Office Space Weight Room

Fred is a regular at working out.  A number of years ago I bought him a bowflex on craigslist.  He loves using it and it's so compact it moves with us everywhere.

In our home in Vienna, the bowflex has a great spot in our oversized laundry room.  It's still in a functional part of our home, but away so no one but Fred and I see it.  I even set up an old tv there so he could watch news while he worked out.

When we lived in a 2 bedroom townhouse in Coronado, it had a large bedroom that had plenty of space to fit all our bedroom furniture plus the bowflex. So guess what came with us!

Our home in Singapore once again has huge rooms but not many.  We brought the bowflex, which would easily fit in our bedroom, but just off our bedroom is a space many people use as an office.  Ours now has a bowflex in it and I have my office in an oversized hallway.  See pictures below.

This decision on where to put the bowflex always results in a little stress in our marriage.  The bowflex means easy work outs for Fred and that is important to him and obviously I love him enough to have bought it  (for our home in VA, when it had a space NOT in the bedroom).

Unfortunately, his workouts are often done at 6AM before work and hearing the clanking around as he works out disturbs my beauty rest.  I like to sleep in and preferable would never in my life choose to wake up at 6AM.  I also realize school will start soon, and our entire family will be up clanking around at 6AM, so for the next few weeks, I'll be waking to some clanking and trying to fall back asleep.

Settling In- Challenges in Singapore

The biggest thing I miss from the US- Bed Bath and Beyond.  Every time we move I end up running there for bath, kitchen, rugs, decorations.  They have it all.  I've been to two differen little Japanese stores that are like home stores, but I could get exactly what I wanted.  I've resorted to searching on line and ordering what I need (thank goodness we have an FPO address and shipping is free). Running to stores here is time consuming and annoying.  I don't know what they have, they seem so disorganized.  It's like when a food store reorganizes stuff and you are stuck going up and down every isle trying to find what you need.  I am constantly feeling that way.  One errand seems to take forever and I walk to and from so when I buy the wrong thing, it's a pain to return it.

Case-in-point--- I decided to just re-setup the cable Fred had at his apartment here in our new home.  However, I needed lots of extra cable line- the connections were much farther from where we wanted the TVs.  I walked over to a nearby hardware store bought cable- unfortunately it had slightly smaller connectors and wouldn't fit.  I walked back returned them and got a different type that worked, but it still wasn't long enough.  I walked back, bought 2 female/female adapters (ok maybe I'm being to techy for some of you)  but the bottom line is somehow I grabbed 1 female/female and 1 female/male.  So, I still need to walk back and exchange it for 1 more correct connector.  The walk is only 15 minutes, so it's not bad, but for some reason these running back and forth with the wrong things seem so much more painful here than driving 15 minutes to Home Depot.

The good news is, they do have an IKEA here and a neighbor drove me there.  I was able to buy many of the random things you need to set up a new home and Target Online and Amazon are filling in the rest of the stuff.

Movers Singapore style

Our movers delivered our household goods about 5 days ago and I have finally gotten our wifi back online and wanted to do a quick update on how they do a move in Singapore.

We had 6 (wow) guys show up to unload our crates.  however, one guy would open the crates while 5 watched.  Our crates were glued and nailed so tightly this took about 15 minutes to do 1crate (we had 13- you do the math on how long that took).  Once each crate was opened the guys would line up and pass the boxes down the line to our front porch.  Heavy furniture were individually carried to the porch.  Then the guys would carry the items into the house leaving all furniture items still wrapped in paper. This process continued for the first 6 crates then the truck went to get the rest of the crates.  The 5 guys left behind had lunch and took a nap.

At this point I kept thinking how about in unwrapping all that furniture inside my home?   But they have a system, unwrap after they unload everything they would tell me, "unload, unwrap, set up."  Finally, all items were in the house, but it was so late they had to come back the next day to unwrap and set up. Unload was it for day 1.

