December 2007 - My New Home

Degrees Celsius

Who are the people in your neighborhood? I spent this week in Singapore getting acquainted with my new surroundings. Contrary to my original beliefs, I actually like Orchard Road, especially at night and especially during the Christmas Season. It is not like Naperville as much as a cross between London, the Champs Elysees and Ginza. Marks and Spencer, Takashimaya and Boarders on the corner, every expensive shop Paris would frequent and a Starbucks on every block. When Gloria Estefan warns that the ‘rhythm is going to get you,’ watch out for that Asian shopping bug instead.

My new apartment has 2 flat screen TV’s, 2 DVDs, 6 remote controls, over 100 stations, but no alarm clock or radio. So my first purchase was an iPod clock radio. My apartment has no dishwasher too, but on my second day I realized I do have one and her name might be Ling Ling. She comes everyday to clean my apartment and it makes me nuts! Feng shui uses a lot of items placed on angles. I’m more of an orthogonal girl (i.e. anal retentive) so when I walk in from work, my first five minutes are spent straightening the items in my apartment. Sunday is now the only day of the week that I have to make my bed.

Getting acquainted with my new kitchen was dangerous. My oven is the size of a microwave oven, and it is a microwave oven too. I go to make a pizza, trying to set the dial to 400, but it only went so far, so I figured it was warming up. Then it starts making a sound like a microwave. I walk away for a while and start to smell something burning. I stopped the oven, thinking I microwaved the pizza, opened the door to take the rack with the pizza out, and burnt the bejesus out of my fingers. 400 degrees Celsius = over 752 degrees Fahrenheit . The oven did not go that high, but it was on the hottest setting. I will not have fingerprints for a while.

My washer is also a dryer. I still have not figured this one out either, because my clothes are still wet and it baked my undies.

Thursday I went to dinner at a restaurant where the waiters started dancing on tables and breaking plates on the ground. Friday I ate Rudolph (venison) atop a revolving restaurant with a view of fireworks to kick off the Christmas Season. Saturday I walked to the Botanical Gardens where the Orchids are located, soon to become my new running route.

I am making friends quickly here. The Aussies are really nice. Many people I have met while interviewing at the local gyms are also road bike riders, so I have started riding with the ANZA cycling team. This is the Australia/New Zealand team that does group rides in Singapore. It feels much safer to travel in a peloton rather than alone and it is a great way to meet people. This morning I rode with the Rat Pack and we were riding on an expressway. Good motivation to keep up with the group. Later in the morning I attended some other instructor's classes, ballet with Kayla to help with my Pilates and Bellydancing with Jessie to get me to Bollywood!

Since I do not have a car, I have been pooling home with people from the Lonza jobsite and my estimator, Jen. Lonza is the site in construction next door which Genentech plans to buy after one full run of Avastin. The HR girl from Lonza is living in my building, but she will be leaving at the end of the month. One of the Lonza superintendents lives in my old Chinatown neighborhood, so I hitch home with him once a week to go to my Yoga class with Ruberman, the Indian Guru who can put himself in any compromising positions.