Phuket - h is silent

Other than our foray into the Malaysian hinterland we had not been able to create an opportunity for ourselves to explore our new neighborhood (Southeast Asia).  But we finally got over the hump and booked a last-minute trip to Phuket, Thailand.  The prices were high (last-minute + holiday season), but we managed to keep it from being too ridiculous by flying budget (Tiger Airways) and using a discounted AAA rate for our accommodations (good thing we didn't cancel that membership, it's now paid for itself for 2-3 years).

Tiger Airways departs from Changi Airport's specially-designated "Budget Terminal".  The terminal is functional, with several play areas for kids, and a reasonable selection of shops.  The only drawback is the lack of air-conditioning at the gate area.  The airline's booking and check-in process are hassle-free, and after this trip I would recommend it as a good-value choice for regional travel.  It's nothing like Singapore Airlines.  It can best be compared with modern, intra-continental flights in the US (no frills).

Phuket Airport is small but tidy.  The Avis counter was obvious, service friendly to a fault, and we were on our way in a manual Toyota Vios within 20 minutes of landing.  The roads in this area are pretty good, and the important signs are translated to English, so we found our hotel in no time.  The JW Marriott is what you can expect for the money.  Manicured setting, well-designed recreational areas, a huge, clean beach, and all sorts of activities.  We arrived late in the evening and went to its Thai cuisine restaurant for dinner: crab appetizer, green curry chicken, pra lad prik (chili-covered deep-fried fish), chayote shoots, served with two kinds of rice, a pomelo martini and a coconut.  The food was well-prepared, fiery in the right places and we discovered pea-eggplants!  Lizzy was getting sleepy/cranky and one of the waitresses took her for a walk along the tables blowing out the candles since it was almost closing time.  We found this sort of service everywhere and we really appreciated the friendly nature of everyone - so warm and welcoming, not at all like Singaporeans.

Day 1 started out with a drive up north to Phang Nga just across the Sarasin Bridge from Phuket Island.  We drove to Wat Suwannakhuha (วัดสุวรรณคูหา), a small Buddhist monastery built inside a limestone cave.  It contains a large reclining Buddha, along with lots of other religious artifacts.  The cave was interesting on its own, with lots of neat rock formations.  The outer area of the monastery was overrun by monkeys - all fun and happy until you try to give them some food (vendors selling peanuts and bananas).  Then they go ape-shit - literally.  Lizzy held a banana in her hand for all of 3 seconds before an alpha male snatched it from her aggressively, getting her into a nervous mood.  Then a large pack of them surrounded us and started fighting for position as we made our way back to the car.  When we got back to the car we noticed it was the only one with 7 monkeys on top of it, defecating, scratching the paint and defying our appeals for them to get off.  Lizzy was bawling, I was trying to get things into the car without letting any monkeys slip in, and Connie was busy capturing the traumatic experience on digital celluloid.  We think it was the tangerine peels that drove them to vandalize our vehicle.


Next we drove through Phang Nga town and on to a nice little park called Sa Nang Manora Forest.  We did a short hike up cascading waterfalls, got a little wet, both from sweating (carrying Lizzy in her Kelty FC 3.0) and from walking through some of the streams - I didn't trust my balance with 40 pounds on my back on the tiny wooden bridges across the meandering waterways.  At the foothills of the park, locals were bathing in the shallow pools, and 5-6 street food vendors were selling all sorts of meals from satay meats to crepes.  We tried the satay - liver, giblets, small whole fish, and chicken thighs - some freshly fried chicken, and some sticky rice (~$3 total).  The wackiest thing was that while we were buying and eating our lunch the street vendors were buying their fresh meat from another vendor that drove in on a motorcycle with a side tabletop covered in pork bellies, hocks, and other raw parts hidden under towels.  The food tasted great and we didn't get sick.


On the way back to Phuket we drove back through Phang Nga town, this time stopping at a 7-11 for some ice cream, milk, beer and all sorts of Thai snacks.  We also bought some coconut rolls (delicious!) and what turned out to be durian-cream (foul, yet tasty) cookies from an old lady in a shop by the side of the road.  Lizzy fell asleep, then mommy, while I kept driving south, back to Phuket, past our hotel, and all the way down to Patong beach, where everyone woke up and enjoyed the mad scene - lots and lots of white people shopping, eating, walking, and merry-making.   The beach seemed nice, but completely overrun, and without a convenient parking spot we just drove on.  And on and on - the drive along the coast is scenic and dangerous with its sharp turns and sudden changes in altitude.  I was definitely exercising the clutch a lot...


We ended up at Surin Beach, which is a nice little spot with less people, but well-served by shops, restaurants, and massage beds.  The so-called Thai Beach Massage is around $5-15 for an hour depending on which beach you're on and is by far the best way to spend a dollar in Phuket.  everyone partakes and so everyone is relaxed (the weed probably helps, too).  We played, we ate, we watched Connie getting a massage, and then ate some more.  Connie bought clothes from a lady walking around the beach with hangers in both hands.  We also bought and lit up a Kongmin Lantern - a miniature hot-air balloon that is flown for good luck and is commonly found in these parts.  By the time we got back to our hotel we were aching for sleep.


Day 2 was spent almost completely on the hotel's premises.  We enjoyed the beach, and then Connie enjoyed another 1 hour massage (this time complimented with all sorts of stretching exercises).  Lizzy and I buried and dug ourselves out of the sand several times.  We swam.  We sea-kayaked until our arms got sore.  We had lunch pool-side (a nicely made burger, rich Cobb salad, and ok fish sticks).  The kiddie pool area has large stone turtles and elephants, a pretty good slide, and lots of places to splish and splash.   We slept for a few hours back in our room and went out for dinner to a nearby restaurant - Kin Dee.  We had 3 kinds of soups, all great - a tom yum, a less-sour but still spicy seafood medley, and a seaweed broth with shrimp balls.  We also had a big crab fried in a curry sauce, some green veggies, and a banana-blossom salad which was quite interesting.  We bought me a souvenir shirt, and some more supplies and hit the sack.


On Day 3 we drove back up to Phang Nga and followed signs we noticed on Day 1 for James Bond Island.  These signs ended up leading us 20 km through a side road to a one-street, Muslim fishing village with a pier and a small dock - Khlong Khian.  We found someone who found someone who translated for a captain of a small long-tail boat.  We haggled a price for a half-day tour through Phang Nga Bay and off we went...  It felt good getting a bargain and at the same time supporting a toothless old man and his daughter (our friendly, non-English-speaking tour guide) without a cut for the big operators.


Phang Nga Bay is a must-see.  The limestone stacks evoke something primal and you just want to hug and kiss every one of them.  Words and pictures both cannot do justice to this place.  The tour lasted 2.5-3 hours during which we rode through the bay, landed on some islands for walking tours of limestone caves, on another for a swim in a secluded beach, on another (James Bond - the only damn place to avoid in the entire bay) to survey the souvenir vendors and tourism at its worst.  We passed by Hong Island which has caves that can only be explored by sea kayak or canoe, but we left this for another trip...


We drove back towards the hotel and Lizzy fell asleep, so we opted to stop in a beach-side restaurant just south of Sarasin bridge - if you're ever here, this is the first beach shack coming up from the south.  The restaurant was run by one lady and her 10-year-old son.  We were the only customers.  We had the best food here - pra lad prik, papaya salad with crab, fried rice with squid, and boiled cockles.  Good, simple, local.  The fried rice was amazingly delicate.  Lizzy was asleep in the car with the windows rolled down to let in the sea breeze, and Connie and I had a relaxed and sumptuous meal.  We also took turns dipping in the ocean before and after the food, while one of us stayed with Lizzy near the car.  We ordered some more food for Lizzy when she awoke, and drove back to the hotel for some more beach/pool adventures.  We re-created rock formations in the sand and did battle with the rough sea.  Lizzy is getting pretty adventurous with her arm floats and refuses to be held anymore.  She half-walks, half-swims across the water.


