Month: May 2005

Cool slides through a wall of water. Unfortunately this apartment is not so close to the subway, because otherwise it is fantastic. It even has it’s own bomb shelter. 

Today was a very quiet day at work. I rode a bike at the gym at the hotel for a bit before heading taking a taxi to work. I had a nice chat with the cab driver. Because he likes me, he recommended a place to buy electronics at the end of the ride. Mre eveidence that shopping is the chief activity in Singapore. Everyone from AMD was out of the office, today, so I had visitor suite 1 all to myself. I got some work done, had lunch with the TD Litho manager, and left at 3 to go househunting. I looked at 5 places. Three were very flashy new high rise condos, with polished marble floors, shiny new kitchens, underground parking, views, gyms, multiple pools with waterfalls and stuff like that. Two others were older multi story places with the typical tile floors, porches and bigger rooms. Probably subway and shopping access is the most important criteria. Based on that, one of the shiny new places wins. It is less than 10 minutes walk from the subway, and during that 10 minutes you pass several markets, many restaraunts, a mall, a bus depot, the local community center and etc. While it does not have its own yard (which the older places both do) it does have a grass perimeter around the complex which is right outside the front door of the building. I know all this because I went and walked around the neighborhood after the apartment viewing was over. By the end I was soaked with sweat, but everyone around me seemed OK.

A few things:

My friend, Gargi, from grad school just had her 2nd child, Arnuv, this weekend. She lives in Philly and works for Merck.

Lana, my friend from high school, fell into a river this weekend on a canoing trip and soaked her cell phone and lost all her phone numbers.

Ben thinks that his visa to Sweden will be granted in a few weeks so after the France trip, he should be able to move to be with Johanna.

What else? Hmmm… tomorrow I have an appointment with my car dealership to do the 37,500K mile tuneup. I just have to do some dishes and hopefully off to bed early tonight.

We are back in Richland. We went to Washougal to visit friends there and also looked into land and houses. One house has beautiful river & mountain views but just too expensive. We heard Mel Gibson has a mansion there also.

We are back at home. I love going to Bard, but it’s all very exhausting. Vince is wired the whole time we are there, even if we aren’t doing anything too exciting. So after three days there, we came home and he was in tears and sooo tired. Finally, he’s napping now and hopefully will be in a good mood when he wakes up.

On Friday, I got there at 5 pm and met Bob in his office and we went home and had a pizza dinner. Bob spent many, many hours reading books out loud to Vince.

On Saturday, our most exciting day, I went to Poet’s walk with Edda and then we all went to the Red Hook Playground for a picnic. Then we went to the Bard nursery school’s year end party and hung out there for 2 hours eating cake.

Yesterday, we painted on the sidewalk.

Vince painting on the sidewalk.

Vince and Bob reading.

Edda at Poet’s Walk near Bard.

Edda at the Bard nursery school party.

Today I had lunch with Raymond (a colleague) and his family. They are really nice, and after lunch they showed me around Bishan, where they live. It is closer in than Woodlands, which is really on the outskirts. It is centered on an MRT station (North South Line stop NS17) with its own mall (many MRT stations have a mall) and is about halfway between the stop for Chartered (NS 7, 8 or 9) and downtown (NS 22-25). There is also a dog run in the park and some of the Singapore Kennel club classes are held there. I am going to check with the Realtor about whether anything is available in that neighborhood. Most neighborhoods in Singapore have a community center where classes of various sorts are held. At the Bishan community center there are classes in jujitsu, and belly dancing. I am not sure about what else yet. I had more fun than I expected to this weekend, riding around on the subway and walking about town. There are so many different faces to see here, so many different kinds of noses, chins, lips, teeth etc. And because it is the weekend and school is out for midyear break, there were lots of folks around, shopping, flirting, kissing and etc. It was a bit more lively than the subway back and forth to work, besides which I am finally emerging from the last of my jet lag. It will be a lot more fun to run around here with my family. I am looking forward to that.