8/26/12 - Back Home

I got off the plane Thursday evening and at immigration in Singapore went through the line that said "Welcome Home."  Not sure if the "home" part has fully sunk in yet, but its getting closer.  At the very least it sure helps at immigration that I can just scan my passport and thumb print and be on my merry little way.

What is helping on the home front is the condo really is coming together.  Here's the little mini tour with a moderate level of comments from the peanut gallery/editor in chief.

Dining room/study area.  The teak bookcase in the background  was left by the owner and was custom made in Indonesia.  Hoping to be able to find some similar items to bring back to the States when our tour is done.

Can you tell a full-time student lives here and has claimed a spot to study?  As Sarah says, school went from 0-60 MPH over night.  Or 0-100 KMH for those of us still trying to learn to speak metric (thanks US school system for not making that an innate mental calculation).

Living room and balcony - essentially where we spend the rest of our time.  Project #1 today is to do some cleaning.  Project #2 is set up the TV that is sitting on the floor in a box.  We can then move the TV the size of a computer monitor to our room.


The badger football has regained a prominent position in the living room!  I just need the Thanksgiving Turkey Day trophy now.  I did meet a fellow Badger at a party at Sarah's school last night.  He's from Indonesia, has been living in a India for awhile and knew more about what Mike Wilkinson and Kirk Penney were up to than I did.  So he just scored an invite for when basketball season starts.  And yes I realize those two names are probably meaningless to most people, but sure made me smile.

Kitchen is just a touch smaller than our previous one, but if you were to chart out its time usage about 80% would be to make coffee.  The market across the street has fresh produce, but only until about noon.  So to get that from a cooking standpoint would involve us being a little more active in the mornings on the weekend.  We did make it over there to eat the other day and the ramen soup with dumplings in it for $3 might be my new favorite lunch.  Both of us even finished our bowls with chopsticks and spoons only - progress is being made.

Our bedroom is the coolest room in the house - literally.  Its the only room where we run the air con each night.  Otherwise you are constantly going between cooler and warm and humid and is shock to the system.  Sundays, however, are the day of the week we run them in the other few rooms just to keep them working.  So once it really heats up today its off to the pool and then a little air con in the afternoon.

Thats about it.  The bathrooms are outside....... just kidding, there is a master bath as well as a guest bathroom and guest room.  We're all set up for visitors.

Speaking of visitors, Sarah got her first visit from a gecko last week and I'm on ant destroying duty.  Apparently they are just a way of life here.  We'll see if a little American ingenuity can't keep them at bay.