For dinner, we drove back to the same spot where we had lunch but the place was closed so we tried its neighbors, but we ordered all wrong and the experience was not good.  Apparently we should have ordered a steamboat here... oh well, at least the setting was nice - beach-side, lightning flashes in the horizon, a cold Singha and a juicy, young coconut.  We then drove across the bridge (for lack of a proper u-turn) and ended up buying 4 small rock lobsters for $3 total from a small road-side market.  The vendors in this little market cut and crack them for you, so we had a bag of these, still hot, to enjoy back in the hotel with Toy Story.  The lobsters/crabs were awesome - meaty and with lots of roe.  But we did feel sick that night, and we're not sure if it was the roadside shellfish or the crappy food in the beach-side restaurant where we had dinner.  No one vomited and Lizzy didn't complain at all, though she had a lot of the shellfish meat.. I would try them again!


Avis didn't mind the monkey damage, and the 1-hour flight back was uneventful.  I miss it already.  It was a no-hassle, last-minute vacation filled with adventure, comfort, good food and good fun.  Pictures here.

Singapore Midtown Lunch: Shin Kushiya @ Far East Square

During lunch, I wanted to celebrate booking our first real trip out of Singapore since we got here.  Connie already had lunch, so I invited myself for Sushi at the Shin Kushiya right behind our building.  We haven't eaten a lot of Sushi since we got here.  It's relatively more expensive than other foods, and it's hard to stomach a $20++ lunch, when you can get a large bowl of really good soup for $4-5 at the hawker centers. We had a few good experiences at Sushi Tei, but nothing to make us yearn for it.  Shin Kushiya is a small franchise (3-4 locations), compared with Sushi Tei (ubiquitous).  Tei has kaiten, whereas Kushiya has Yakitori.  Both have enormous menus.  The reason I went to Kushiya on this day was simply because it's closer to the office - saves half a block.

For Sushi lunch I usually order Chirashi, which is what I did this time.  There were 3 choices which seemed to be: cubed fish, sliced fish, or a more premium selection of fish (not sure the shape).  I never had cubed Chirashi but wanted to just sample the standard for comparison in this new venue, so I ordered the common, sliced fish version ($20).  My only disappointment with the dish was that the slices were a bit too thin for my taste.  I am used to New York bite sizes, and I remember sashimi to be thicker and meatier.  Other than that, the assorted fish were fresh, properly chilled and did not feel thawed-from-frozen to serve.  The rice was ok.  I like it warmer, but it's served different in different places and I don't hold it for or against an establishment either way.

While waiting for my Chirashi, I browsed through the rest of the tome-like menu, and became engrossed in the beautifully laid out and graphic-literal Kushiyaki/Yakitori double page.  I couldn't resist and ended up ordering Foie Gras ($10) and thrice-cooked pork belly ($7).  The foie gras did not disappoint.  While the portion is tiny, the two bites are perfectly cooked and mouth-watering.  It's a really good appetizer/amuse bouche.  The accompanying grilled apple pieces were less appealing, but the combination is commonly applied and I did not find them distracting.  The pork belly was tough, but came with a zesty sauce that tied the charcoal & fat flavors well.

One of the most expensive midtown lunches I've had so far at $40, 10x what I normally pay.  But it hit the spot and I felt like mission accomplished.  I whetted Connie's appetite for the foie gras, of course, and we will be going to sample that and some other dishes at another seating soon.

Singapore Midtown Lunch: Si Chuan Dou Hua @ UOB Plaza

The first of an expanding empire of fine-dining Chinese fusion restaurants, UOB Plaza's Si Chuan Dou Hua boasts good food at a high location - the price is fair.  This 60th-floor restaurant serves dishes originally from Sichuan, Shanghai, and Canton.  We were referred here by one of Connie's colleagues for good xiao long bao (juicy buns), traditionally a Shanghai-rooted dish.

The setting is fairly formal and upscale, the views are great if you're facing a window - I wasn't but my date was - the tables further from the window are smartly positioned on a raised platform.  There are small plates of peanuts, chinese slaw, and a spicy paste of some kind for amusing your bouche, while your covered teacup of tea leaves is filled by man sporting a brass kettle with a 4-foot spout.  Each pour is methodical and borderline dramatic.  The long spout narrows to a tiny opening creating a thin stream of boiling water that hits the side of the cup with enough force to create a swirly vortex that seeps the leaves just right and at just the right temperature... hmm...  I anxiously anticipated the kettle's arrival at our table, and became surly when a woman showed up with an electric tea pot for one of the three refills.

Connie and I really like spicy Sichuan dishes, and we ordered some that we're used to as a gauge of the quality of the restaurant's general handling of this third of the menu.  Chilled Pork Belly, Chengdu Fried Chicken, and Wantons in Chili Oil.  The pork belly was delicate, while the chilli marinade lacked some of the bite we're used to.  The Chengdu Chicken had the requisite amount of dried chillies (more than half the plate) and tongue-numbing capsicum berries, but the chicken was diced too small and all you could taste was the crunchy, oily batter.  The wanton dish was simply yucky.  The sauce was too sweet and too salty.  We also ordered our favorite veggie side of green beans which were delicious - Connie pointed out that in NY the beans were bigger and longer, but I assured her that it's not the size that matters....

We skipped the entire Cantonese Dim Sum menu, and got two orders of the beef soup xiao long bao.  These were good, thin yet stable shell encasing a delicious broth.  They are again smaller in size than the ones we're used to in New York, and the quantity per order is less still yet.

One of the better parts of the meal was dessert, Dou Hua (restaurant's namesake) beancurd custard - original and with wolfberry sauce.  The custard was delicate, subtly airy, and each bite a sensual delight. The common syrup was well made, not too sweet.  The Wolfberry Sauce added a herbal-medicinal quality to the dish, in a good way!

The price tag on this meal was somewhere near S$100.  Really not too bad considering the restaurant's position on the vertical scale of downtown, the amount of food, and the exhilaratingly original, table-side tea-pouring performances.

Singapore Restaurant Review: The Mushroom Pot @ Kallang

Situated on the crap (that is, non-waterfront) side of the Indoor Stadium at Kallang are two restaurants: Le Bistrot and The Mushroom Pot.  Pot - the first of two outlets in a slowly-growing franchise - is the second of a half dozen restaurants in this hoity-toity strip that we've dared visiting so far; the other, Brewerkz, mainly for its home-brewed pints of beer...  Elizabeth is going through a mushroom phase, possibly because of eating in this establishment, or maybe because of the Gurffalo - a book taking place in a forest with mushrooms drawn on almost every page that we race to spot and then fake-pick and eat  We're just not sure what came first, but she has been vocal about wanting to "go Kallang Leisure Park eat mushroom" in the past few weeks, and so we went there again this past Saturday.

The decor is "gallery modern" with Wacky-Tacky Orange-painted walls forming the backdrop to a collection of evenly spaced and vertically aligned macro-focused portraits of various varieties of wild mushrooms that Elizabeth and I fake-pick and eat throughout the meal.  We've eaten here only on weekends during lunch only (dinner costs more) and there have always been only 1-2 other tables besides us so the staff - a waitress, a bus-maid, and a hostess/manager/owner has been super-attentive, to the point of distraction as they baby-flirt with our daughter.  And attention is required, as you continuously order different plates of raw ingredients to add to your hot pot during the meal.

