Before College Starts

I don't feel much Halloween-ey around this area, unlike our previous place. Moreover compared to my college daughter's Virginia campus, that according to her in her own language: "Halloween is such a huge huge huge deal here and it’s just crazy!....." Here... mmmpppfhhh.... ssshhhh...quiet....

Speaking of college, here are the pictures from last August. The building is the famous one called the Rotunda, located in the Lawn of the original grounds of the UVA. The Rotunda was designed by Thomas Jefferson and completed in 1827.

The event is a gathering for freshmen prior to the start of the college.

Colors In The Morning

Not every morning we could get some beautiful colors in the sky. Here's a shot from yesterday morning around 6:35AM .... Awesome, isn't?

It Takes Five Years

In the summer of 2004, we traveled to the USA and Canada. We visited Victoria Island, British Columbia too, which I believe is the place where we got this chess set from. The top of the base was made of glass so DH carefully hand-carried the box around the airport. We never opened the wrapping, it was in its original box. We never really had the space for that. At some point, DH attempted to bring it to Jakarta to be put in his apartment there, but I think, he did not had enough space and decided to leave it for a while. Then it was forgotten.

I placed the box under the printer for a couple of years to provide base and support and elevate the printer's height to a more comfortable level. It was meant to be temporary but it continued until we moved out of the previous house.

Finally, we moved and had a bigger space, a bigger living room for once. DH opened it one day and put the set on the table in the living room. Nice. They are out after five years in captivity.

The City Is My Gym

That's a quote mentioned by Judith Light on TV about her way to lose some weight, she walked a lot around the city she was in. A tiny little part of that works for me. I love to walk, but I doubt if I could lose weight because of that. I feel healthier though, which is good. I am glad that it is so much nicer to walk these days because I can walk along the side of the river. Many people walk, jog or run. Many walk their dogs. Many use the path to get to places of their destination. I just need the sun to hide a bit more often.....

We had Stuffed Mushrooms last night for dinner. They are K's favorite... cream cheese, parmesan cheese, sausages.... and more.. Surely delish! I need that walk after having many of them. Burn those calories!

Pink Lily

I hope this is pink Lily. I am sure of the name of the flower but in terms of color, it could be purple. I managed to get some a couple of days ago after finding out that some markets nearby do not sell flowers. I love the smell and I love the beauty of them...

Eleventh Morning, 6:22AM

I am still in love with the sunrise and sunset, the picture below was taken this morning at 6:22AM. Gorgeous colors.

Morning number 11. What happened to the first 10 days? I barely noticed that many days have slipped by in front of me. It's so absolutely crazy how fast the time went by. The kids went back to school after midterm break, DH is in Shanghai. Life is good. Have a great week!

After Dinner ...

Chilling out in the terrace, looking at the city lights in the cool and nice evening after dinner.... just nice.

Just Like Fridays

I found out yesterday, experienced it myself, that it takes around 16 minutes from Orchard road to our house at normal walking speed. How cool is that? It is totally a world apart from where we used to live. We used to live????..... Miss that place already!

It was Friday again, a vegetarian day for us. We had tomato pizza with some basil leaves and generous amount of cheese. Life seems back to normalcy again....

We had some extra night curtains on the study area installed yesterday. They are great for blocking the strong morning sun that we have nearly nearly all morning and at night they give us more privacy from our neighbor.

Unpacking Kitchen

This picture was taken on the moving day. As the movers unloaded boxes and placed them according to where they were supposed to be, I began unpacking and sorting too.

But the movers did not bring all of our stuff, so nearly everyday over the next few days after, I still continued with packing things from the old house, bringing them over and unpacking and store them. This way, I was able to remember where things are better and I find less difficulty in finding what I need.

The kitchen looks almost normal now. It is operational, but still need a few minor re-arrangement. We are still waiting for a new dining set to arrive soon as well.

Bread Will Do...

I had an annoying experience last night. We had a very long and tiring day and decided to pick up what could be the last batch of our stuff. It was around 9:30 PM. The children helped us downstairs to carry some stuff up. My 13-year old was the last one at the door between the lift area and the car park, she was keeping the door open for her dad carrying the last piece. She continued holding the door for apparently a man, around late 40's to early 50's, he passed through without a smile and barely looked at the person should be thanking for. What a RUDE man!!! I frowned at him. Then behind her came along a woman, likely to be his wife, just passing through again, without acknowledging anything. A RUDE woman indeed! A very ungrateful couple in my neighborhood???!??!!! The last one passed through the door was a young girl, maybe around 17-19 years old, she said thank you to my daughter. Finally.

