Saturday, December 5, 2009

We are officially moved into our new house on Duchess Road. It looks like a house, but who knew the little things make it feel so different?

We're not fully acclimated to the heat and humidity here so we're trying to figure out how often to run the airconditioning. We don't want to run it constantly because we're afraid we won't be able to afford to eat after the first electric bill. At the same time we want to be comfortable and want to preserve our furniture from the humidity. Trial and error and more physical time in this tropical climate.

I took me at least a couple of hours to read through the instruction manual and run my first load of dishes in a new and foreign dishwasher. It would have helped had I purchased the proper dish"WASHER" detergent. Who needs to go to Tanglin Mall to participate in a snowy-sudsy event when you can create one in your own home. Our landlords, Patricia and Albert, never used a dishwasher, so this is a new appliance for the home. I tried to hand wash a few dishes, but couldn't get any hot water. Evidently homes don't usually have hot water in the kitchen. I am still not sure I buy that one. I'm checking out some other opinions. At least we do have hot water for the dishwasher, washing machine and upstairs bathroom.

Albert, our loadlord, is a technical computer/electronic wiz. He's been educating me on the use of 240V vs 120V for our electrical appliances. We didn't bring many, but I think I already fried our IHome docking station. Albert is checking it out to see if it can be salvaged. Might just be a fuse. Or so he says. He switched our hard drive computer tower over to local voltage with a click of a switch. Who knew? I've been so afraid to plug in anything else. This is scary powerful current over here. I was wiping down switch plates with a "slightly damp" cloth and could feel the current buzzing through by hands and arms. I guess it's a much more efficient use of power, but all I can think of is little children and sticking things into the electrical sockets. I am so thankful the girls are old enough to know better. Although they have been banned from plugging anything into a socket. Albert has brought me several different adapters and transformers (doesn't that sound techy) to get our computer and newly purchased lamps working.

The girls and I have visited both of the 2 IKEAs here in Singapore. We had to spell it out for the cab driver as he says they pronounce it EEkea. We much preferred the store in Tampines. It's farther away, but much larger. We bought some lamps (Albert brought us adapters as they are a little different plugs than the sockets here. Not a voltage/amp thing, just a 2 prong vs. a 3 prong thing.) We also bought some black plates and bowls. I found some beautiful black and metalic green silk pillow covers in Chinatown, so I'm going with that theme. I'm accenting with a metallic copper color too. Going for the sleek, modern, minimalist, zen, fung shui, nature theme.

Alison got a fun red carpet for here room. Jacqueline is still searching for the right carpet for her room. Our upstairs is entirely parque flooring so its nice to cozy it up with carpets. Brian's boss is Pakistani so he's going to check into some silk carpets for us too.