For those of you who have never experienced a hot pot dinner I have nothing but pity mixed with scorn.  This could be a good place to have your first, but the menu is horribly designed, and the choices are bewildering.  Even veteran hot-potters such as ourselves had some difficulty ordering on our first visit.  But basically, your all-you-can-eat meal begins with a choice of broth: wild mushroom, spicy Ma-La, or spicy/mushroom - ying yang pot with both broths separated by a divider.  We opted for the combo on our first visit, and dropped the spicy on our second - it's basically a vat of chili oil with a hint of the wild mushroom broth that is hard to focus on because you're just concentrating on taming the fire with your ice water after every taste.  There are also herbal concoctions, such as the cure-all Black Chicken broth, which you can choose from for a small extra charge.

Then you can pick up to 5 items from the starters/house specials list - these are cooked or cold-served dishes that do not go into the hot pot for further boiling.  We've tried a bunch but only appreciated a few: House Special Beef (tender and spicy), Monkey Head Mushrooms (fried and tossed in a creamy sauce with sweet-roasted walnuts), and fried squid with a wasabi mayo dip.  And now you can start choosing plates of raw (or pre-cooked) ingredients from the two abundant menu lists - hot pot buffet (meats, offal, fish slices, vegetables, noodles/rice, and even bread) and homemade selections (meat and fish balls, meat and fish pastes, and meat and fish paste-stuffed vegetables and mushrooms - reminiscent of yong tau foo ingredients).  It's hard to go wrong here - you choose what you already know you like and curious to try.  Just remember that excessive over-ordering does carry a penalty.  We especially like "5 kinds of mushrooms," tripe, pork stomach, the marinated beef - somehow much more tender than the raw beef selection - tofu (Elizabeth's fav), fish slices, golden mushrooms (not wild enough to be part of the wild mushroom selection?), Spinach and "Taiwan cabbage" (baby, curly bok choy).  But you can order as many items and as many of each that you can fit in your belly.  You won't come out of there hungry.

Really a footnote for completeness-sake, as this is superflous both here and during the meal itself:  Drinks are extra.  I've tried their chrysanthemum tean and boiled barley and was disappointed.  I'll stick to water or soda pop next time.  My other criticism is that the tables are badly (maliciously?) designed, with a noticeable and distracting shortage of leg room.

Compared to other Steam Boat restaurants we've been to in Singapore, this one falls in the middle for me, mostly because at some other places you can get more seafood items like crab and cockles that we particularly enjoy in this medium.  The choices of broth included in the base price are usually more varied as well, and, finally, it's more expensive than most other places we've tried.  Still, at ~SGD$25 per person (depends on when you go; Lizzy so far is eating for free) it's not a bad deal, especially for this upmarket location (we spend more on food when eating at Brewerkz).

I give this place 2 Goodyear Shiitakes - worth a forage, if you're in the neighborhood.

Malaysia, or How to Kill 7 Hours in a Car with Lizzy

On Friday we went to Malaysia to try and find a hiking trail in a jungle nearby - it's been almost 6 months since our last hike in NY (Harriman State Park).  This was a big mistake, as everyone else who owns or rents a car on this island went along with or just before us - Diwali is a Hindu holiday and is a national holiday in Singapore.

You get stopped both ways between Singapore and Malaysia for some reason - in Singapore to pay a toll (both ways), and in Malaysia only for immigration purposes - on the way out it seems only keep count since they check an exit voucher that you receive on entry.  We got out of Singapore no problem, but we waited 4 hours crossing a 2-mile road in-between countries.  This is called the Second Link - basically a bridge between Singapore Island and Malaysia and a small stretch of road in Malaysia before you get to the Kompleks Sultan Abu Bakar immigration checkpoint.  I am not spinning or exaggerating.  4 hours.  Stop & go, bumper to bumper, for approximately 2 miles.  The only saving grace was that we packed lunch and some fruit and water, and that our car came with a built-in DVD player and TV.  Still, how many times can you watch Toy Story and 100 Favourite Hebrew Children Songs?  We got into Malaysia at 5pm (we left very late, around noon, so shame on us, but we did not want to hike 12-2pm).   Since it was getting dark we decided to head to the nearest fishing village for crab dinner.

There were some interesting points along the way, like when we reached the toll booth right after the border and we didn't have MYR (Ringgits) to pay for a Touch & Go toll card.  And when Connie made me stop in front of a house in some village near Mt. Pulai that we were driving through, in order to buy soy milk from a woman standing in a booth in her front yard (the proverbial Malaysian lemonade stand).  Dinner at High King Seafood Restaurant was forgettable, except for the setting - it is situated at the end of a road that leads into a ferry terminal - where you can take a boat to Pulau Kukup.  The restaurants and shops along this road (this short stretch of road pretty much makes up the entire village) are all built jutting out into the water on top of stilts, and from High King you have a good view of the mangroves of Pulau Kukup just off-shore.  When we got there the tide was out and you could see salamanders splashing and crawling in the mud below.  By the time we left the tide had come in and it was water all the way back to the road.  We had some fried leafy greens, oatmeal-battered fried prawns, fish slices in brown sauce, and sweet butter-fried crab.

Things are relatively cheap in Malaysia - we bought slices of watermelon (red & yellow), pear, pineapple, papaya, and some unidentified mango-like fruit for ~US$1.50.  And dinner (fish, prawns, and crab + 500ml bottle of beer) was ~US$22.  After dinner, we did a little shopping (alas, they ran out of bootleg Toy Story 3 DVD's) and drove back home across the double border - another exciting episode when Connie drove through customs without stopping eliciting a super-thorough search of the car while we waited shame-faced nearby. But it only took 2 hours total from Kukup (fishing Village) to get home - what I had originally expected for our outbound journey when we left home in the morning.

Driving to Malaysia, check.
Hiking in Malaysia, TBA.

Brewerkz!

We didn't realize how routine everything got until the F1 Walkabout.  So, for the next couple of weeks we've been trying to do things in the evening - with Lizzy.  One new thing is eating dinner and rushing to Brewerkz for happy hour pints (before 8pm).  This Heartland-like franchise brews on premises and currently does an Oktoberfest ale that's quite good.  It's only a 5-minute walk from home, so Lizzy gets to ride her bike across the foot bridge over the Kallang basin; when the stirring rod we use to control her broke, we demanded she become a better rider and lo and behold she did.  Once she started stirring on her own she decided she could propel on her own too, so she started using her legs!

Some nights, the moon and stars are out and the lights from the buildings of the neighborhood shimmer on the water.

From "Early Fall" in Singapore

I guess it's nice to just get out... But we're very happy about our choice for living arrangement.  The neighborhood is great, we've met some nice neighbors that we hang out with, and in our 3 months living here have not seen anything to make us regret it.

F1 @ Night

We haven't really walked around a lot - we get sweaty really quickly - so it was a real adventure to just walkabout the Singapore F1 Grand Prix Walkabout Zone 4.  This night circuit runs around Esplanade, Marina Bay, behind SunTec and back to Esplanade - all within walking distance of our office building.  So, this evening, we took our F1 badges and walked up Shenton way, to Esplanade Dr where we could enter the area to enjoy the first practice round of the grand prix, along with the qualifiers for the junior AsiaPac race.

The view fro Esplanade Dr is quite stunning.  The new Marina Bay Sands hotel is dramatically situated across the bay and behind this wacky lotus/flame-looking structure that may open to the public soon - as what, I am still not sure.  The ever-spinning Singapore Flyer is just to the east.

From "Early Fall" in Singapore

The Walkabout Zone was well-designed with lots of beer stands, merchandise booths and food stalls - plus there were regular businesses in Esplanade that had special deals for the occasion.  We got our ear plugs and beer and found a nice platform to view one of the turns.  That kept us busy for about 10 minutes...

From "Early Fall" in Singapore

So we went back to walking around the Esplanade, took some pics, had some dinner, more beer and walked over to the stage where Missy Elliott was going to give a performance.  My only thought throughout the show was that she must be really hot in that sweater and sweat pants... We're not big Missy Elliott fans but she tried to give a good show, and some of her dancers were amazing.

