House Photos

Welcome to our house!

I'm going to a nursery in a few weeks to get some plants for the window seat.

The metal gate stays locked at night.  The main gate stays locked all the time.

This is our living room.  We didn't ship a sofa so we bought these at a local shop.  The window is a sliding glass door which opens to the front of the house - great breezes in the morning.

Our dining area which looks out the front window by the door in the photo above.  The alcove in the back is my office nook.

The kitchen!  The windows are louvered and look out to the wet kitchen in the back.  There are gaps which means that it can get hot in here.  We are going to buy a fan to help move some of the air con from the dining area into here when I cook.  

Wet kitchens are generally used for food prep, laundry and also washing dishes some times.  Some people use it for cooking so the smells and heat stay outside.  We cook in the main kitchen and wash dishes in there too.  But it is nice to have this space for laundry and not having to wring the mop out with your dishes!

This is the back window to the wet kitchen - no glass.  Roy just put up some mosquito netting.  It can get quite hot out here, especially if I am running the dryer.  

Roy's office is just off of the wet kitchen.  It is fully enclosed and has air con.  There is also a downstairs bath when you first walk into the wet kitchen.

winding stairs up to the bedrooms

The master bedroom has a little balcony just big enough for a cafe table and two chairs.  Great for morning tea. 

Built in wardrobes are nice, but they take up a lot of room and make our master feel very small.

The guest room!  Just waiting for the furniture and a visit from you!

This nifty little door is for our garbage!  Put it in the door and the garbage man can access it from outside your gate.  Keeps the critters out!

This is called a lipstick palm and is in the corner of our lot.  I want to hire someone to plant some grass around the base of it - our neighbors have a beautiful little corner like this that has been well cared for.

The guard house and park are across the street from our house.  There is a nice playground, badminton court and basketball court.  This is where the ladies do Tai Chi in the mornings and also I think a singing group.  

Grocery Shopping

Every Tuesday and Thursday the vegetable man and his wife come to our neighborhood about 730 a.m.  I discovered this one morning when Roy was headed to the doctor about 9 and called me on the mobile to tell me they were on the other side of the park.  I walked over and everything looked pretty picked over.  I got some kailan (leafy green like kale) and 1/2 of a cauliflower.  I found out when they came in the morning and resolved to be there on Thursday morning shortly after their arrival.  Thursday came and I got there about 7:45.  Well about 15 Chinese housewives and several Filipino maids had beat me there.  It was a bit chaotic and I got knocked back by an older women who I towered over.  I discovered that you pick up a basket and use that to get your produce.  They had lots of local veggies, eggs, soya, noodles, garlic as well as fresh fish.  I kept with some veggies and garlic.  Next to the veggie man was a motorcycle with a cooler on the back that had chicken parts in it.  I decided not to get my chicken from him though.

There are several large grocery store chains to choose from.  One is local and the others are foreign owned (French, British and Japanese).  One has lots of imported items and I can get things from the US that we miss.  Shopping is still a bit of a chore for me.  It takes me time to negotiate the store and pick out things that I can identify.  I look forward to understanding the language a bit more.  When you buy vegetables at most of the hypermarts, you take them to a stand in the middle where they weigh them for you and tag them. 

Same thing for most of the meat.  Some is already in plastic wrap, but a good bit is on ice for you to choose which pieces you would like best.  When you've made your selection you take it to the counter and they weigh it and tag it.  

Most of the stores have a non-halal section.  This is where you can purchase pork items and alcohol and things like refried beans which have been processed in lard.  

Generally I alternate between the local hypermart where I can get good deals on meat and vegetables and basic items and the market that has the imported items I need for making more western food.  Like whole wheat spaghetti, brown rice and mexican food items.  

Fruit has been a wonderful discovery here.  I have yet to try the famous Durian which smells like..., well it just smells.  It is even banned from hotels and airplanes!  But we have tried mangosteens, rambutans and snake fruit.  The mangoes from India are delicious and we are looking forward to trying dragon fruit.  

Food generally costs less than the US except for those imported items - did they really want me to pay almost $8US for Eggo waffles?  Eating out is inexpensive if you eat the local food - fried rice, fried noodles, roti (local flat bread).  You can get good Chinese and Indian food as well.  The satay we had the other night was amazing.  But if you go to a more western restaurant you can pay much more for a dinner.  There are lots of American chains here - all the normal ones and then a few more you wouldn't expect - like Tony Roma's and TGIF.  Walking through one of the local malls, if I ignored all the people walking by I could have imagined I was in the mall in Atlanta - with samples of Auntie Annies pretzels on offer.  

At home I rotate between cooking some of our western favorites and cooking more asian.  I'm learning to try new things and it has been a good adventure.  Darlene and Ian almost entirely eat Asian so I get to try new things with them and then give it my own twist at home.  

