Greg & Veronica's Singapore Update
Volume 4
Sunday, 05APR98
"The EAGLE has landed..."
We are here and currently wide awake at 5:15 AM in our very own
apartment! We arrived on schedule only a few minutes late on Friday morning and the flights went fine. In fact, the flight from Chicago to Tokyo was "very fine"---they upgraded us to Business Class since economy was sold out! Very nice. Veronica took that as a sign that her guardian angel was looking out for us and our year in Singapore would be great. Greg assumed that this meant we would be marginally more comfortable when the plane fell out of the sky and into the Pacific. Looks like Veronica was right. Greg would like to point out that the comfort on the CHICAGO--TOKYO leg just made the ride in economy from Tokyo to Singapore more uncomfortable---we knew what we were missing. Of course, showing "Home Alone 3" and serving some form of boiled beef may have contributed. Just goes to show that you can't please everyone.After we spent a short night in a hotel, one of the woman from the office came by and brought us to our apartment. She gave us a quick tour of the spacious two-bedroom apartment and then she left. Greg and Veronica had a momentary bout of panic ("What have we done?") but couldn't focus on it for long because they realized they had to figure out how to use the washer/dryer, air-conditioners, convection oven and light switches. Greg reviewed the manuals while Veronica did all of the unpacking. We then ventured out to purchase a few things we were missing and might need (i.e. food, dishes, utensils, glasses, pillows, etc.) before our air-shipment arrives next week (we hope). Although we took a cab downtown, we purchased a bus guide and successfully made it back to our apartment by bus! Friday night we ate in one of the restaurants across the street. Saturday more shopping (shopping IS Greg's favorite past-time) and dinner at Clarke Quay (for those in Washington: kind of Singapore's Georgetown/Harborplace combination; for those elsewhere: lots of tourists, restaurants, bars (including Hooters), souvenir shops, etc.) Last night we returned home exhausted and went to bed around 11:00 PM. Now, it is around 5 AM and we've been up for the last hour. (Actually, Greg is up and suspects Veronica has fallen back to sleep).
Assuming you are still reading, our apartment is very nice. As I said it is a 2-bedroom/2-bath apartment on the third floor of a 4 story (or, storey as they spell it here) apartment complex of 160 apartments. Our bedroom overlooks the swimming pool while the living room and guest bedroom overlook a major road. In terms of layout, the front door opens into the living room/dining room. The room is sort of a dog-leg left (think dachshund not Great Dane), with a door to the
kitchen immediately on your left as you enter. Leading to the right from the bend in the room is the hallway to the bathroom, guest bedroom and master bed/bath. Opposite the kitchen door in the dining area is a large glass-block wall that makes the whole room very bright. The kitchen door is a "real" door because the kitchen is NOT air-conditioned. The living/dining room has two air-conditioners and both bedrooms are air-conditioned. Each of the air-conditioners is located high on the wall (ceilings are probably 11 or 12 feet high) and come with remote controls (Greg loves this feature). With the bedroom doors open and all of the air-conditioners running it is relatively easy to keep the whole place (other than the kitchen) cool. The kitchen has lots of counter space and some very nice wood cabinets. It is equipped with a refrigerator, stove-top (3 gas burners and 1 electric) and a microwave/convection oven. After some experimentation, Greg was able to figure out how to make toast in the thing. The kitchen extends onto an enclosed patio kind of thing in which the washer/dryer sits. That's right, it is one unit. It looks like a front-load washer but this Italian engineering marvel dries as well! Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to hold very much, or, it can wash a reasonable amount of stuff but can't dry all of it. Veronica is still experimenting. We suspect that we'll be doing a load of laundry every night or two. Before we left, Veronica was having lunch with some friends and discussed shower curtains (and people say men have nothing to talk about!) and whether to bring any, how many, etc. Greg was quite sure we didn't need one; Veronica wanted to bring one so we didn't need to go out and buy one. We ended up packing one, but we put it in our air shipment, so we had to go out and purchase one anyway. So, while Veronica was "technically" right, Greg feels vindicated.The apartment complex is very nice and located across the street from a renovated block of two-story buildings. The complex is made up of approximately 8 or 9 restaurants and pubs. It looks very nice and the one restaurant we've tried was good. Since we haven't arranged for gas and don't have any pans, we suspect we will become familiar with all of them. We don't have a phone yet either, but will get one soon. TV is poor with only 5 channels (3 Singaporean, 2 Malaysian), most of which are broadcast in languages other than English (go figure!). Last night we watched (for a minute or so, at least) an Indian film with Malay sub-titles. While we can't speak either language, we can now translate between them. An interesting thing about TV here is that the in addition to programming, the Singapore channels also carry "tele-tex". You hit a button on your remote and your TV program disappears and is replaced with a screen full of text. By hitting various buttons on your remote, you can page through literally thousands of screens of information. These include news reports, weather, stock prices, classified ads, etc.) Kind of a non-interactive, non-graphical Internet; sort of. One of the other channels carries a lot of video games that people play over the telephone with a chance for valuable prizes (at the very reasonable S$.50/minute). You can actually submit a classified ad over the phone: all you need to do is translate your message, up to 140 characters, into a series of numbers and key them into the phone (also for S$.50/minute). In spite of the popularity of the Internet here, this Tele-text also appears popular.
Now that we've covered all of the important stuff (our flight, our apartment, TV), we'll end this update.
Greg & Veronica
p.s. Almost forgot: Veronica was right about which apartment we were getting.
p.p.s.: Greg's recipe for toast:
Slice some raisin bread (our's is unsliced to "preserve freshness")
Preheat your convection oven to 230' C (they use both metric and non-metric measurements here, so you need to know both; which might explain why their kids do better in math than American kids)
Place your bread slices on the tall oven rack
Cook/bake/toast for 4 minutes, more if you want it very dark
Remove and eat. Optionally, spread with butter, jam, jelly or spread and use as coaster.
For those in the office in Rockville, this may give you guys an idea on how to toast the bagels on Friday mornings (until the fire marshal removes the convection oven; not sure what you can use for the oven rack, maybe it came with one)