This was our first evening leaving Lizzy at home with Allen, and I gotta say it was quite nice.  We're seriously thinking about making date night official - perhaps, bi-weekly?

Elizabeth is 2-Years Old

These birthdays are way more shocking than my own.  OK, maybe 30 was disorienting, but how the time flies with Elizabeth.  A lot has happened in her first two years, but I can't help feeling like I missed something very important here... Especially since moving here was to satisfy selfish cravings, although I'd like to believe that whatever makes mommy and daddy happy is good for  their children.

Anyways, this year here birthday was celebrated in Israel with her extended family and in Singapore with her daycare class.  We have many, many hopes for her future, but right now I just want to make sure she doesn't grow up to say "can" instead of "yes".

From Birthday Party at MMS

Rosh Hashana in Israel

We spent a week in Israel with my parents and brother and the rest of my extended family who lives there. This was Elizabeth's first time in Israel and meeting most of this part of the family - including my grandparents.  Both Lizzy and I were sick for most of the week but we tried to make the best of it, doing a little touring - Jerusalem, Tel Aviv/Yaffo, beaches - and a lot of eating.  Connie filled up on grilled foie gras and I filled up on my grandma's cooking (and lots and lots of hummus!).

Elizabeth now knows some of her second cousins by name (Schwartz family) and since we've been back has been asking for them.  It's quite sad that we're so far away, but no different being in Singapore or NYC.  Speaking of which, on our return flight (with Turkish Airlines) we had severe delays - our flight was cancelled (supposedly, due to world basketball championships in Istanbul) and we ended up flying back through Bangkok with El Al, and with Singapore Airlines back to Singapore.  Singapore Airlines is our new favorite airline...  Good even in economy...

Anyways, Shana Hadasha Hao! to everyone...

From Israel II

Settling In to Routine Life

We've been mostly busy with unpacking and settling in to life in the new apartment.  My mother left us in the beginning of August, so it's just the 3 of us and Allen, our domestic helper.

Our workdays are as follows:
Connie and I wake up around 7am, do our morning routine, say goodbye to Lizzy and drive off to work - Connie needs to be in by 8am and the total commute is ~15-20 minutes.  I get my breakfast sandwich packed by Allen and Connie gets breakfast from the Bloomberg kitchen.  We work 10-hour days, including one hour for lunch.  That's the schedule dictated by Bloomberg for all of its Singapore employees.  We eat lunch around 1pm; it is hard to find a place to sit in the hawker centers at 12:30pm.  There are many lunch choices, but for budget and timing reasons we usually opt for one of the hawker centers nearby - our two favorites are M11 @ China Square (air-conditioned) and Hong Lim Complex Temporary Food Centre (not air-conditioned but has some really authentic fare).  We leave work about 6pm and get home by 6:30pm.  We spend some time playing with Lizzy and then we eat dinner (prepared, served, and cleaned up by Allen).  Then we wash Lizzy and start bedtime routine - some play, drink milk, read a couple of books, and get her tucked in.  We do some paperwork (Connie), watch TV, drink a glass of wine or a can of beer, and turn in.  Rinse, repeat.  On Fridays, we might do something after dinner like go to Night Safari or walk about town.  Sometimes, Connie and I will go out after work (so far, only a fantasy).

Weekends:
Allen has only Sunday off, so Saturday she cooks us some breakfast.  Connie may or may not join Lizzy and I depending on how much sleep she feels she has missed over the work week.  We then either go downstairs to enjoy the pool area, or do something more adventurous like riding our bicycles to the beach, fly a kite, drive to Sentosa Island, or go to the Zoo.  We usually get back home for a nap.  Then, we either play and dinner at home (prepared by Allen), or we go do something and eat out.  Sometimes, Allen takes Lizzy out for a walk in the afternoon and we get time to relax or do some house chores or paperwork (Connie) or read and blog (me).
Sundays are similar to Saturdays, except I usually make breakfast.  Sometimes I take Lizzy out on my own in the early weekend mornings with a packed breakfast if mommy is in extraordinary sleep deficit.  We mostly eat what Allen has left for us, or we go out to sample whatever is Singapore has to offer food-wise (like Carl's Jr. drive-through).

From Settling in Singapore

Until her school starts in September, Lizzy spends the days with Allen, playing at home, going for walks and shopping at nearby Kallang Leisure Park, or for a couple of hours at Peek-a-boo (a big indoor playground).

Our routine life here is actually very similar to our life in Brooklyn, where we lived with Connie's parents and they mostly took care of the daily chores at home, and served as a reliable and always-available baby sitter.

Water Place

Hallelujah!

We finally signed a lease on an apartment.  We don't have to move again for 2 years.  Hurray!

Our home in Singapore will be an apartment in the condominium Water Place - which is just outside the city center on the other side of the waterway that turns into the Singapore River and Marina Bay to the West and into the Kallang Basin and Geylang River to the East where our new neighborhood is enveloped by it and by the Singapore Strait.


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The complex houses 7 buildings between 15-20 floors with 4 units on each floor.  It was built in 2004 (not too new, not too old).  Our 3-br + 1 (that's the indication used for maid's quarters) unit is ~1350 sq feet with a master bedroom and a shared bathroom.  The fixtures are fairly modern and the apartment, even without our weathered Swedish furniture feels like an IKEA showroom.

The condo's amenities incude 1 main swimming pool, 2 "fun pools" - one with two floating goals and one with a basketball net - a Jacuzzi, and two children's pools with a water slide and other playful water fixtures.  There are 2 tennis courts, 1 multipurpose court used for soccer and hockey, a small outdoor playground, an even smaller indoor play area, a karaoke room, a reflexology path, and several BBQ pits (some with gas stoves in addition to the grills) and picnic areas.  There's even a nice koi pond and you can get food pellets from the guardhouse to feed the fish!

BBQ pits, tennis courts, and the karaoke room have to be booked in advance and there are associated (symbolic) charges.  The occupants of most apartments are foreigners, and of those about half are Western (and I include Australians and New Zealanders in this group).  That is part of living in a condo versus an HDB, which is, for one reason or another, where most Singaporeans live.

We saw this condominium in our first day of apartment hunting.  We liked it immediately, although at the time we felt it was too remote from public transportation - less of an issue now that we're addicted to having a car.  The apartment we are now moving into is also bigger than the one we saw originally; we actually ended up viewing ~8 in total once we decided on this neighborhood - there is quite a high turnaround in this expat-friendly area.  The surroundings are very family-oriented, have more of a feel of a suburb and not so gritty like the city center.  The complex is also a scenic stroll and foot bridge away from Kallang Leisure Center and the Indoor Stadium where there is good shopping and entertainment and some nice waterside restaurants - along with the nearest subway (MRT) station.

Heritage View - More Temporary Housing

We have been trying very hard to find suitable accommodations, but as you can read in past entries we have some issues with at least the available units that we can afford.  The new buildings have very, very small apartments and we hate paying a premium to live in small cages.  Units in old buildings are often in disrepair or lack some of the nicer amenities you can find in the newer buildings like a pool area with water slides, or a covered parking lot.

Anyways, now we have been kicked out of our corporate apartment because they are fully booked.  So we moved to another corporate apartment provided by LMB Housing Services (Heritage View codominium) a bit further from work but still in the center of the city.  Commute is pretty good, but the shopping nearby is limited.  This area is near some big campuses (INSEAD and Singapore Polytechnic) so lots of young students live here.  The apartment is spacious, the pool is nice, and we don't have to find cardboard boxes to live in - for a while I was having trouble finding temporary accommodations; maybe it's the Singapore Super Sale, or the Youth Olympics but hotels and corporate apartments are largely booked solid until end of July.  Anyways, the A/C's work - so no complaints.

