First real weekend in Singapore

Since we no longer were considered ‘Aliens’ and hence don’t need Alien registration cards, we only had to wait one week for our NIC cards. They work as the official identity cards and with it it’s possible to get an electricity/gas/H2O account, internet and TV license. This was a huge relief! We were also fortunate enough to spot an add in the newspaper about a huge electrical appliances sale. We therefore ended up with Jonas’ wet dream TV:

Samsung, 46’’, LED TV, Series C5 5000, BN69-04694E-00 and so on..

Last weekend started with a proper bang; I was at the pool in the morning after a swim, just reading and planning what to do next, when the skies went from blue to almost black in a few minutes. It was still sunny, so I didn’t notice much first, but then the sun disappeared and it was as if someone in the clouds decided to turn on a shower. It was raining so heavy I could only see a few meters in from of me. Then it was a bang, which was probably in the same category as when I accidently blew up parts of the lab during my 2^nd year as an undergrad, followed by a flash that lit up the entire sky. Everything got completely soaked before I got out of the rain, but luckily my pone has only gone slightly bonkers after wards and I didn’t get electrocuted.

Start of a Singaporean tropical thunderstorm 

Since in IKEA Singapore, they don’t necessarily sell full sets of furniture together if they come in different boxes. Therefore, we had been able to get the dining room table top, but not actual legs and frame with the big furniture batch. In addition, the frame was not to be restocked until the 16^th, so we had to have our first real dinner on the outdoor table. However, it was a great dinner and we were both very happy that it really started feeling like our own home. 

Starter: celery with Camembert cheese and avocado a la Eurenius (plain salt, pepper and lemon); Main course: pasta with creme fresh, bacon and vegetable sauce (of course with shit loads of chili) and mixed salad with mustard vinaigrette; Dessert: strawberries with cane sugar 

On the Saturday we were invited by friends to go and have ‘the best sea food in Singapore’. And it was truly amazing! We had fresh oysters, grilled lobster salad, trout, black cod and fantastic wine. We were supposed to go for additional dessert, but were so full by then it wasn’t even possible. I was also quite pleased everything on the plates was dead. That would not have been absolutely necessary, had it been Japan. Then we had our neighbors for dinner on the Sunday and they actually became the first dinner guests in our apartment! We have friends coming both this and next weekend, so it was good that everything worked. It was however quite evident that red wine and a white table were not ideal, so this week’s shopping list of mainly green kitsch (pillows for the sofa, candle holders, glass coasters..) was extended with place mats. Green of course; guess my favorite color.

First dinner guests: neighbors and new table

With new technology, there always seems to be extra stuff you need to invest in. I know, since I was once sent to get 32 meters cable for a surround system. Anyways, we needed an HDMI cable, a digital video recorder set-top box and headed for NEX. After cruising between people being positioned all over the six floors and endless escalators (I really miss the Japanese way of standing in strict lines in the escalators btw), we stumbled into a very weird sight. It was a whole country in the middle of the mall, made up of balloons. That’s what I really like here: it’s never entirely what you expect.  

Balloon land