It really bugged me that to see adults that are so lacking of courtesy. It is no wonder that the government feels the need for courtesy campaign in the country. Many people are just so ungracious..... and when that involves my family, I have to say something about it. Those two are perfect for each other, but they need to learn their Ps and Qs as well as mannerism.

Just a couple of days after we moved in here, I baked plain bread to be dipped into olive oil and balsamic vinegar and that's just it.

We only stayed here for two nights and we did not have everything we needed. We were extremely busy too. Everybody tried to find something that they could eat in between busy schedule.

Orange Under The Pink And Green

It's a common sight to see workers in action Sundays here. Most of them come outside the country. Bangladesh and China are the common ones, I would think.

There are four particular trees with lots of pink flowers, at times more than the above picture shows, placed in the corner of Grange road and they always attract my attention because of their lovely colors. Last Sunday, it was even more interesting to see many workers wearing bright orange uniform working underneath and around one of the trees.

Season Greetings In October!

I passed by the junction where this Tanglin Mall is located many times a day over the past few days, as we continued moving our stuff from our old residence to the new one. It's super duper exhausting and physically demanding. We underestimated the amount of staff we have. The little things we have seem to be much more than the big furniture we've got.

We throw away things we do not need, of course. We also separate things that we want to give away to others. The remaining is still plenty. An extra packing needs to be done as well as one of the girls is away is for college.

Anyway, we started seeing the development of the Christmas decoration a few days ago and now the pieces seem to have a clearer picture of what it is. The street has been decorated too.... I can't believe that Christmas is nearing..... although what I have seen is more on the business side of it. I am too busy to care much about that right now.

Window Dressing

It happened less than a week ago, the curtains. Lots and lots of them.

Packs and packs of curtains for various areas. All of them were put up the whole afternoon. After some minor hick ups in which the guys gave DH strange unreasonable excuses for not being able to put the roller blinds in the kitchen well and parallel, all ended in the early evening. The supplier came the next day to sort the issues out. All are well for the time being!

We need some extra curtain in the study/family area apparently, but this will be sorted out later!

The packs for one of the kids' room are in the picture above.

And these are for the master room, very heavy thick night curtains.

The guys were getting ready to steam the curtains in the living area.

New Kitchen Partners ...

Let me introduce some of the new partners in my kitchen. The stove, the oven and the microwave oven are from Siemens (again). I have tested all but the microwave oven as I am still working with my old one that I brought along with my move. They all work well.

The new fridge is from GE. It comes with water and ice cubes dispenser, which unexpectedly has robbed so much of my freezer space. Arghhh... I wish I knew before I purchased one. I thought DH wanted this type, apparently he didn't. He thought I wanted it. No, I did not. The culprit is the little girl with a bedroom next door to mine!

The dispenser had problem yesterday, apparently the guy who unpacked and install the fridge forgot to remove the sponge that cushioned the dispenser and this resulted in jamming the roller dispensing the ice cubes .....

Looking at the bright side, it still works out well. Most of us drink cold iced water, so it is truly an extra convenience to be able to get them without having to open a door.

Caprese And Osso Bucco

It's Saturday again, time really passed by so quickly these days.

We worked really hard last Thursday. Not only we have been packing and unpacking for nearly a week, our movers, the professional ones, came that day to help us do our big move i.e. big furniture and boxes of books, clothing and manymanymany boxes of non-sense-unnecessary-stuff-but-we-like-to-hold-on-to-God-knows-til-when..... It was work-work-work nearly all day long. By 5:30 PM we were exhausted and hungry and the girls decided to go to La Nonna for more Italian food.

This time, we ordered something we have never had before, Caprese, which is Buffalo Mozzarella served with tomatoes, salad and pesto. We also ordered pizza for starter. Definitely, we overestimated our ability to eat. For my main entree I had Osso Bucco. My gang picked the usual fettuccine, gnocchi and fish. They should try something new..... Anyway, we ended up feeling so stuffed and still achy from working too much.

First Morning

First sunrise in the the new place..... I love the sun rising behind the Singapore Flyer, above the sea..... I think I will take many many many more of this.....