From Settling in Singapore

And now our helper can start living with us.

Help, The

This weekend we went to shop for a live-in maid.  This is something I've been both dreading and looking forward to.  The idea of affordable and convenient maid/nanny services was one of the original appeals of life in Singapore.  But the idea of finding a suitable person to look after Lizzy and live in our home haunted me.  It's like shopping for a new member of the family.

The process, it turns out, is quite simple.  First you find one or more maid agencies - there are many, many to choose from and we just went with a colleague's recommendation.  There are a few malls in the center of the city who have entire floors dedicated to housing such agencies, which broker contracts between migrant domestic workers - mostly Filipino, Indonesian, and Malay women between the ages of 18 and 50 years old - and, well, people like us.  The one we used was in Far East Shopping Centre on Orchard Rd.  You call the agency up and briefly describe your specific needs and they send you over some resumes to review.  You book an appointment to interview the maids you're interested in.  You agree on pay and some other logistics with the maid you choose.  You sign a contract, the agency takes a finder's fee, and the maid moves in - most homes and condo apartments have an extra small bedroom and 1/2-3/4 bathroom suitable to house a maid near the kitchen.  Oh, yeah, you also have to do an online course in how to be a maid's employer - covering your responsibilities toward the employee as mandated by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).  You also register the migrant worker with MOM, which begins levying a monthly tax from you for providing your maid a work permit.  Finally, you have to get health insurance for your new employee and the agency helps you take care of that as well...

At least that's the technical description.  The actual experience is a bit more colorful.  One discomforting element in the process is that when you walk around the mall looking for your agency you pass through many other agencies and the place starts feeling like a market for legalized human trafficking.  The migrant workers have to find a job within a few weeks of entering or losing their previous employment arrangement or else they face expulsion from the country.  Many of them seem to be on their last day before their work permits run out, as they bring their suitcases to the agency where they sit the entire day waiting for their chance to get picked to be someone's maid.  It is nerve-racking.  The rules of engagement also made for an uncomfortable interviewing setup - chairs arranged just outside the agency's office in the middle of one of the mall's corridors, other maids-to-be and shoppers milling about.

We picked "Allen", who is from the Philippines but has been working as a maid for 20 years in Singapore, China and even, briefly, in the USA.  The reason we liked her on paper was that she was older, educated, and had no children of her own for us to feel sad about... The reason we liked her in person was that she spoke very good English, she seemed quite intelligent (college-educated even), and Lizzy took a shine to her from the get-go.

We don't have a place for her to live with us yet, as we are in a small corporate apartment, so for now she commutes to work - and we're getting used to having the help.

Front-Ended

Today I was involved in my first car accident in Singapore.  I wish I can tell you a funny story about driving on the wrong side of the road or some silly unorthodox signage that I could not understand, but there is nothing uniquely cultural about this incident.  I was stopped in the middle of a parking lot waiting patiently for the car in front of me to settle into a space so I can get into another of my own, when the driver decided to drive back directly into my front bumper.  I am not sure if this was a failure to listen to the many beeps and blips that are coming out of the rear-bumper sensors that I see on every car here, or overconfidence by the driver, or negligent and purposeful vandalism... All I can say is that when I got out of my car to get the details of the other driver, I got accosted by her boyfriend/husband/brother and blamed for not honking my horn before I got hit by them...


Later in the day I went to the rental company's office to file my claim report, and the rental office was kind enough to offer the driver to settle by cash for a meager sum - it was fairly minor damage all-told.  This crazed maniac asked to speak with me while on the phone with the agent and tried to convince me to take some of the responsibility for the damage.  Why?  Because of my negligence in honking in a timely manner.  Maybe their bumper sensors don't work after all and they expect other stationary objects on the road to alarm them instead.  I politely declined to take any responsibility, and when that didn't work I did it less politely... 


The next twist in this story is that I was asked to collect the settlement payment from this person on behalf of my rental company, so I arranged to meet her after work - we both seem to occupy a desk in the same building.  It turns out she works at Bloomberg - we sort of guessed because the collision happened at 8am, when all Bloomberg employees here have to report in.  She was quite amicable by this point.  I got my cash and we parted our ways.  Other than this, and some wrong turns, driving here has been pretty straightforward.  Only thing to watch out for is that if you end up taking too many wrong turns you might find yourself crossing the border to Malaysia by mistake...

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Further Afield At Tanjong Pagar

We found the little food plaza at the triangle made by the intersection of Cantonment Rd and Yan Kit Rd, simply because it was adjacent to the open-air parking lot we decided to use for our errand this afternoon.  We went to some community center because it was the nearest place to work that would supply us with our SingPass (http://www.singpass.gov.sg/) - the one-stop login password for all governmental agencies in Singapore.  I call this place a food plaza and not a food court or center, because it was really small with about 4-5 stalls and was all along a single wall so not an enclosed court per se.  And I make a point of noting that we parked in an open-air parking lot, because that is a blog entry onto itself - the different kinds of parking systems employed and deployed island-wide.

The food plaza, which I will henceforth dub the SingPass Plaza, was nestled inside the eastern wall of a family-owned ancestral temple, where several people were burning loads of fake paper money.  When we arrived at the adjacent parking lot, water started sprinkling from several exit points along the second floor of this temple and onto the tarp that served as an awning and shade for the plaza's sitting area.  From the tarp, the water trickled down onto the edge of this area like a little waterfall, maybe creating a cozier and cooler feel in the open space.  The plaza consisted of a Claypot and Ramen stall, a Fishball Noodle stall, a misc noodle stall, and a Vietnamese Pho stall at the end that we only spotted after ordering from the first and third stalls.  I ordered Claypot Pork Ribs ($4) and Connie got Carrot (radish) & Fungus (fungus) Soup ($3.50).

The pork ribs were limited in number but succulent.  The moist claypot rice was covered in a thick black soy-ish sauce that was burning into the side of the charcoal-hot clay dish it was in.  This sauce managed to be both subtle (for all its blackness) and a bit overwhelming in texture.  Almost like the soy sauce version of fermented bean curd.  There were bits of green leafy veggies and thin cuts of sausage here and there, but a bit on the stingy side.  The sambal and red chili sauces that came along with this dish had some odd way of bringing out the umami-ness that was trapped inside the rice.  I really enjoyed the combination, despite the black sauce covering it all.


The soup was also quite delicious, with an uncomplicated broth and lots of big vegetable pieces that had room to breathe without the usual noodles taking up all the liquid's surface areas.  The soup came with boiled white rice, which I stubbornly disdained for its relative simplicity.  The fungus was fungusy - it was cooked to a soft yet bouncy consistency, just the way I like it.   I am still burping happily from this meal.

Lunch was $7.30.  Parking was $1.00.  ERP (tolls) was $2.00.  At $10.50, this was not a bad lunch adventure considering we came back with a SingPass registered.  Driving around is fun!

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Mee So-Soto

Connie had to go straight back to work after we ran some errands today, so I went to explore Market Street Food Centre on my own.  This is a 2nd-floor food court a block away from our office that we noticed last week but had not visited yet.  It was extremely crowded today, and hard to move through.  Lines were long in most stalls.  I think the chief reason is that everything here is cheaper - many items under $3.  Based on the fact that most signs had stickers with prices covering older prices on the original signs, it seems they've all hiked up prices recently, but it's still cheaper than all the other nearby food courts.


