LYNNY IS BACK IN SINGAPORE - A MORE TEMPORARY, TEMPORARY HOME!

Well folks, here I am - back in Singapore!  It has been a while since my last post.  Over the summer I have had two trips back to the UK and got to spend time in the USA with my kids, the youngest of whom turned 21 (finally!) at the end of September.  It was a fun time but now I am back in Singapore and ready to explore some more.

Before I left in June, my husband and I signed a lease on an apartment in Singapore.  So we have somewhere a bit more "temporary" to base ourselves from!  The Paterson Suites is a brand new apartment complex so we are the first tenants. Our new compact and bijou pad gives us all of 1700sq ft. of living space.  We are on the 6th floor of building One, the apartment has lots of light and two nice balconies, perfect for wine sipping!
The complex has a great pool area, tennis courts, gym and a couple of BBQ areas.  Certainly this is a different lifestyle to our wonderful Leesburg, VA. home.

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The apartment has three bedrooms though they are quite small.  We have a "wet" and a "dry" kitchen.  The "dry" kitchen is what you see next to the dining room, we have our ovens, fridge and wine fridge plus a small sink and electric hob.  You go through a door to the "wet" kitchen which is typically where all the messy and smelly cooking is done (asian cooking typically involves a lot of stir frying), it has a gas hob and double sinks.  From there you walk out to our laundry area with a small toilet/shower area and "bunker".  The bunker is a reinforced concrete room which is found in all apartments as required by the Singapore Civil Defense Force.  Ours is 7ft x 7ft and if we were to employ a maid (which is a very common thing here in Singapore), she would have this room as her living space.  Since we don't have a maid, we use this room as storage space.

As the apartment is within an easy walk of Orchard Road and all it has to offer, it is really convenient to be able to walk to shops and restaurants. We also have a fantastic view from our balcony of the Orchard Road Skyline.

Shophouses are being torn down except for one hold-out

The view of the Orchard Road Skyline is not the only thing we get to look at every day.  Unfortunately, here in Singapore, construction is everywhere and not easily avoided unless you choose to live out in the quieter suburbs.  There is so much building going on here it beggars belief! When we signed our lease we looked down from our balcony to the left on some lovely old shophouses and we thought "brilliant", we have cracked it, no construction noise.  Within two weeks of signing the lease we discover that the shophouses are being torn down and a nice 14 story apartment block is going up in their place. FANTASTIC!!!  With an end date of 2014 it looks like construction noise is what we are stuck with for the time being.
Graham and I were walking into town one night when we met a lady who lives in the house you can see in the bottom left corner of the above photograph.  She was telling us that she has lived there for over 50 years and raised her family there.  She is refusing to sell out to the developers, the only one out of the whole street who refused to sell.  The poor woman has put up with construction in her back yard since 2006 when they started building our apartment blocks.  She said she had a short respite once our blocks were finished last year but now it starts all over again.
 

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The picture above was taken soon after we moved into the apartment in June, the one on the left is where we are today.  As you can see all the shophouses are now down bar the one standout.  Heavy cranes have moved in and they have been busy pile driving. 

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Though the noise during the day can be a real pain, it is quite interesting to see how these buildings are constructed. So watch this space for updates on how the construction is progressing.  In the meantime I am off to buy shares in ear plugs lol!!

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