Apartment hunting in Singapore; part 2

The day after our huge Midsummer BBQ everyone slept until late; unfortunately the boxes from Japan had decided to arrive and needed to just be picked up, so without expecting it to take more than about an hour, David and I drove to the airport cargo terminal. To make a painfully long story of impossible people, enormous amounts of patience, one completely unintelligent rule after another and at least four hours later, we finally were heading back with the four boxes. By then we were completely exhausted and made a very much needed pit stop at McDonald’s on the way; herring, potatoes, strawberries etc were then had later during the evening, and everyone were in bed by 23.00.
After a few lapses in the pool, I thought it’d be good idea to go completely house-wify on everyone and was just off to the store to buy ingredients for a smashing dinner, when tired members of the household thought it’d be better to pick up ready-made food from the hawker center. So we bought roasted Singaporean chicken and rice, black bean sauced home-made noodles and dry noodle stir-fry, paying around S$10. The food was absolutely fantastic.
On the Monday we found that after deciding on our preferred apartment, we finally got a go-ahead on the one in Springbloom and the moving in date was set for the coming Saturday (110702). Jonas was completely on board, while I was still hesitating. We anyways went for a final look, armed with measuring tapes, cameras and all the questions which we could possibly come up with. In short, the Springbloom is a condominium with full facilities including a squash court, kids’ playground, indoor gym, kids water-land-pool, four BBQ pits, outdoor gym, tennis courts, exercise swimming pool with sun-deck, basketball court, common club-house, garages, convenience store and guarded entrance.

From the exercise swimming pool and parts of the sun-deck at The Springbloom

It is three main buildings (we’re in ‘The Jade’), an arsenal of garden keepers and various care takers and it’s about 100 m:s to the nearest MRT (metro) and bus stations. There are two major hawker centers (the open food courts) with mainly class A stands (highest level of quality regarding the food) at 10 and 20 minute walks from our house and a big shopping mall (NEX) in between. The area has a lot of private houses, so it seems very calm and there are several schools in the vicinity + a huge sports stadium (Serangoon Arena), where they hold both concerts and national games of all sorts. If we walk for 15 minutes we end up in a small village-like area called ‘Chomp-Chomp’ which reminds of both a Spanish bar district, but also has numerous of cozy restaurants along with all necessary shops like pharmacies and grocery stores where many are open 24-7.
The apartment itself is about 110 m2 including the ca 21 m2 balcony (!). We have so far only gotten a simple set of wooden outdoor furniture with room for 4, but J really wants a grill as well. I also found a chaise longue online, which the owner just wanted to get rid of. It’s in perfect condition so I’m very happy about my catch! Since there’s a roof over almost half of the balcony, we’re currently using it to hang laundry as well; in the future I would very much like to have cocktail tomato plants around the supporting frames of the roof.

Taken from the path below our balcony (situated in the middle of the pic); we’re at the 6th floor

All interior walls of the apartment are made of white stone and the floors are in marble for the main part, but normal wood in the bedrooms. There is a very spacious living room which we also use as dining room and along with the master bedroom it’s a lot bigger than our apartment in Tokyo. There’s also good storage in the bedroom and a very nice old fashion window bench in a little extra widow compartment, which sort of hangs out from the wall. Since I got free hands regarding furniture from IKEA, it became almost all white furniture, beige sofa-bed (the marble floor is white with small beige stones in it; otherwise I think beige is rather ridiculous) and huge green palms in white pots in the living room. Due to the wooden floor and wardrobes in the bed room, I found a bed frame in the same wooden shade, blue and green bed linen matching the green window linings and have decorated with green plants in blue pots. Since it’s hotter than hell in there at night, and AC is apparently quite expensive, we also have a huge fan in there which doesn’t really go with anything, but can be hidden behind the white curtains. 

