Somewhat settled in Singapore

It has been a little over a month since we moved into our new apartment in Singapore and we are finally (somewhat) settled.

I must admit it was tougher than I thought it would be moving straight into a completely unfurnished apartment ... especially with Lou & Serge being freshly sprung from their 30 days in quarantine. Mad dashes to IKEA for mattresses, furniture and basic kitchen utensils to get us started and to the hardware store for doggie-proofing supplies.

much more wiener dog friendly!

Doggie-proofing? What? Our apartment is on the 14th floor with balconies all around and we needed to reinforce the railing security to protect the dogs from falling. Serge could definitely fit between the bars. He probably wouldn't but I couldn't take that chance. We settled on some fine plastic meshing which will keep the doggies safe and won't obstruct the views.

We slept on a mattress on the floor and ate and sat on an IKEA bistro set for the first couple of weeks waiting for our hastily acquired furniture to be delivered, our newly purchased televisions to arrive, and our cable and WiFi to be activated.

It was very different from when we moved to South Africa in 2012. In Joburg, we rented a completely furnished ground floor apartment with a grassy garden for the dogs. And since Vince had moved into the apartment a full six months before I finally made my permanent migration, by the time I arrived he had the cable and WiFi already live. He had a car and was well acquainted with the local malls and markets. In retrospect, it was actually quite an easy transition for me.

an antique Chinese cabinet and Peranakan ceramic accesoriess

Yes, Vince had started working in Singapore last December again ahead of my moving here, but he spent most of that month outside of Singapore traveling around his new region before heading back to the USA for the last two weeks of December to celebrate the Christmas holiday with our family. Although we had rented the new apartment in November, we did not take possession of it until January 2, the day we both landed in Singapore. It was a rude awakening to reality.

an antique calligraphy desk we will use as a TV stand

At the same time as I am trying to make this new apartment into our cozy home, I am trying to be selective about the amount of furniture I am buying. We have a huge storage unit filled to the rafters with furniture waiting for us at home in the USA and now that we have adopted a minimalist lifestyle, we have embraced the  smaller footprint that goes along with it. I will find a place someday for the teak and Chinese antiques we are buying, but not the IKEA pieces. Luckily in a country where 30% of the population are expats, there is a strong aftermarket for IKEA furniture!

We shipped very little from South Africa to Singapore. Clothes, some kitchenware, office supplies and the Webers. All of our "Africa stuff" is on its way back to our US storage.


Our apartment is located along the East Coast of Singapore on Amber Road in the trendy Katong area. 11 Amber is one of the older high rises in the area and therefore has just one building and fewer apartments overall. Only 20 floors with two apartments per floor. (Some of the newer complexes have several buildings with 100s of individual apartments and are almost like small cities.)

The Chinese Swimming Club

11 Amber has a small gym and pool but we don't use them. We joined the venerable Chinese Swimming Club located a few steps away from the apartment almost as soon as we moved in. Between the main clubhouse and its additional recreation center across the street, the CSC offers two 50m Olympic size pools, another 25m lap pool, a water polo pool and and a recreation pool.

The Recreation Complex across the street

The club also houses a huge gym, a rooftop of tennis courts, a floor of badminton and squash courts, a billiards room, a bowling alley and table tennis center. There are several restaurants, a bar, a casino, a spa, a dance and music studio and many activity rooms and event spaces. Besides swimming every day, I am also learning to practice tai chi on Sundays.

Our location is ideal. Katong is very atmospheric and culturally rich. A short walk gets us to the expansive East Coast Park and beach, several shopping malls, tons of restaurants and bars along picturesque East Coast Road, hair salons, our new vet and doctors, two Catholic Churches and a wet market. Anything else we could want is just a quick cab or bus ride away.


Let's take a tour ...

entrance lobby for the apartment... please take off your shoes outside before entering!

Come on in! Morning sun streams in from the small entry balcony.

The main living space is long and narrow making it somewhat difficult to furnish. It serves as our entry foyer, living room, dining room and an outdoor balcony breakfast room.

Although it is small, the high ceilings, expansive sea views and bountiful light make it feel much larger.

The long hallway goes from the dining corner in the main living area to the master bedroom suite.

First, you pass the office on the right.

