A Flat with Furniture - Woop Woop!

After a lovely week back in the UK my boyfriend and I returned to a considerably warmer Singapore just over a week ago.  We arrived back late on the Sunday evening and I then had to be up early the next morning as our furniture etc. had arrived on the container to Singapore and was being delivered that day.  It was certainly a good way to beat any possible jet lag!  I then spent much of last week unpacking boxes and trying to find homes for everything.  It isn't perfect yet but the flat really feels like a home now with all our bits around us again.

The flat before there was any furniture in it!

The flat here is smaller than our one in Twickenham was and so we were both a bit bothered whether everything would fit in or if it would look a bit cramped as a result.  However it all fits fine, the only slight problem being a lack of storage space.  Fortunately we have a three bedroom flat and though I insisted on the second room being kept 'nice' for guests (I have a friend coming at the end of September for starters) the other room has become a bit of what will hopefully be a temporary junk room whilst we sort through the final items etc.  The other main area we are using for storage is what would be the maid's living area if we had one.  This isn't much larger than a big wardrobe though but it all helps!

Monday was also my boyfriend's birthday so in the evening we went out for a couple of drinks with friends at a bar that he and I first visited when I was here in January and then a Thai restaurant for a meal afterwards.  The bar is called Blu Jaz and is in the Arab Quarter of the city.  This name for this part of Singapore I gather is only really used by tourists, the locals calling the area Kampong Glam.  The bar though is quite bohemian in its appearance but is a really nice place for a few drinks and they have live bands there sometimes playing jazz and a more dance music atmosphere upstairs at the weekend (as I discovered last Friday - definitely much more big fish, little fish, cardboard box to coin a phrase on the second floor!)

Later in the week we went to a shopping mall called Sim Lim Tower which specialises in shops selling electrical goods, a real geek fest to be honest but my boyfriend wanted a special lens for his camera in readiness for our Grand Prix trip later this month and this was the best place to go.  After that we went to a Chinese restaurant near by called Fatty's which was great.  They apparently serve what is probably the closest you'll find to Chinese food that you'd get in a takeaway in the UK and I have to admit the sweet and sour chicken really did have a taste of the UK about it.  There are still plenty of items on the menu you probably wouldn't find in the UK, i.e. frogs legs but it really was good.  I also braved chop sticks again and in my own way I'm developing a bit of skill with them and am at least managing to eat the food whilst it is hot and not leaving restaurants starving hungry. 

The next night being Friday we went out for a few drinks with a group of people we have got to know (hence us winding up in the upstairs part of Blu Jaz) and as well as there and some other bars we also went to a little Thai cafe called Thai Smile Cafe.  This was down a little side street and I would say would probably be classed as one of the more local eateries in Singapore.  I'm not a huge fish food fan but this past week even I have tried a few fish dishes and I have to admit, whilst I'm not sure I'd order a whole dish, the ones I have tried have been nice.  The only one I didn't try (and now kind of wish I had) was one of the dishes at the Thai cafe which had soft shell crab in it.  I was assured it wasn't too fishy but chickened out in the end.  I guess I shall just have to go back there again!

Obviously as you know I am looking for a job and did actually get a call about a potential role last Friday.  Unfortunately though the recruitment consultant called having not seen my CV and the role she had just wasn't suitable for me.  She has my CV now and well I guess a call about a role is a step further than previously so maybe things are on the up work wise too.  I have been feeling though that I do need to make the most of the opportunity to explore Singapore whilst I have the free time to do so as lately I feel like I've spent too much time in the flat either looking for work or doing chores (not that either of those things aren't important).  So I have decided to make a list from our numerous guidebooks of things I would like to do and then in amongst everything else try and do a couple of these each week.  So after my other chores the list is my task for later today and hopefully I can begin ticking items off this week.  I'm sure this will help to motivate me in my job search etc and asides from that I need to be doing other things so that I can continue to share my experiences and now we have our wii balance board try and fit in some sessions on that again too.  I'm not sure I'll have time for work by the time I actually do get a job!

Comments

  1. Speaking from experience, I have no idea how I would fit work into my life now. Although I am going to try and do some voluntary work soon.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Popular Posts