I went to a stall with a short line and the sign over it saying "Food of Islam," I think.  There were crescents and women in scarves serving food.  There was a whole row of stalls like this - like the Halal carts on 53rd Street corner in NY, but Malaysian-style.  The stall I chose had Mee Prawn, Mee Siam, Mee Rebus, and Mee Soto as well as something called Roti John (that looked like a sandwich - google confirms).  Last week I had Mee Siam so this week I went for Mee Soto (http://lifestylewiki.com/Mee_Soto), because the picture of the Mee Rebus made its broth seem ominous, and the Mee Prawn was %20 more expensive (at $3 total).  This Mee Soto was spicy.  Really, really spicy.  I am still licking the spice off the inside of my cheeks and getting a fiery kick down my throat.  And I am glad I missed out on the chili condiments at this stall, because I probably would not have been able to handle them.  The only big letdown of my Mee Soto meal was the chicken.  It was tough like an old, dried-out ginger root.  Like a chicken jerky.

The best part of the meal was that they took the only currency I had - a $100 bill - after giving me the evil eyes.  They also didn't charge me for takeaway like many other places do... At $2.50 for a big bowl of soup, noodles and chicken, can you really complain about the quality of the meat?

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Beng Hiang

On Friday, my boss took us all out to a celebratory lunch (reasons: new joiners including myself, as well as a teammate getting married).  We went to a Fujianese place around the block called Beng Hiang that is situated along history-rich Amoy Street.  BTW, the geographic region is called Fujian, but the people, their dialect and their food style is called Hokkien.  Very confusing.  Anyways, my team is currently made up of people from India, Indonesia and Malaysia.  The Indians don't eat beef and pork and seafood except fish, the Indonesian guy is a vegan.  It was very hard to order here as even vegetables and bean curd dishes came with some animalea.  We ended up with leafy greens (with salted fish), bean curd (with prawns), batter-fried prawns, and two different orders of chicken (roasted and steamed).


The chicken was good, except most of my team had a hard time getting past the chicken head staring them down from the edge of the large round serving dishes.  I've had better chicken at Cantonese restaurants back home, but never with the assorted condiments of raw spicy peppers (green and red), sambal, etc.  The leafy greens were extremely oily and delicious - but the poor vegan had nothing else to eat other than a bowl of rice, so I hardly touched it except to pick out the salted fish pieces on top.  The bean curd was a bit slimy for my liking and covered in too much bland sauce.  The prawns were covered in a crunchy, yet flaky batter that easily gave way.  I liked those and I wish I had some sriracha mayo to dip them in.  By the way you only ever order prawns here.  Never shrimp.  "Shrimp" here means the little tiny floaters that get mashed into a dried, pungent paste - not something you would order on its own, but a condiment.  So don't ask for shrimp, as the waiters will not understand you.

Singapore Midtown Lunch - What Goes In, Must Come Out

First bout of diarrhea over here... Not sure if it's all the spicy food, or an unclean spoon in one of the hawker centers/food courts.  Anyways, charcoal and lots of water are the main things on the menu for next 24 hours.

I had a 7am meeting with NY (7pm EST) here that got cancelled at 7am (grrr!) and so the boss brought everyone breakfast - from Toast Box I believe.  Mine was a plastic container filled with Mee Siam - thin cellophane noodles doused in a sweet & sour curry sauce with half a hard-boiled egg thrown in for good measure.  In Cantonese, mein (pronounced like mean) is noodles, but here they use "mee", which Connie guesses is the Hokkien dialect version.  Hokkien is a widely-used Chinese dialect in Singapore.  Mandarin, which also uses some kind of n sound though not quite the same as in the Cantonese \version of mein, is the predominant dialect but Hokkien is ubiquitous.  Siam refers to Thailand.  Mee Siam.  It was a bit too sour for my liking, but I did enjoy the slick noodles, and somehow the egg manages to stay white and taste very much like an egg, which provides a much needed relief to the complexity of flavors in this dish.  Might try it again one day, if I ever run out of other things to try.

On the way back from the clinic with our tummy medicine, Connie and I stopped at Banquet food court (right next to Raffles Hospital, so we know it really well by now) for lunch - got some fish porridge ($4.50 and mediocre) and Yong Tau Fu ($3.90 with a good variety of leafy greens at this particular counter).  The seaweed Connie chose was a bit tough and maybe not best for our current digestive state).  But just cause I'm sick it doesn't mean I'm gonna stop sampling the goods...

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Rain & Chaos Ruin Lunch Program

There was a bit of flooding in the city center today due to heavy-ish rainfall:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_541057.html

In the middle of this rainstorm, I had my appointment at the Ministry of Manpower's (MOM) Employment Pass Service Center (EPSC) for registering and fingerprinting for my Employment Pass (EP).  The cool efficiency that surrounds the work visa process here is, I guess, a must in a country that employs foreigners for over 1/3 of its workforce.  In fact, the least efficient part of the process was the 3rd party vendor that runs interference between me, HR and MOM.  I applied for my appointment online and printed a sheet of paper, which had a barcode to be scanned by kiosks upon arrival at MOM.  My name was immediately placed on top of a LED signboard and I was called up for immediate servicing by a well-mannered bureaucrat.  The whole thing lasted 5-10 minutes (not including the 5 minutes spent at a photo booth in the conveniently placed photo lab next door to the MOM EPSC).

Still, with all the rain and my daughter in tow for her Dependant's Pass (DP) and my mother to help with my daughter, I ended up being quite late for work and did a brunch together with them at HarbourFront/Vivocity mall(s) where I was trying to also help register my daughter for a Gymboree class.  Most places are closed until 11am, so ended up in another Kopitiam food court, where we had Pig's Organs Congee (rice porridge), and a helping of steamed rice with 3 vegetables.  The rice + stuff stalls basically have barrels of meat, fish and veggie toppings and the menu reads something like: rice + 1 meat $2.00, rice + 1 meat/1 veg $2.50, rice + 1 fish/1 veg $2.50, etc... I ordered from a surly lady the rice + 3 veg choice ($2.90) and pointed at 3 green-looking heaps - I think bok choy, water crest (sort of), and long beans (Chinese cousin of green beans).  Rice was plopped down on the plate from some measuring utensil that looked like a towel...
The rice porridge ($4) contained mostly bits of liver, and had a good congee consistency.  But it was wanting for more variety of organs, so I was slightly disappointed.  Also the porridge didn't reek of intestines as I had hoped...  The green beans were delicious - when done right, these are salty and crunchy and sometimes tangy when fried with good preserved veggies and pork bits, and once you start you can't stop popping them in.  The leafy greens were less appetizing but went down well with the rice and a good helping of a spicy satay sauce that was surprisingly bitter and reminiscent of middle-eastern s'chug.  


We were approached by some high school kids who wanted to survey us about the "problem" of customers leaving trays of food behind in food courts for the cleaners to take care of, and how this creates a problem with turnover of available seats.  Apparently this system did not seem efficient enough for these kids, and they had some crazy suggestions about LED signaling systems, advertisements to change cultural mindsets, and deposits-returned-upon-tray-cleanup-by-customer as incentives. I kind of like getting up and not worrying about the mess we make, and the cleaning lady was anyhow overly-efficient, basically grabbing our trays before we finished our food...

Connie was meanwhile guided to a legendary hawker stall serving Wonton Mee by one of her new colleagues and points us to this blog entry for a 3rd-party review, should you be inclined:
http://ieatishootipost.sg/2009/07/nam-seng-wanton-mee-is-this-singapores.html

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Too Many Choices!

At lunch time, we were already 3/4 of the way to LauPaSat at the end of an appointment at the local daycare, but still tried to head to A/C'd M11 @ China Square for another shot at Yong Tau Foo - we spotted vegetable choices hidden from our original view that demanded a retry.  But we got lost and ended up at LauPaSat anyways... 