Bed finally put together in the night hoursby a proud husband

The kitchen is rather big and we just bought a huge fridge/freezer in brushed metallic which opens like a cupboard with two big doors from top to bottom. Unfortunately there’s no ice machine (!), but it’s perfectly alright, since you can just stick a bottle of water in the freezer and it’s full of ice in no time. We bought it from a family which had had it for ca 1 year and so far it’s worked fine. There were absolutely hideous kitchen curtains which I took down as soon as I saw them, so I’m planning to find some sort of hanging green plant and set it up like a curtain.
Next to the kitchen is a storage/washing space where the washing machine, which we also bought used on Craigslist Singapore (Singaporean ‘Blocket’), resides. It’s just recently been turned to a practical position, which was not possible with previous cords and hoses. Also, all the plugs have created a very extensive hazel, but we sorted it out in the end. The main issue with the kitchen was due to the ‘cleaning’ carried out by the owner: it smelled like someone had taken a wee in every cupboard. We therefore scrubbed all of them with chlorine and sprayed them full of insect killing stuff, since I’m not interested in having extra guests such as Mr. and Mrs. Roach, Sir Gecko I or Dr. Ant and his crew. It was in the washroom that I first met Sir Gecko I, screamed like a crazy person, threw a towel at his, slammed the door and clanged onto my completely surprised husband repeating ‘Gaaahhhh, lizard, get it out of here, I’m going to die!!!’ several times. He just sighed and mumbled ‘Jesus, he’s probably more scared than you..’ The entire kitchen, wash and bath rooms hence smelled like a giant marker pen for at least a day.
Another weird thing is that there’s no hot water in the kitchens on average in Singapore; there is for the washing machines (which is not the case in Japan, so you always wash your clothes in your house in cold water..), but not for you to use for, for instance, washing the dishes in the sink. Odd. In addition, you have to switch on the hot water for the bathroom if you want to have a hot shower. Actually that is quite good, since you really never want to have a hot shower in Singapore, at least if you are not used to sub-tropical summers and air humidity of close to 100% DP. Then a cold shower is really a blessing. However, there’s only one bathroom, but we honestly don’t need more for now. It’s all in beige and brown marble (!) so towels and all other bathroom details needed to be white.
There’s further a guest room, which is very small, but fits a single bed, shelf and chair. Jonas just came with a really humoristic idea of painting a huge yellow ‘M’ on the wall and start serving cheese burgers and fries. I’ve always wanted a red and white room, so after getting a wooden bed and painting it white, putting in red/white pillow-/quilt covers, adding a bright red book shelf and a red chair (walls and curtains being white), I was just happy he didn’t say I needed to stay there a week every month ;) The thought is at least to brighten it up with sharply green Singaporean ‘money plants’.. in white pots!

Flowers like these might also be good for the ‘red room’; just have to find out what they are first!

There’re still small things to sort out like a hallway piece, shoe shelves and TV/TV-bench, but right now it really works as a complete home. I feel truly blessed that we’ve been able to put this accommodation together so quickly and with the internet arriving, it’ll feel like a real home in no time. I’ve further started my big project of trying to learn how to crawl properly, so I’m actually in the pool doing lapses almost every morning so far. In addition, all neighbors seem very friendly and the couple next door (in their late 30’s, the man’s a trader and she’s a flight attendant) have literally adopted us. Today they showed me all the good placed to buy fresh fruit, who to get fish from, how much to pay, where’s the best place for Singaporean chicken-rice (one portion with salad is S$3..) and so on. On the down-side, there seem to be a very enthusiastic piano teacher living just below us, so the quality of the music varies throughout Mondays and Wednesdays. However, it’s nice to hear other around us and also watch the equally varying skills of our neighbors playing tennis and basket ball on the courts just down from our living room window. All in all, this place really suites us and we’re both confident we’ve made a good choice.

One of the guards at our place is giving us a tour; we’ve named him ‘Boss’ and he lights up like a sun every time we call him that. I think he likes us.