Newsletter 04: Apartment selection; Korean Pop Night

Friday, 31 October: More apartment shopping. Our agent drove us to Chinatown, where we parked in a strange hi-tech garage that shelves cars mechanically.

 

 

We visited a small group of 22 apartments called Empire Lofts. We'd noticed it on our walk through Chinatown, and had asked our agent to set up an appointment if there were any available units. The complex resides within an old, restored building, thus the apartments are designated "conservation" apartments. There was a horseshoe-shaped unit available (the olive-green one in the photo), which we liked immediately upon entering, as well as a larger loft unit across the hall, which has not yet been vacated by the current tenant.

 

We then visited two more apartments in Emerald Garden, including one very large apartment with a nice layout, and a view.

 

We drove next to Sunshine Plaza, and then to the Bencoolen. The Bencoolen was an interesting mixed-use building. There are lots of stores selling stone spheres, carvings, and charms.

 

The building itself is in an interesting location (right across from Sim Lim Square).

It's not near an MRT station, though. We revisited International Plaza (which is right next to an MRT station).

 

We were shown a very large apartment badly in need of renovation. It had a well-lit living room with a great view.

The apartment wasn't too far above the swimming pool and tennis courts in the light wells. Though I'm not a person usually afraid of heights, I was nervous on the higher floors; these railings do not inspire confidence.

We saw another conservation apartment near Bugis MRT on Liang Seah Street, but though it did have excellent sound-proof windows, extra square footage and storage space, and a downstairs bathroom, it wasn't as classy as Empire Lofts. The entrance is located on a busy street of eateries, and has stairs; the elevator could only be accessed via the back alley.

We retreated to a food court to have a late lunch and think over the possible choices, and decided we liked Empire Lofts best, for its interesting location and professional, detail-oriented management. We returned to Mosque Street, where Empire Lofts is located, to have a second look and to talk about some logistics.

(South Bridge Road, intersecting with Temple Street and Mosque Street in Chinatown.)

 

For dinner we returned to Liang Seah Street for a series of atypical Japanese dishes at Sakana.

Saturday, 1 November: Went out to Sim Lim Square for power cords and lunch, returned to the hotel for an afternoon of reading and playing with cell phones. Returned to Arab Street to eat dinner at Cafe Le Caire again, this time outside, in an atmosphere of friendly hookah-smoking at the neighboring table, along with the smell of carpets from the shops along the street.

Sunday, 2 November: We went to Sim Lim Square again for lunch, and wandered around the area for a while. We visited many stores selling mineral spheres and carvings, lucky keychains and knotted jewelry.

Back at the hotel, I washed some laundry at the hotel, but unfortunately the laundry included a pen, and the results were saddening.

For dinner, we went returned to Sim Lim Square again, and I had soup with crispy wontons.

Monday, 3 November: We returned to Empire Lofts to fill out the paperwork and hand over the check that would allow us to move in on Wednesday.

 

We walked through the apartment again, satisfied with our choice. 

Entrance, dining area
(dining table/chairs rented by Previous Tenant) 

 

 Kitchen, attached to living room

Living room, door to 2nd bedroom and attached study
(coffee table rented by Previous Tenant; sofa free gift from Previous Tenant)

View from 2nd bedroom 

Second bathroom
(shower has weird glass wall to second bedroom) 

Study
(ironing board free gift from Previous Tenant)

Door to bedroom passage
(on the left is where the dining table and chairs were)

Bedroom
(bed rented by Previous Tenant )

Bathroom
 

The bedroom and the passage to it have peaked ceilings, since we're on the top floor under the roof.

 

Shared terrace; there's a TV/reading lounge, a small weight room, a jacuzzi, a bathroom, some plants and benches. Also on the second floor, there's a passage to the other cluster of units, where the management office is located.

 

That's the bedroom and bathroom on the upper left half of the olive-green U-shape below; the study is at the top right, and the kitchen is along the bottom in the center, and the second bed/bathroom is in the bottom right. There are windows on both sides of the left half of the U, all along the living room in the middle, and all along the study on the right; in the photos, you can see that a lot of light comes in.

The "you are here" is in front of a pair of elevators and an indoor/outdoor stairwell.

 

Our real estate agent took us to Vivo City, a mall on the south side of the island, overlooking the harbor. We had toast and tea at ToastBox, and, after a stroll through the mall, stopped at Giant to buy a couple of inflatable beds to sleep on until the boat arrives with our furniture.

We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant on Liang Seah street.

Tuesday, 4 November: We looked up how to cast an absentee vote, but discovered that it was too late to start the paperwork. We would have had to request an absentee ballot in October, and we didn't.