When I saw 6 guys for a move (we've never had more than 3) I was quite excited and thought they can easily do this in a day.  The stuck crates were a setback, but the biggest thing I noticed that day and have started picking up as a way of life here is that there is a system and you follow it.  The thought of unwrapping the items while the truck was gone for 2 hours was not in the regular system of doing things so why deviate.  The entire process would have been completely inefficient with the typical 3 guys you get in the US, but in Singapore people are something they have plenty of, and wages are low.  Human resources is their biggest resource.  Systems work fine here if you throw more manpower instead of looking for ways to be more efficient in the process routine.

It's not the US way, so it's different to me, but it works, albeit inefficiently, but what matters most to me is our stuff is here!  Once out home is set up I'll post photos of the inside.

Moving in

Moving in tomorrow!  I got a quick call yesterday from the shipping company and our stuff arrived and got through customs quickly so they are delivering in on Friday!  Yea!  The house is really nice and we are so excited to get our stuff and get settled.

This is what our house looks like from the front.  The portion sticking out is the large living room with windows on 3 sides.  The portion to the right is a huge master bedroom and the portion to the left are two bedrooms for Katie and Jen.  There is a large dinning room in the middle behind the living room and then a working kitchen off the back.  The ground level is set up with fans and we have some new outdoor patio furniture and a ping pong table to put down there.

Here are the girls on our driveway.  There are palm trees lining the driveway.  

Wish us luck that our items arrive safe and sound.  We will be busy the next week setting up the home and will post inside photos soon. 

TV Shows

The cable TV Fred is set up with in his temporary place is adequate.  We don't know the channels, nor do we know when anything comes on, so it's hard to plan to watch or find a particular show.  Many people here just watch DVD TV series.  So we bought a few.

In the 3 weeks the girls and I have been here, we have been watching TV most nights from 8PM until about midnight.  The problem with DVD shows is there is another one next- no waiting a week to see what happens.  You become addicted and can't stop.  The girls continually plead "Just One More."  When you have nothing to do, why not stay up and just sleep in?  It's summer break and we don't have a schedule, so it's an ok time to have a little fun and indulge.

So our first TV show was Heroes.  This show came out around 2004- not a very good TV viewing time when your twins are 3 years old, so Fred and I heard about this great show, but missed it.  The girls are now old enough to watch some more scary shows. This show is about regular people who realize they have a super power ability.  There is a bad guy, who wants everyone's super powers and kills them to steal it (not sure how this works in reality- but it's TV).  The show is well done and quite addictive.  We watched the entire season in 1 week.  I thought this was something to brag about, but ran into another person out here who watched an entire season of a show in a weekend.  Umm- not much to do huh?

After a fairly intense show, we opted for The Office- with Steve Carrell.  It's been light and easy AND with no commercials, each show is 22 minutes- you can more or less get 3 viewed in an hour.  How great is that!  Fred has been trying to get the girls to try out Smallville- the stories of Superman when he was a teenager.  We've actually seen some of those- pre-kids and they are pretty good.  Another friend has offered us all 9 years of Seinfeld.  Personally, that was one of my favorite shows and I am totally looking forward to watching 9 years of the show again- in a month!  What have our life come to?

Ok- our lives are not just TV and puzzles.  We have been going out and exploring, but I have been really bad at remember to take pictures and I want to try to do posts with pictures so you can see what we see.  I'll get to posting those fun adventures soon!

Time for a Puzzle

When you live somewhere longterm temporarily there is no yard work, very little housework, not a ton of cooking.  So what do you do all day?

I thought there might be moments that were slow in our temporary quarters, so before we departed VA, I had bought a 1000 piece puzzle.  The girls and I spent a little time over the last 3 weeks putting pieces in and I wanted to share our results.

Jen and the 1000 pieces we were starting to sort through.

Working on the boarder- we may have gotten ourselves in over our heads.

Serious progress.