Next is the guest room.

And then finally at the end of the hallway, the master bedroom ...

... and en suite master bath (with tub!)

Back down the hall to the dining corner ...

Across from the office and guest room is the guest bathroom (with shower)

Other spaces include a maid's room, a laundry room, and a maid's bathroom all of which are off the kitchen. (Yes, we have a live-in helper ... mainly for the dogs.) There is also a tall fairly generous storage closet in the hallway for all our suitcases.

The main reason we chose this apartment was for the sea views from the windows and balconies. I can't get enough of them! Besides the expansive views, the glass doors and transom windows open allowing all the bountiful sea breezes to flow unobstructed into the apartment. We have hardly used our air conditioning! There are several small balconies and one very long balcony that runs the entire southern length of the apartment, all of which overlooks the greenery of East Coast Park, the ships in the Singapore Straits and the islands of Indonesia beyond.

The living room / dining room balcony.

Looking into the main living area from the balcony.

The kitchen and balcony or "yard"

There are beautiful sunsets over the sea from the kitchen yard balcony!

There is one long continuous balcony starting outside of the office ...

... running past the guest room ...

... all the way to outside the master bedroom

the views from the windows and balconies are like paintings!

that's the rooftop tennis courts of the Chinese Swimming Club on the left

This being Asia, the first thing we did - even before we arranged the furnishings - was to figure out the feng shui of the space. The idea is to arrange furniture and add elements to attract the good energy and discourage the bad energy.

Like I said, the apartment was completely unfurnished when we moved in. Not even a dish or a mop! We have purchased most of the big pieces of furniture already but we still need a few more pieces before we are completely done with the basics ... like some chairs and a table for the guest room balcony and a low antique Chinese dresser for the master bedroom here ...

And there is still lots of room left for decorating with all the arts and crafts we plan to acquire during our travels around Asia. Especially on the shelves here ...

And a perfect spot for a sculpture in this space here ...

And another one perhaps here ...

One thing is for sure. It is really hard to know whether you are making the right decision in those few jet-lagged days when you have to choose a place to live in a city you've never lived in before. But now that we are here, we are quite sure we made the right choice ... and that is a huge relief!

House Hunter's International: the Singapore edition

Moving to South Africa definitely took some adjustment after living in the USA. For one thing, after raising our family in much larger houses in New Jersey, we chose to move into a small garden townhouse with a tiny yard in Sandton. Moving to Valley Lodge was an adjustment we welcomed and enjoyed, but it was an adjustment nonetheless. 



But aside from scale, living in Sandton did not require a huge adjustment in terms of lifestyle. We still lived a somewhat suburban lifestyle near the action of Johannesburg (JGB), drove a car to get to where we were going, and did a considerate amount of entertaining and cooking at home.

But like New York, Singapore (SGP) is pretty much all-city which means an adjustment in everyday lifestyle in addition to scale. (For the record, we did look at actual houses with yards and enclosed garages in SGP as well as in JGP - they do exist -  but we have enjoyed care-free apartment living in South Africa with shared amenities such as pools and gyms. And since we are renting short time and not buying in SGP either, we are free to indulge more of our city fantasies and really step outside of our comfort zone, i.e super high-rise apartment living with a view.) But real city living brings with it more adjustments ...

Firstly in SGP everyone has a live-in maid. Neither Vince nor I grew up with a live-in maid nor did we have a live-in nanny or live-in maid when our children were young. While it is true that for all intents and purposes, between her evening dog-sitting and her three days a week cleaning and laundry service, Cecelia has been practically living at Valley Lodge, the fact remains that she still goes home nearby to sleep every night unless we are away. And she never ever cooked for us, did the food-shopping or ran errands for us.

However, the cost of finding a convenient sitter to walk the dogs when we are out of the apartment for the evening or kenneling them for an extended period of time when we are away from Singapore plus the cost of regular maid service once or twice a week totally trumps the cost of just having a live-in to do it all. Besides, many of the apartments we viewed did not even have an oven (!) and none of them had a dishwasher. They all however had a maid's room and bathroom. Sharing a small space with a non-family member will be a major adjustment. Having someone to walk the dogs and run errands however will be awesome!

