2 BDRM + Bunker

At last, the long-awaited apartment post.

So we "moved in" on Friday but couldn't get to buying any bedding or anything until Saturday, which is why this post took a bit longer to get to. I spent my first night here last night and, I must confess, my bed is AWESOME. So for those of you who were once members of the Christine's Bed Club, and those of you who encountered my bed in Queens, know this: the standard has been upheld. My bed remains one of the comfiest places in the WORLD to sleep in. Anyway. I have not managed to put together all my furniture as yet, so please bear in mind that the apartment will become more populated as the week goes on, but for those of you who have been emailing and gchatting and begging for pictures, here we go: a photo tour of the S'pore Pad.

First, the approach.


So this is the corridor outside my apartment, and then the front gate. All the apartments in HDB housing are set up like this, I think, where you have a big wooden door behind a front gate. The idea is that you lock the gate and open the door to let the cross-breeze between living room and foyer sweep through. I feel like the gate needs a name -- you know, like The Awesome Gate, or the Iron Gate, or some kind of neat title because it is MY GATE. And that makes it...special? Something. So you get off the lift, come down the corridor, and here is my gate. Moving on to...


This is the view of the dining area and living room from just inside the door. Beyond that ENTIRE WALL of windows, we have an awesome view. There was a thunderstorm last night, and the lightning was breathtaking to behold.


Here's a closer shot of our punk-rock-retro-awesome leather turquoise living room furniture, which goes so well with the yellow wall behind it, and though you cannot see the purple lamp to the right here, trust me -- it's there. I'm not sure I would have expected yellow, turqoise and purple to go together, but...well, fuck yeah. The floors, as you can see, are all this kind of rocking faux-marble, and it has inspired us to adopt the asian habit of taking off our shoes and leaving them by the door. Anyway, suffice it to say the living room is the shining star of the apartment, being huge and beauitfully lit during the day. If you turn away from the living room, you will see...


The kitchen, which is not the most amazing aspect of the apartment, which I feel is self-evident. There are two fridges here out of frame -- I'm not sure why we need two, but D and I will figure it out. Maybe one is meant to just be full of beer at all times? Who knows. Anyway, there is no oven but there IS that stovetop who-what that I intend to learn how to use. We also have TWO -- count them, one two -- washing machines, but no dryer to speak of. Dryers seem to be extremely rare in Singapore, I guess because it's so effing hot. So we've really tried to embrace the culture and do the hanging-up-our-clothes-to-dry thing, as you can see. Hello, my laundry. There is a window to the right there, and a long-ass green pole that actually extends into my bedroom, where we imagine we are meant to hang our laundry. Out over the 17-floor drop. We're not that adventurous yet, but all in good time. The second bathroom is also there on your right, but we'll get to the bathrooms momentarily, because they are their own special kind of awesome.

Turning back around from the kitchen here, we see:


Well, that's the breakfast table and...wait, who's that? Let's get a close-up.

Ah HA! Those of you who remember Fred from the Holiday Inn, well, he had to stay at the hotel because he was strictly a hotel plant. I'd like everyone to meet Longwei -- he is a native Singaporean, as you can see by the flag he is waving in honor of National Day, which was a few weeks ago but he is adamantly patriotic and so has not taken down his flag as yet. Longwei means DRAGON GREATNESS in Chinese, and I'm looking to him for guidance in my new and strange surroundings. So far all he's done is sit in his pot and look good, but that's about all you can ask of a plant, I guess. Anyway. Longwei is standing guard across from this door, which we originally thought was a closet.


But then we opened it, and saw THIS:


That's right, people. Civil Defense Shelter. SHIT IS A BUNKER!

So if the Japanese attack, everyone can just stay calm. So long as they don't attack with fire, I will be perfectly fine, because we have an in-house bunker. Can't piss in the lifts here, but you get a bunker free with every apartment. I love Singapore.


At the moment, we're just using it for storage. But it's ALWAYS ready.

So if you travel back through the living room and around a corner to the left, you will encounter our bedrooms. As D is away, I have afforded him the privacy of NOT taking pictures of his room, but for your edification, here is where I sleep:




Oswald says hi! He's finding the monsters here in Singapore to his liking as well, though markedly less...one-eyed. So that room in the corner of my bedroom with the BRIGHT BLUE is my bathroom.



A word about the bathrooms here, before we continue. I'm not sure if this is an Asian thing, or a Southeast Asian thing, or what, but I imagine it has something to do with the large population of Muslims here in Singapore. In a moment, I will show you a picture of the bathroom floor, and you will notice that there is no separation between toilet and shower beyond that bright orange shower curtain. It is my assumption that the bathrooms are structure this way because Muslims wash their feet after using the restroom (you see these buckets of water a lot in public/less hoity toity restrooms, but even the hotel restrooms have drains in the floor beside the toilets), so they make the entire floor in a manner that makes washing one's feet much easier. This, of course, also means the whole damned bathroom floor gets wet when you shower, so we're looking into some plastic shelving that is lifted a few inches above the floor to store stuff.

Also, we need "shower brooms" to sweep the water down the drain after every shower. Ah, Asia.


So that's basically that. Some other time I'll take pictures of the positively labyrinthine lobby-business of the building. I have now gotten lost in my own apartment structure easily five times, because there are three-ish interconnecting buildings and a whole buttload of twists and turns and wind-tunnels and courtyards.

But as you can all see, I am not living in a shithole (at least, no shittier than the Sahara of 3-C back in Astoria). And, at least here, I have a BUNKER.

Now...'Stine tries to put together Ikea furniture. More on that, I'm sure, as it unfolds.




EDIT: I was told recently that there are not enough pictures of me on this blog, though that's largely because I'm generally the one taking all the other pictures. But to satisfy the curious, here you go:


I'm smiling because I finally figured out how to use the fucking chopsticks.