So, Aquinas went to NUS, and I went on a mission: to buy some replacement shirts for Aquinas, and to find a post office and mail a couple of things back to the US. I took the hotel shuttle to Orchard Road and walked to a hotel and asked where there was a post office. There was one on the fourth floor of the Takashimaya department store in Ngee Ann City. I mailed my items.

Then, I went looking for some shirts at a reasonable price. Shirts, I found. Reasonable prices were a bit trickier. I wasn't looking for designer shirts.

I did find an alterations place that was willing to fix the broken strap on my purse. The woman at the desk started to say she didn't fix purses, but that she could recommend someone in another building to do it. I was glad she changed her mind, because it saved me a long walk to the other building. The price seemed high, but it saved me having to leave and look for another repair place or, worse, another purse. She told me to come back in an hour.

When I approached the mall of tailors, a woman asked me if I needed any items made. I said no, but asked her whether there would be any ready-made shirts available in the mall of tailors. She said there were some silk ones, but no cotton ones. She pointed me back the way I had come, to the fancy department stores. So, I turned around and walked into the closest one, partly to see what prices were like, but at least partly so she would see me following her advice, and also partly because it would be cool inside.

As it turned out, there was a sale on in the men's department there. Actually, there was a daily special and an *hourly* special. I picked out some of the shirts on sale, helped and watched over by one of the staff there. I had brought a couple of Aquinas's shirts with me to compare sizes, in case the shirt sizes belonged to a different system. As it turns out, these shirts are measured the same as shirts in the US, in inches. Just as real estate is measured by square foot. I'm so baffled. British spelling, British driving, Asian bed sizes... American shirt sizes. Whatever!

At the checkout, I was showered with vouchers and coupons attempting to keep me in the store to spend more money. This is a different strategy from the one used in the states; usually, in the US, coupons are intended to get you to come back another day. These coupons were all only valid for the day of purchase, which I didn't realize at the time; I was just glad to get out with my not-so-expensive department store shirts.

I needed a place to sit, so I went back to the mall that had the alterations place, and bought a McFlurry at the MacDonald's, so as to be able to occupy a seat there. That MacDonald's is pretty chic, incidentally. I sat there until it was about time to pick up my purse, and then went and claimed it. Then, after talking with Aquinas using my swanky new phone, I returned to the hotel to drop off the old shirts and new shirts before meeting him for dinner at the Sim Lim Square food court.

After dinner, we took a taxi to the Singapore Indoor Stadium. We had tickets to Korean Pop Night 2008. (We'd gotten them from the cell phone saleswoman.) My, was that ever a strange experience. We were, as far as I know, the only Western couple in a nearly-full stadium seating four or five thousand people. It was surreal.

At the beginning of the concert, and between songs, the three MCs spoke, sometimes in English and sometimes in Korean, about how the concert (like a number of other recent events) had been arranged to promote cultural ties between Korea and Singapore. Interestingly, in the Singaporean accent, "Korean" sounded like "KOH-reen" instead of "kuh-REE-uhn," which is how I'd pronounce it.

I don't know whether the concert in fact strengthened any cultural ties, but it sure did gratify young female fans of the flamboyant Korean performers. Some fans had made paper signs. Actually, some had electric signs. Many had glowing lightsticks or glowing jewelry. There was a lot of screaming. My thoughts were less along the lines of "oh, wow, it's really HER on stage and I can't believe I'm here too!" and more along the lines of "some people have really strange jobs."

Singing and dancing on stage, in four-minute stretches, in a carefully designed outfit and hairdo seems to me to be a long way from writing a good song, singing well it at a recording studio, and selling copies afterwards. And I guess I'm not the first to say that; it's just that I've only now been brought to realize what many musician celebrities actually do to earn their pay.

 

See, I am not a concert-goer. (And I only ever watched MTV when I was in Italy.) I've been to some live music performances, but never a rock or pop concert. (I suspect an American rock concert would have been different than this, somehow. Less tidy, perhaps.) I am also not much of a sports-fan, though I have been to a few large-scale sporting events, (basketball, football, baseball, some equestrian events in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and, yes, actually, a pro wrestling match). I've been to large, musical, theatrical performances in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York. I've been to any number of student and professional plays and classical concerts. I've seen ballet performances (well, okay, maybe just the Nutcracker). I've seen the Barnum and Bailey circus, and I've seen Cirque du Soleil. I've also been in the audience on the set of a live TV recording. I would say that, of all the comparisons I could make, Korean Pop Night was a most like the live TV recording; when you're there behind the cameras, it all seems incredibly, transiently contrived.

In the midst of the ardent fans of what were, to me, completely unfamiliar songs performed by completely unfamiliar artists, in, sometimes, a completely unfamiliar language, I felt a bit like an agnostic at a Billy Graham crusade. Clearly, there was something going on, and it meant a lot to some of those people, but to me it was merely fascinating, hypothetical, alien. Foreign, one might even say...

Next newsletter >>