Second adjustment, we are going to try to live in SGP without a car! Except for the Gautrain and the very limited Rhea Vaya, there really is no mass transportation to speak of in JGP, so everyone has a car. (Our only adjustment since moving to SA was owning one car versus four!) And with the security issues in JBG, walking as a way to get around the city was really not an option. You drive from your secure parking in Sandton to secure parking in JBG. I did walk to my local shopping center, but that is in Sandton, not JBG. They are putting in a Rhea Vaya line in Sandton that will connect to more places in JHB, but unfortunately for us that is too little and way too late.

In addition, cars are much more expensive to lease in SGP and there are zero security issues. Taxis are cheap and for the rest of the time, mass transportation is plentiful. And if you pick your neighborhood correctly, you can simply walk to local shopping centers and restaurants.

Changi Business Park

Luckily one of my favorite shows on the HGTV channel has always been House Hunters International (HHI.) Even before we moved to SA, I watched HHI like most people watch game shows. I played from home.

Now the way HHI works is that the expats-to-be are usually shown three properties in their intended city based on a previously determined wish list. View, space, proximity to work, schools, the beach, town, etc.

Our wish list was pretty simple. A space that is first and foremost dog-friendly; it must have at least two bedrooms and an office space; we would like some storage space; and most importantly, it must have a good location close to the airport and Vince's office and within walking distance to shopping and restaurants. After a few viewings, we quickly eliminated houses as a consideration. Much more space than we either needed or wanted.

Unfortunately that meant we also had to knock storage off of our wish list since the apartments in SGP really do not include the kind of storage and space we enjoyed in JGP. (Darn, I am going to have to do some more paring down of my clothes before we leave SA!) The typical apartment size also means we probably will not be doing much entertaining at home. To compensate, we added a sea view to our wish list. Yay! Back to the ocean at our doorstep!

After dog-friendly, our first consideration on choosing a location for our new neighborhood was proximity to Vince's office and the airport (his second office.) Since they are both co-located in Changi, that was easy. So we concentrated on Katong and the Eastern Corridor, an easy commute by taxi to both with a lively expat and local culture.

After seeing about 20 places altogether in four days, we narrowed it down to the following three apartments.

1. The highrise with killer views of the sea.

Plus side: Very good neighborhood close to amenities like restaurants, buses and shopping. Partially furnished. There is a private entrance from the elevator into a lobby and the living room with views of the water from all the balconies. But the dogs (and we) would have to adjust to using an elevator to get outside for a walk several times a day. And the pool and gym are small so we would have to join a club. (Not too much of a problem really as the Chinese Swimming Club with an abundance of space and amenities is just two doors down.)

wrap around balconies

with sea views

sea views from every window too!

sea view from the small but private balcony off the master bedroom!

2. Valley Lodge II. ground floor apt with wrap-around patio, and convenient green space. On the plus side, this would be so easy to move into and would mean little or no adjustment for the dogs. Open the door and they are outside for a walk. There is a huge pool and gym and a clubhouse. Down-side, not as close to amenities and it doesn't have that "wow!" SGP sea view.

3. Highrise with a view. also close to amenities. It has the most convenient location of all. It has a sea view from the living room's balcony but the apartment does not have a private elevator entrance. And it is completely unfurnished.

nice balcony

nice sea view from the living room

On HHI, the first thing the expats do is eliminate one of the choices. That was easy. #3. So now we are left with essentially what would make us happy (#1) versus what would make the dogs happy (#2).

And speaking of the dogs, here is another adjustment - this time for Lou & Serge though. Unfortunately for our canine heroes, along with other the other indignities of pet relocation, they have to spend at least 30 days in quarantine! While house-hunting in SGP, we decided to stop by and check out Lou & Serge's new temporary housing.

We were pleasantly surprised. Like their local kennel in JBG, the Sembawang Animal Quarantine Station was very roomy, the dogs can share a space, and there is daily recreation. Vince can stop by in December and bring Lou some toys, bring their favorite foods and treats and there is a special area set aside so that Vince can play with them when he visits.

nice and roomy and they can share a space!

there is an air-conditioned sleeping area and a screened in patio

fenced in recreation area for ...

... one on one play

Our decision? Stay tuned for the conclusion of House Hunters International: the Singapore edition ...