Cars and negotiating

We bought a car last week.  Roy went with Ian to several used car places in the north of the city and looked at those within our price range.  2nd hand cars are much more expensive here.  We couldn't buy anything worth driving for what we sold our Saturn for the in the US.  We decided to get a local brand which saves on the taxes for an import like Toyota or Honda.  We'd have loved to get one of those, but this will do for now.  

Negotiating is part of the culture here.  We learned that when we bought our bed and our friend admonished us for settling too easy.  She did the negotiating and even got the guy to throw in a couple of pillows.  Roy learns quick and so when we bought our couch, he negotiated the price down for us.  Ian knows the local language so he was helpful when negotiating our car price.  We had to wait until the wire transfer was finished so that we could pick up the car.  The car was supposed to have the car tax paid for a year and also insurance.  But "Uncle Tan" informed us when we picked it up that he only paid through December and we'd have to come back then and he'd take care of the rest of the year for us then.  We thought the car had an after-market cruise control.  But the next day we discovered some wires hanging down - come to find out then were for a non-existent cruise control!  We had them removed by our new mechanic.  He is a church member and we are grateful for his honesty.

Driving is interesting here.  There are rules and generally people follow them.  It's not like some other large international cities we've been in where chaos reigns.  But it is still a bit unnerving - especially the motorcycles.  Lots of people drive motorcycles and scooters.  More than one person on a bike at a time - sometimes three or four.  I've seen mom and dad and child on a bike.  Mom's skirt is hiked up and the child is in the middle.  Sometimes they all have helmets, sometimes they don't.  The motorcycles weave in and out of the cars.  You have to be really careful when you are changing lanes and sometimes even in your own lane.  They seem to operate by rules of their own.  

They will all congregate at the front of the red light waiting in anticipation for it to change.  Even if they were last in line to begin with, they will make their way forward through the stopped traffic to get a jump on the light.  One person said to not pay so much attention to them but just drive and they will take care of themselves.  Hard to do when you are going straight and they are turning right from the far left lane across your path!  

Driving is on the left side of the road here, and that hasn't been too much of an issue to get used to.  The only problem I've had is remembering which is the blinker and which is the windshield washer.  Oh, and where to grab for my seatbelt.  :-)  Otherwise it's pretty much the same.  I do have to be more aware of the left side of my car and realize that it's over there further than I'm used to - especially when making a left turn in a crowded street.  I haven't attempted to drive a manual yet, but hope to do that sometime.  

Our House

We moved into our new house just 2 1/2 weeks ago.  It's a little bit surreal.  It is a link house in the middle of a block across from a nice park.  It is 2 story with 3 bedrooms upstairs and 2 baths.  Downstairs is a living room, dining room, kitchen, wet kitchen, bathroom and a extra room that will be Roy's office.  It's going to be perfect for hosting people who come to stay and for having students over.  

A wet kitchen is a room off the back where often you will find the laundry, sometimes an oven and another sink for washing dishes and such.  It's usually open and feels like it is outdoors. We have a 12' wide window across the back with just bars and mosquito screen.  It's very hot back there.  But it is nice and big and I can run the dryer without heating up the rest of the house. Plus when we have lots of guests, we can wash 1/2 the dishes in the sink out there.  

There is no hot water heater in the house.  Each shower has its own heater which you turn on when you want to take a shower.  The washing machine heats the water internally when you do a hot cycle.  Each sink just has cold water - even the kitchen sink.  So washing dishes is a bit of a chore.  We have to heat water in the kettle and fill each sink half way.  Then we add cold water to each and soap to one and clorox bleach in the other for rinsing.  The clorox helps keep things sterile.  

I also wash all my vegetables with clorox water when I bring them home from the grocery.  Saves time when I go to cook later in the week and we can be more protected from hepetitis and typhoid.  Speaking of vegetables, this morning Roy called when he spotted a vegetable vendor on the other side of the park.  I heard that there was one in the neighborhood.  I went over and found a truck with most of the veggies already purchased.  they come at 7:30 a.m. on Tues/Thurs.  they have all kinds of vegetables for good prices.  So I bought 1/2 a cauliflower and some greens that looked like kailon (like kale).  the kailon is good for stir fry and delicious with oyster sauce and garlic.

Back to the house - we have air conditioners in each of the main rooms.  They turn on individually.  We try to keep the air off in the morning and just have the breeze come through the front sliding doors.  Every window and door in the house has bars on it.  The doors slide open and lock with a padlock.  There is also a gate at the front which we keep locked all the time.  The neighborhood has a security patrol and we pay about $50 a quarter for the security guards.  The patrol the neighborhood during the day and evening and at night they shut the gates to the neighborhood and only let people in with stickers or who have business here.  If you don't have a sticker, they will escort you to the place where you say you are going.  Seems like a good system.  They have less break-ins than most neighborhoods.  

the neighbors are very friendly.  We have enjoyed talking with them.  They also provide us with good information.  I am looking forward to having our things arrive so I can have people over to the house.  It is a bit bare at the moment!