I was thinking this weekend as we traveled around the city, enjoying ourselves in not crowded places (that are typically packed) that if you want to come visit us, now’s the time! (Relatively) cheap flights, everything’s open and the weathers the same everyday! Spring break anyone?!?
Actually all kidding aside, our awesome friends and family are quickly booking our summer up with visits. We can’t wait to see them and show off our temporary home.
This week we interviewed helpers. What a strange process that is. The tale is best told over a drink but our experience so far is agency=bad doing it yourself=good. We’ve made an offer to a lovely woman named Janeth who is from the Philippines. She currently works for an Irish couple who gave her rave reviews with the only criticism being, she might be too “frank” with her opinions. Being American, we’ve learned already that as a nationality, that is a trait we already posses (that drives people crazy sometimes). So we hope it’s a perfect fit. She’s also very religious, so maybe some of her catholic ways will rub off on our heathen children? Her contract with her existing employer is until may 1st, but we’ve agreed to transition April 13th. So far, so good. I’d be lying to say I wasn’t nervous to have someone live with us, but I’m also excited to relinquish the never ending laundry in the very small machine…
On Saturday we ate lunch at the Newton Hawker. Ella has a great video that I’ll be posting soon. Just need to figure out how to upload something that big….
Saturday afternoon, Liam went on a play date, Ryan napped and Ella teched out, so I took Avery to the pool. She finally found a friend her age (and an 8 year old sister). They only played for a short while but hopefully we run into them again soon!
That night, Ryan and I actually went out! A large group of women from the AWA were going to a brewery in Changi village. One of them, I remembered had a daughter who is a senior in high school, so we asked her to babysit. Score! We also were invited to their house before. They live in a beautiful shophouse on emerald hill. Emerald hill is a historic street off orchard (the biggest shopping district in Singapore). It is lined with shophouses that have been converted into restaurants, stores and homes. Ingrid’s home was stunning. I don’t have any pictures because I didn’t want to be creepy. Inside, it was 4 stories high, all wood. I really can’t describe it, other than to say it was just lovely and so different from our uber modern condo. We then took a party bus with 5 other couples up to Changi village. We had a fantastic time, met some interesting people and danced to a band playing music from the 60’s to the present day. We also had some good beer. It was an interesting concept. You buy a pre-paid card then “tap” the card at the beer tap you want and you pay per volume for the beer. Our full pours didn’t lend its self to bring a cheap night out, but it was worth it!
Sunday morning, Ryan and I played tennis together at the condo. He hasn’t played since he was a kid, but that didn’t stop him from being much better than me 🤦🏼♀️. Luckily he’s very patient and we had a good time. Hopefully it will help me improve my game as I am not very confident serving and with match play.
We then debated what to do and ended up reading down to gardens by the bay. This is typically PACKED with tourists. We went in both of the bio domes and played in the children’s garden with very few people. Both awesome and eerie.
We finished the night with dinner by the pool at the American Club. A pretty solid weekend.
The only sad thing is we decided not to go to Bangkok next weekend 😢 we’ve been trying to continue on with our plans despite the virus, but traveling to a city made us concerned. We’re not particularly concerned with catching the virus (though we probably should be since Liam touched all the straps on the MRT yesterday and Avery chews her MRT card 😬). The larger concerns are the potential downstream implications, if after our return, Thailand has a dramatic increase in cases (like what happened in South Korea and Japan). we could then end up in a quarantine which would be difficult for Ryan with work and the kids with school. For the immediate future we will probably try to pick smaller, “safer” travel locations. Instead, we are probably going to go to an island in Indonesia you reach by ferry and boat from Singapore. For spring break, we had wanted to go to Vietnam but will probably shift to Australia. Just trying to decided, reef or Tasmania… our life is difficult.
In the meantime, all is well in Singapore. We pray the rest of the world can say the same and we hope the US figures out quickly how they are going to handle the virus situation. The world is depending on it.
Nutmeggers in Singapore 