We didn't wander too far from the entrance, it's the only area I've ventured to so far.  I went back to try the Chinese Burger - some dry parts and not nearly as good as Momofuku's, the only redeeming touch was the spicy satay sauce provided on the side.  Connie got orders of roasted duck over herbal soup with thick flat noodles, as well as an order of 5 juicy/soup buns - both from the center chinese stall that you can't miss as there are only 2-3 center stalls and everything else is along the walls.  The soup was earthy, well-salted, and had a good amount of fatty duck.  We didn't like the thick noodles, though, as they felt a bit undercooked or over-dried.  I missed the juicy buns in my first 4 visits.  At $4.00 for 5, it's by far one of the more expensive items you can get here along with Korean and Japanese food that I still have not tried.  For a better value, you can have 10 pcs for $7.  But I am happy to report the buns are steamed to order, the soup is rich and hot, the pork filling deliciously savory, and the dumpling itself is thin yet can withstand shaky chopstick manipulation... If you don't know what I'm talking about, get some at New Green Bo in Chinatown NY.  At least we can have some common ground for this review!
Chinese Burger (Pork) - $2.50
Duck Herbal Soup - $4.50
5 Xiao Long Bao - $4.00
Whoa went a bit over-budget with $5.50 per person - still, it is much better to do LauPaSat family style... With Connie in tow I might just be able to sample all the stalls by year's end.  We spotted a stall - Qiu Lian Ban Mian (seems like a franchise of homemade noodles shop) - that had a line wrapping around tables and other stalls that we vowed to try next time it's not so crowded.  Plus, on the way back home we passed yet another A/C food court (Kou Fu) that looks good.  Damn!  Not enough meals in a day...

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Food + A/C = M11

Spent another entire weekend between apartment hunting and hospitals... Still too overwhelmed to report on the rest of our affairs here so far.  I can say that we like our temporary apartment and the facilities in the building - rooftop pools and playground, gym, and breakfast dining hall.  Our small shockproof camera got shocked (by the humidity?) so we're photo-documenting a lot less than we would otherwise, which also explains the lack of food pictures amidst all the food blogging.  We are a bit stressed out about a lot of things, but we are settling into some kind of routine if that is even remotely possible in our current situation. Too much is going on and I have not been able to digest it - unlike the food we've been sampling, so...


After sweating it out in LauPaSat last week I discovered that you can get similar foods (not as varied or exciting, but similar, and at the same prices) in little food courts in the first floor of various office buildings in the area - with A/C included!  Today, Connie and I met for lunch.  We work in the same building, but it actually took a few phone calls, several more emails, and much coordination to meet roughly at the same time in our shared lobby.  I really tried to time it right so that she would catch my elevator (I'm on 13, she's on 11 but has to climb the stairs to take the elevator from 12 - Bloomberg!@#!), but somehow we missed each other and in fact she had to wait for me on the plush leather couch in the lobby.

We walked out to an averagely humid day, immediately beginning to wilt.  After some hesitation involving new shoes and sore feet we still opted on further-afield LauPaSat.  However, as we were trying to cut across one of the buildings we happened upon M11 @ China Square.  M11 seems to be another food court franchise like Kopitiam - we've sampled some foods from the M11 @ Bencoolen across the street from our apartment building.  This M11 has about 8-10 food stands so it is easier to actually report on what you can get: Korean, Ramen, Dim Sum, Cantonese-style BBQ & Chicken, Beverages (this is always separate from other stands, so for a meal with a drink you have to order from 2 stalls, although sometimes these food courts have someone walking around taking drink orders), and Yong Tau Foo.  The neat thing about most Yong Tau Foo stands is that it is do-it-yourself.  You get a bowl and choose a minimum of 7 ingredients from a selection of 20-30 veggies, tofus, and fish balls/cakes.  Each is 50 cents.  You also choose your broth or curry, the type of noodles if any (50 cents extra), and wallah - soup or curry at SGD$3.50-$4 to be enjoyed with some dipping sauces, fried-dried scallions, and your choice of sesame oil or soy sauce added to the soup or sauces.  If you can find a seating place in the A/C court all the better.  Still a decided lack of napkins - good thing we both carry packs of tissues everywhere now - but a fairly civilized affair here at M11.

Apartment Hunt - Day 3 (and change)

Connie had gotten in touch with an old college friend who is soon moving to Singapore to get married after finishing a business school degree in China.  Her fiance is in Singapore and his mother is in real estate, so he has kindly offered to look for apartments for us and serve as our agent.  We saw five places with him on Saturday and one more today:

Tiong Bahru MRT

Central Green - We saw two units in this condo.  It may have been the weather that day or something in the air, but for some reason the neighborhood and the condominium gave us the hibby jibbies.  The units were big enough, the buildings really close to the MRT, the facilities seemed adequate; maybe the place felt a bit run-down, but I can't point to a real issue that caused us to not give these apartments any consideration.

LUNCH: In-between viewings we had lunch at Vivocity (a huge mall in the South where you can catch the train to Sentosa Island) at the chain restaurant Soup Restaurant.  Great steamed chicken with ginger sauce...

HarbourFront MRT

Harbour Light - We saw two units in this condo as well.  Again, very close to MRT and shopping (Vivocity mall where we just came out of lunch), just like we asked.  This condo was on a major road canopied with overground train tracks.  So busy and noisy, but on the other side it was facing Mount Faber, the local big hill, and a hiking destination.  The units were a bit dated but not bad and a good size.  The facilities int he condo were limited to a small pool and a gym, I think.  I actually liked this place, but it didn't seem very child-friendly and there were little things wrong in the apartments that gave us the excuse to cross these out and keep going.

Buona Vista MRT

One North Residence - The condo was really nice.  Great facilities - it had one of those playground caves with bubble domes for kids to pretend they are moles peering up at gushing parents.  But it was too far from MRT, rooms were tiny, and it had no real maid's room.  On of these "new constructions" we're growing to hate.

So some doable places, but no bull's eyes yet.  

The next day we met our new amateur realtor friend again to see a place in a condo 7 mins walking distance from work:

Raffles Place MRT

The Sail - this is a swanky new building and the apartment we saw was on the 50th floor with amazing views of the bay.  If I were single or without a kid, this place would be it.   But it was not a 3BR, did not have maid's room, and was a bit too modern feeling for my taste.

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Tub O' Rice

Yes, back to LauPaSat again with my colleagues.  Connie is still home sick...

Before I forget, the Pig Organ Soup stall at the 24-hour Kopitiam food court on Bencoolen Street (corner of Bras Basah) was a big hit last night for dinner.  Connie chose for us a portion of Pig's Trotters (comes in a vinegar sauce that is spiced with star anis and possibly the complete 5-spice powder) with some Pig Organ Broth on the side.  The broth had this funky sourness extremely reminiscent of pork intestines - delicious with some white rice.  Come to think of it, the same intestiny funk also permeates a 1-2 meter radius around the stall.  I don't know how the folks at the Viet Kitchen booth next door can handle it all day long.  The trotters were fatty and succulent, and Connie used the vinegar sauce to douse whatever rice was left, which soaked up all the leftover goodness.  Lizzy enjoyed both the fatty and more meaty parts.  Need to explore more offal at this counter next time.  Well, on to today's lunch...

