Author: Doris

Today I did a lot of research on places for Doris to study Mandarin in Singapore and for Vince to go to school. On Friday I will visit a montessori school and the YMCA in Bishan. On the way home from work I stopped at a different neighborhood close to work called Chau Chu Kang. It is only 25 minutes from work on public transit, and the two huge condo complexes (each as big as Holland Village in Hsin Chu) are each only 1-2 minutes walk from the MRT. Again there is a mall, a supermarket and a bus depot at the MRT station, and this Mall even has a nice little public library on the first floor. Chau Chu Kang is deffinitely more on the outskirts than Bishan, and so things are a little more spread out . There is a nice little nature park with a playground nearby, and overall it looks pretty good. The downside is it is a lot further from downtown than Bishan, and in addition to the huge japanese department store, it seems the Chinese classes and one of the top mentessori schools are nearer Bishan. Oh what to do, what to do…..

In the morning, the kids and I went to the Volvo dealership for my regular service. I’ve gone many times before and it always took a month to make the appointment and then they would say it’ll be 90 minutes, and it would take 4 hours. Anyways, they have improved their service so that now it takes only a few days to get an appointment and by golly, they finished it in 90 minutes! I was quite pleased and the kids liked playing in the toy room and there was also free cookies. No wonder I’m paying so much for an oil change and tire balancing.

In the afternoon, we went swimming at the gym. It was a lot of fun and I was really worried about having 2 kids and just me, but it turned out OK. Vince and Edda both wore an Aquajogger belt and I held Edda in my arms and Vince, with his Aquajogger and a kickboard was basically able to swim the length of the pool. Pretty nifty. I would have taken pictures of the adventures, but then I would have needed a clone. Oh well, that will happen soon enough.

Edda at the Volvo dealer.

Vince at the Volvo dealer.

Cool slides through a wall of water. Unfortunately this apartment is not so close to the subway, because otherwise it is fantastic. It even has it’s own bomb shelter. 

Today was a very quiet day at work. I rode a bike at the gym at the hotel for a bit before heading taking a taxi to work. I had a nice chat with the cab driver. Because he likes me, he recommended a place to buy electronics at the end of the ride. Mre eveidence that shopping is the chief activity in Singapore. Everyone from AMD was out of the office, today, so I had visitor suite 1 all to myself. I got some work done, had lunch with the TD Litho manager, and left at 3 to go househunting. I looked at 5 places. Three were very flashy new high rise condos, with polished marble floors, shiny new kitchens, underground parking, views, gyms, multiple pools with waterfalls and stuff like that. Two others were older multi story places with the typical tile floors, porches and bigger rooms. Probably subway and shopping access is the most important criteria. Based on that, one of the shiny new places wins. It is less than 10 minutes walk from the subway, and during that 10 minutes you pass several markets, many restaraunts, a mall, a bus depot, the local community center and etc. While it does not have its own yard (which the older places both do) it does have a grass perimeter around the complex which is right outside the front door of the building. I know all this because I went and walked around the neighborhood after the apartment viewing was over. By the end I was soaked with sweat, but everyone around me seemed OK.

A few things:

My friend, Gargi, from grad school just had her 2nd child, Arnuv, this weekend. She lives in Philly and works for Merck.

Lana, my friend from high school, fell into a river this weekend on a canoing trip and soaked her cell phone and lost all her phone numbers.

Ben thinks that his visa to Sweden will be granted in a few weeks so after the France trip, he should be able to move to be with Johanna.

What else? Hmmm… tomorrow I have an appointment with my car dealership to do the 37,500K mile tuneup. I just have to do some dishes and hopefully off to bed early tonight.

We are back in Richland. We went to Washougal to visit friends there and also looked into land and houses. One house has beautiful river & mountain views but just too expensive. We heard Mel Gibson has a mansion there also.

We are back at home. I love going to Bard, but it’s all very exhausting. Vince is wired the whole time we are there, even if we aren’t doing anything too exciting. So after three days there, we came home and he was in tears and sooo tired. Finally, he’s napping now and hopefully will be in a good mood when he wakes up.

On Friday, I got there at 5 pm and met Bob in his office and we went home and had a pizza dinner. Bob spent many, many hours reading books out loud to Vince.

On Saturday, our most exciting day, I went to Poet’s walk with Edda and then we all went to the Red Hook Playground for a picnic. Then we went to the Bard nursery school’s year end party and hung out there for 2 hours eating cake.

Yesterday, we painted on the sidewalk.

Vince painting on the sidewalk.