There are still stacks of boxes to unpack nearly everywhere, but we managed to have homemade pancakes and grilled bread this morning for breakfast. Cheers to better life and good health for everyone!

We are waiting for the telephone guy to activate our home phones.

Chance Of T-storms

It's been cloudy and raining nearly everyday over the past few days. According to weather forecast, we won't have any sunny days until Sunday. Everyday for the rest of the week, we will have some 20-40% chance of thunderstorms. The view from our place has been pretty much like the picture above. Heavy clouds hanging over......

Today is D-day. Or the M-day? We are moving house!!!!!

Walking Back....

Song of the morning: Brand New Day by Joshua Radin. I so need this......

Before the scheduled arrival of the people that were supposed to install the curtains in our new place, we went for a Japanese lunch nearby. It was around 10 minutes walk from where we were at. We also walked back to our place, just along the Singapore river. It would be a nice walk when it is cool and shady, but not at noon and the sun shines above.

The place was good for ramen, but I had no knowledge on that, so I order a bento set consisting of sashimi and tempura. The set came with salad and cawan mushi, both of which were letdowns. Dessert was sad, after a long while, it was two slices of small unhappy watermelon. I am not excited about overall service and the food quality and will do my best not to go there anymore.

Filling Them In...

We are filling the kitchen cabinets, up-down-wherever while trying also to remember where things are, so that we won't have to open every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen when we look for something.

We have quite a bit of space in the kitchen, especially we also have an extension built along the yard adjacent to the kitchen. We have started bringing in kitchen supplies and whatever kitchen related that we could grab so that the kitchen can be easily utilized after we moved in.

Light Them Up

More stuff have been moved today, the best we could. It's super tiring for all of us that do not do so much physical works like this before before we do what we've gotta to do.

We did not intentionally look for these lights. We stumbled upon them during our search for dining light. We thought they were pretty and not too complicated or way over the top, compared to our likings, like some others that we saw.

These lights made using Swarovski crystal beads really caught our eyes, but back then we did not think that we had a place for them. There was one with three cluster with a round base that we thought we could use for our dining area, provided that they were bigger or had more clusters.

Finally, there's a perfect spot for the dream lights, it's in the entrance area to light the console table underneath.

Evening From Dining Area

It was a full packed day. We spent hours waiting for some furniture to come and kept ourselves or more accurately myself, busy, cleaning whatever needs to be cleaned. We managed to have two trip there, taking as much the car could possibly handle and store them in the new place. The picture above was taken when the sun was about to set, it was actually not dark yet but the camera setting made the picture looks that way.

The little expert in the family said that "It's half an hour before the sunset!" I am not sure how she plucked the number. Who cares? I think we will take more pictures of this.

Waiting For Deliveries...

Saturday, we got a bunch of things coming to the new house today.

I heard it before, I read it before, expectation can lead to disappointment, subsequently bring unhappiness. But I feel I have the right to expect that everything was soooo.... nearly completed by 10 Oct, after the deadline was extended from end of September, to early October and further to 10th. I only heard about the slight delay last night, which did not give me much time to get disappointed anyway. There's one though, bugging me. The items in K's room are supposed to be movable, but they are not quite so. There are apparently cables going through the bed, to the side table and up through the desk, restricting the movement of the said furniture. Having said that, removing and placing curtains on that side of the glass wall require one to be all over the bed, table and desk.

Earlier on, I have specifically to the retarded designer to make sure that I will have easy access to the curtain.... and boyyyyy..... he was so nice and supportive. Too back it was just gesture and he has not been seeing and heard much lately. Déjà vu. This happened to us 13 years ago when we built our first landed house in Jakarta.

When I was growing up, my mom and my sisters always cooked the dishes again and again. I do not recall them trying some new dish. Now I am living on my own and have my own troops that are more open to try something new, especially after going to school the whole day and ended the day with swimming training until 6PM, they would be more willing to taste new things on the table.

I saw this pizetta on Martha Stewart Show that I recorded and watched when I had time, sped it up to the cooking segment. I thought it would be interesting to try. The original recipe is with fresh rosemary, but yours truly does not buy rosemary from the supermarket here as they cost a fortune. I have some dried ones, but I used dried basil instead and black pepper as the recipe suggested. The topping is mainly sliced potatoes mixed with olive oil, more black pepper and salt. Finally, sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese generously. It's all good!

The original recipe is here.