All that red is yet to be put together.  How do you do that- ?

Trial and error and lots of patience got all those red pieces together.  Glued and taped.  Ready to hang on the wall in one of the girls bedrooms.

Florida or Singapore

For the last two weeks we have been living in a temporary furnished apartment.  It has all the basic amenities you would need.  It feels like we have been on a two week vacation and with the heat and palm trees around we've decided it's like Florida.  

We have a timeshare in Florida so we went there often, sometimes we visited during the hot, rainy afternoon summer heat- this is what Singapore is like (year round).  While in Florida we go to the pool often, we have been doing that here too.  We stay up late and sleep in, all of us but Fred, who is not on summer vacation, are sleeping in late.  In Florida, we generally hit the amusement parks, we are not doing that, although there is a Universal Studios in Singapore, but we haven't been yet.   I guess our periodic outings to various places in Singapore to explore are like amusement parks- we definitely return exhausted.

So what's the difference?  If you don't pay attention to all the Asians, Indians, and Maylay people around you and think you just love Asian food so much it's all I want to eat you might be able to fool yourself into thinking I'm just in Florida.  I am very good at ignoring my surroundings and I actually like Asian food, so this really is doable for me.

When will reality settle in?   When our furniture arrives and we have a new home with our own stuff but not in Vienna?  When I'm driving a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side and I'm on the wrong lane directions?   When school starts and we begin a routine without our Vienna family and friends?   I'm sure it will hit us that we are actually living somewhere else and it's not Vienna or even Florida.

But for now I'll enjoy my altered vacation reality.

Not so 4th of July

I love the 4th of July, it is one of my favorite holidays.  I love the warm summer weather, I LOVE fireworks.  Since I was a kid I always remember staying up late watching fireworks and having a great day being totally exhausted at bedtime.

Obviously in Singapore they do not celebrate the 4th of July, however the Americans in our community do recognize the holiday and are given the day off.  So what to do with a day off that is typically a huge celebration for Americans.

Well we started our day off viewing a car to possibly buy, discussed it and decided to go ahead and take this vehicle.  It will not be in our hands for another month, which is hard to accept.  Knowing you will still be walking around for month, but have a car coming is a bummer.

Fred had been wanting to show us the Singapore history museum.  So what better day to go than on your own county's celebration of their independence.  Why not learn about another county's independence.

We ended up noticing a Popey's chicken restaurant near the museum, so decided to treat ourselves to a very American chicken and biscuits meal.  (Side note I noticed on an older entry that I'd comment if the fast food tastes the same. The chicken here was juicier, the breasts were cut in half , and the biscuits were less buttery and dryer- but overall delicious!)

Not wanting to just go home and have this big celebration day end with tv and sitting home in the evening (that wouldn't fit the bill for my concept of the 4th of July) I found us a showing of Man of Steel that started in an hour.   Off to the theater, we watched a very American movie with lots of loud noises and violence much like fireworks- almost as good as the real thing.

On our walk back to our home we did pass by a house with a few kids outside holding sparklers, I guess there are other families out here who love it enough to find a way to make it a celebration.

Happy 4th of July.

Mall Hopping

In Tysons Corner mall is one of our favorite restaurant called Wasabi, it is a conveyor belt sushi place.   This place was always fun to watch your food choices go by and the plates are different colors based on their price.  The girls thought this was this was super cool.  The other day we were checking out a new mall and guess what we found-- a conveyor belt sushi place-- yea!  We weren't hungry so we didn't try it, but it will definitely be on our places to hit and may become our new Wasabi!

Also while walking around this mall we came across something we needed to share.  The place is called baby spa.  Not sure what exactly it is but basically there are tubs of different sizes that you bring your baby to.  We saw one in the big tub pool thing with a floaty ring and the pool had little waves.   So my best guess is maybe families that only have a shower bing their child here for a fun bath?  Definitely nothing I've seen before so I wanted to share it.