Aaah, the life of an expat! After almost three years in an old colonial style bungalow, we moved to a year-old, modern resort (read:all white, glass and concrete box with three reflection pools and lots of plants along the perimeter) house, ironically, on the other side of the dreaded highway. But what a difference a street makes!
You've all heard me moan about "too much jungle" when we lived on Mt. Pleasant Rd. Well, I am happy to report that the new neighborhood doesn't have monkeys invading our trash bins every weekend. I haven't spotted a monitor lizard, or skinks or geckos. No squirrels, bats or owls. Most importantly, no snakes (knock on wood)!!! But this being Singapore, you can never be too far away from little critters. We have spied moths of various sizes, garden snails that leave disgusting trails on the white wall fence, cute little frogs (one of which has been successfully captured as a specimen and placed under a magnifier and eventually released), about five species of ants so far, but the best part - two birds who have made a nest in our balcony planter box. They are gorgeous and I am on a mission to find out what type of bird they are. My eleven year old and I were so inspired, we finished painting our birdhouse.
We are all pretty pleased with the move. Four bedrooms, an attic which serves as a guest room/arts and crafts space/storage, a basement and a small roof garden make for a spacious home where everyone has room to move. The boys are thrilled to have their own room, and I am just happy to have toilets that don't clog and doors that lock. There's still quite a bit of sorting and discarding and re-purposing to do, and we're to leave for our month long summer trip to Canada, but the house is shaping up. I'm hoping to have it ready for a housewarming/birthday party by September.
Having said all this, the house is not without its share of, er, problems. Ironically, it shares a lot in common with the older house across the highway. The glass panels that form the "sky wall" that runs the height of the house leaks everytime it rains. The contractor explained to me that the aluminum bars that hold the glass panels are hollow inside, and if there's even a pin sized gap in the joints, the water will seep in and run through what would be effectively hollow pipes. Thus, the water that pools at the basement. The outdoor kitchen which we thought was a blessing is turning out to be a major electrical hazard in the rain. Being built on an elevated platform and having very little by way of eaves or even a sloping roof, rain falls in sheets and splatters everywhere, drenching everything up to table height. I've warned our helper not to operate say, the iron, or any other appliances while it's raining. Lastly, the fuse box trips every time it rains, killing half the circuits of the house. That means the kitchen, study, basement,three bedrooms and the service area are without electricity. And funny enough, flicking the circuit breakers don't seem to help when it's raining. Doesn't this all sound painfully familiar? It's the same lament I used to moan about when we were at Mt. Pleasant.
At least our landlord here employs a property manager/broker who seems receptive to our requests. He really does seem like a nice, honest man, but it's been over a month now since our move, and well, the problems are still waiting to be fixed. And oh, I failed to mention the almost-deal-breaker: the property next door is being demolished and in its place will be two super houses. A year-long construction that involves piling is looming at us. The surveyor came into the house to take pictures and give us a copy of the house report before the demolition started (two weeks into our move) and to soften the blow a bit, gave us two bottles of wine with the report. Sigh...
On the upside, we are at least enjoying thinking about design and furniture. We tell ourselves that this is a dry run for when we build/own our own home. We will know exactly what we want, and what design flaws we want to avoid. A contemporary home cannot be all about looks, and I wonder how architects and designers can design good-looking houses with so many impractical features.
How long do we think we'll live in this new house? Who knows? As an expat, I've learned to take things as they come along, to wait wait until the last minute, to make the most of what is here and now and to think there's no such thing as a perfect place, but where ever my family is, is home. So this is home for now. It's a little like me, a work in progress. I hope this place will give us a lot of happy memories just like all the previous homes we've lived in.
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