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.


View Larger Map

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?