The line at Jia Xin Kitchen (Stall #76) was short today with just one person in front of me, but I remembered it as a potential stop wondering around looking for queues yesterday.  I may have not noticed that the only customers were light-skinned foreigners attracted by the word "burger" on the simple menu.  The Chinese Burger on offer seemed like a steamed pork belly bun (man tao) in the pictorial menu, but not seeing any obvious pork belly in the pictures I opted to pass.  The impatient lady taking orders in this stall was constantly urging me to make a choice ("yes sir?  excuse me sir? ready sir?") as I was perusing the menu.  When I was good and ready I signaled my decision by raising four fingers on my right hand to avoid shouting it over the head of the lone customer in front of me who was busy sorting out his utensils and condiments.  Set #4 (what we in the States know as a meal or a combo is generally referred to as a set here) is an order of Wood Tub Rice with Minced Meat/Tofu (SGD$3), basically MaPau Tofu over rice.  
The "wood tub" in this case was a metal bowl encased in a faux-wood bucket giving the romantic appearance of a rural, home-made dish and also an illusion of enormous portions - the metal bowl is actually only half the size of the tub.  The minced/meat tofu was in a thick XO-style sauce with a poor quality of black beans adding insult to an already over-salted affair.  Good thing there was a big rice-to-sauce ratio.  The tub also came with a bowl of clear corn broth with a thin slice of corn on the cob approximately 2-kernels wide, which tasted like a saltier version of the water you throw away after boiling some corn on the cob in a pot.  This time I knew to prepare my utensils and condiments (pickled radish and tiny salted peanuts, as well as some spicy chili oil with even smaller peanuts), which unfortunately were the highlight of the meal.  I might come back for the "burger" but not for the "tub".
BTW, my colleague got a veg dish from the Indian stall, so I was wrong about the constancy of the biriyani...

Singapore Midtown Lunch - Oodles of Noodles

My entire family has been stricken by the mycoplasma bacterium (factoid: this sucker has no cell wall so penicillin doesn't work on it).  We are all on antibiotics of one kind or another (dictated by age group and allergies).  At 7 days into living here, I can give you better reviews of the Raffles Hospital Walk-In Clinic (good) and Children's Centre (fantastic) than the midtown lunch places...

My new boss continues to tease me about the weather and my commitment to learn to live with it.  He is originally from Malaysia, but only eats at air-conditioned venues or brings back food to the office, which is nicely A/C'd.  Thus, as an act of stubbornness on my part (and also because the rest of my colleagues eat there, and because Connie is home sick and not here to accompany me for lunch, AND because takeaway is 20-30 cents extra!, and because I think my sweat glands WILL adjust imminently) I went back to LauPaSat Festival Market to sample some more exotica sans A/C.  Today was a bit rainy and cool and I was not nearly as hot and sweaty as Monday so I opted for soup.  My teammates headed straight back to their usual Indian food stall and left me to wander with instructions to only eat where there is already a line formed and waiting...
Xin Xiong Ji (stall #74) lists about 5 items on the menu - Fish ball Noodle Soup, Prawn Noodle Soup, Minced Meat Noodle Soup, Laksa (spicy Malaysian noodle soup), and Mini Wok Noodle/Rice.  I am not sure what that last one is (picture showed 3 bowls - soup, noodles, rice), but at $4.50 just seemed too out-of-budget - hey, if I am going to sweat, at least I shouldn't be paying much for it.
I am pretty sure the rest of the people in front of me ordered something completely off-menu and much better-tasting than the standard selection - I think this because the head chef (old guy standing in front of 4 boiling pots tossing noodles and broth and other ingredients like some crazed juggler) seemed to take longer on their dishes and did more flashy things with his ladle.  I went for Prawn Noodle Soup at SGD$3.50.  I discovered too late that I had not followed the assembly line correctly and neglected to collect utensils (chop sticks and plastic spoon), and a small plastic container which you can then fill up with all sorts of condiments from the counter.  By that point I had a heavy bowl of hot soup to carry and I was just lucky that another person in line was good enough to supply me with utensils - the line was now too thick to penetrate for the condiments.  With heavy feelings of loss over condiments not to be tried and reviewed (possibly the lost highlight of the meal) I sulked away to find a free table to sit with my colleagues: chicken biriyani again - I now assume I will see them with this very meal every single time I follow them to LauPaSat).
The broth was reminiscent of Cantonese noodle soups in NYC, the noodles slightly thicker and bouncier than the ones I'm used to (handmade fresh on premises, supposedly).  The soup had two boiled prawns.  Not sure what made it a prawn soup, as there were two of many other ingredients - fish cake slices, pork, etc.  Without the imagined extraordinary condiments, the soup felt bland - and yet still mildly satisfying.  At least I didn't need a napkin/tissue to wipe rivulets of sweat today.  In order to properly investigate the foodstuffs in this madhouse of a food court, I need to bring Connie with me so we can sample more dishes per visit.  Today I discovered that there are even more stalls than I thought, as the outer walls also offer pockets of food-serving locations; this food court is like an inside-out sushi roll.
A least I can look forward to dinner - I plan to try the Pig Organ Soup counter at the Kopitiam food court (A/C included) near our temporary apartment... and sample whatever the rest of my family is having too!

Apartment Hunt - Day 2

After our first disastrous apartment hunting trip, which ended with high fever and a sinking feeling of hopelessness, we resumed our search with cautious pessimism.  Despite seeing six inappropriate apartments on this next expedition, our spirits were actually re-lifted.  We saw apartments in buildings that were just beginning to be filled, construction having finished within weeks before.  One had a swank living room that opened completely into a magnificent outdoor patio space, another had an amazing high-end finish in every room, another with sprawling city vistas and an infinity pool in a deck overlooking a narrow river and a luscious lawn.  Many occupied half the floor in the new narrow buildings they were built inside and the elevator opened directly into the apartment!  Clean, fresh, and the only smells we could detect were of drying paint and caulk.  But of course like most things in life it was too good to be true:

Novena MRT
Pavilion 11 - The one with the living room that turned into a massive outdoor deck - unfortunately it was overlooking two major and active construction sites and the wonderful city view beyond was being overtaken by the mad pace of building.  It was not that near the MRT station and the bedrooms were tiny.

Kallang MRT
Riverine - Dust just settling from end-of-construction here; the apartment and building are newer than the iPad.  I'm not sure what they call the little tributary extending from Singapore Bay/River on top of which the building is situated, but the view from the apartment and the pool deck (just over the infinity pool's horizon) is quite nice.  Probably there will be some construction starting around this place very soon, but for now it is quiet.  No real maid's room.  MRT station is far away and you'd have to walk along a major highway to get there.  No real shopping walking distance away.  Too expensive.

Lavender MRT
Southbank - Another newly-built building.  This one practically seats on top of the MRT.  Open-plan kitchen.   Tiny, tiny bedrooms.  Very limited living room and dining room area.  No real maid's room.

Newton MRT
Suites at Cairnhill - Really high-end finish, from kitchen to bathrooms.  4 bedrooms plus a real maid's room.  5-min walk from Newton MRT, 5 stops to work.  Bedrooms are very small; king size bed wouldn't fit comfortably in the master bedroom.  No convenient shopping in the vicinity, and too expensive.  Pool deck overlooks busy street and construction sites, so constant buzz.

Orchard/Somerset MRT's - kind of...
Spring Grove - Older with outdated finish, really smelly and rundown.  Felt like a basement.  Lots of westerners in condo.  Limited facilities.  Far far away from MRT.
Aspen Heights - Scary, claustrophobia-inducing condominium.  Have you seen "Dark Water"?

Issues with newly-built places: they are too expensive for the space and location you get, and most will not conveniently fit a king size bed in the master bedroom.  There are also either regulations or some fashion mandate to build rooms with sitting spaces built into the window walls that dig into the already small rooms.  Also they have to come with a bomb shelter, which is proposed as the maid's room but has no ventilation (duh!).  Some smarter developers make bomb shelters be common spaces in the building, but they probably paid less per sq foot (psf), which means the location sucks... These almost ok ones are too costly to also be able to afford a car.

Issues with old places: they are too smelly.  I guess upkeep is expensive with all the humidity, so you just hope someone won't notice?  Anyways, it is really hard to consider a place seriously, even with all the luxury of large spaces and good location, when you're holding your breath to avoid inhaling dampness and musk.

After musing thusly to our agent at the end of the day, we were told that there are renovated units in older buildings, but those are hard to come by.  Right...  Well, let's just keep looking, then...