The Great Escape from Windows 7 and Braddell Heights

[So am now trying to write the first blog text on the our iMac OS X 10.6.8 and incorporate pics from my iPhone directly in the blog. I've never used a Mac before really. To make things more practical, our Swedish keyboard already passed away in Tokyo, so I now have a Japanese/Romanji (our alphabet) one. This means that the position on letters and signs are quite different and of course buttons to change the text into Japanese characters are present. I constantly seem to slide over them and become quite surprised when I look on the screen after a while and see: ティンgsw裏ってン印あヴェryst欄下和ｙ= ‘things written in a very strange way’.
It’s all part of The Great Escape from Windows 7 and the world of PC:s in general. I have decided not to give up. It shall work.]

I was asked not long ago about the surroundings and what Singapore looked like besides The Marina. This blog text is hence dedicated to the absolutely amazing houses in our hood, since I've frankly never seen anything like this in real life. It was a bit awkward to take pics due to security and of course if the owners were around, but I think you'll understand what I mean.

We have been taking walks the past few weeks in Braddell Heights Estates and the homes are totally stunning. As foreigners in Singapore you're not allowed to buy just any property due to restrictions on ownership of private residential. Basically it's almost impossible to buy a house, but you can rent almost anything for up to 99 years. Most of the following houses are however big enough for two families easily ;) 

This is my favourite (minus all the pillars), but for us it'd be enough with just the top floor cut in half ;)

This house had a sundeck which stretched all around the front with modern solar panels on parts of it; quite impressive overall with quite a few solar panel homes, since they're very unusual in e.g. Sweden. Might be for a reason though, considering we hardly see the sun 9 months out of 12.

 This was really cool with the funky palm tree in the front and all the over-the-top-looking cupola details; perfect for red wine n toga parties ;)

 This house was five floors and one of the bigger one-family houses I've ever seen; there were five luxury cars parked in the see-through garage. Considering one car is outrageously expensive in Singapore, I can hardly imagine how much five imported, highly modern cars are.

 

Here are four 'small' more modern villas with a lot of glass and steel work; I really like this style. Jonas think they look like shoe boxes.

 This was also absolutely huge and the base of it was a lot bigger than our apartment building in Tokyo. I was actually shocked to see this rather tasteful design being made completely ape sh*t by numerous stone lions in all shapes and form over the garden and walls. It was way worse than the garden gnomes in UK.

 One of my dream houses with a pool ranging all around the base of the house, almost like a moat. It'd hilarious to host foam parties at a place like this. To win plus points with the neighbors one could also add some Greek god statues spraying water from various body parts. Or not. Besides, that's already done by the city planners in Gothenburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Milles_Poseidon_01.JPG). Hideous. 

 On the roof of this property was both BBQ pits, an outdoor gym and a club house; considering the amount of furniture they had outside and the fact that most of the gym equipment seemed to be running on electricity, it must be highly impractical when it rains.

The owners of this house had a breathtaking garden pouring out to the street with really amazing flowers and birds.

One of the more Europe-inspired architectures where the house was also huge. It does however remind a bit of Hansel and Gretel.

When we passed this it really didn't make sense at first, but it was undergoing renovation and up for rent. Would be fun to just see how much they would charge for it!

 An example of a somewhat not-really-thought-through-project: the bathroom is towards the road with glass walls. Look at the toilet in the bottom right corner..

Again a not really well planned, newly built house; I mean who'd want to sit in this display pool with people and cars passing by on the street? Or maybe that's exactly what you want to do if you have a house like this?

 I couldn't get a good pic of this property due to cameras and gates, but passing it by we were really in awe. It was situated almost like a small castle on a height, with a beautiful jasmine garden.

 Really cool terrace houses with smashing views; they had both lemon and avocado trees planted in several of the compartments.

One of Jonas' top ten with an enormous garden; looking at it I'm pretty sure our apartment in Tokyo would have fitted in one of their single garages. And there were three single garages.

Well, well, one can dream, but right now our cosy condo at The Springbloom is just right.