.