This little coastal town called Marion

Seeing that it was a sunny and beautiful day on Monday, we decided to leave the car at home and took a walk around the town...but not without my camera of course!

This town may be little but it has got big charms! Enjoy the photos.

Gone are the concrete jungles

I've lived in Singapore for the last 34 years of my life. I've gotten so used to the high-rise buildings, skyscrapers that it's kinda weird to have vast open views of the sky...totally unblocked by tall buildings. I've almost forgotten how blue and clear the sky can be.

Surrounding our new home is a beautiful garden...lovingly cared for by my landlords before they left the house to us. And behind the house is a small woods where little animals lurked.

Everyday, we'll see little squirrels and rabbits hopping around in the garden. It's obviously a common sight to the residents here...but we were so thrilled the first time we saw a bunny in the yard...and we still are.

According to my neighbour, she had seen wild turkeys too!! Hopefully, the turkeys don't pick a day like thanksgiving or x'mas to run amok.

With nature so close by...it's not hard to smell the roses everyday.

Our new home - Part 2

So this quiet little town that we've decided to live in has a population of just slightly over 5,000 people. However during summer, due to the attraction of the sun, sand and sea, the population would swell to over 20,000.

This beautiful Victorian-style house that we've rented was built in 1905. It has a living area of over 1,800sqft and a gross area of 3,300 if including the porch, deck, storage areas and wood. Such a house would easily cost over USD700,000 to purchase and yet the rent is relatively low. With the same rent that we are paying for this house, I doubt we'll even be able to rent a 4-room HDB flat back in Singapore!

While the house is over 100 years old, it is not dilapidated at all. It appears that much remodeling and renovation works had been carried out by the various owners over the years.

Given that the landed properties in Singapore are so costly, we can only dream to live in such houses. I'm happy that we've got this chance to enjoy this charming century old house at least for now.

Here are some photos of the house that I'd like to share with you. The credit goes to my landlords who obviously have great tastes in home furnishings and decorations.

Our new home (for now)

We arrived in the states (Logan Intl Airport, Boston) on the 12 August 2009.

Having stayed in various hotels for the first couple of weeks of our arrival, we are very happy to have finally found a place to rent in this small town called Marion.

And this will be our home for now.

Why the long silence

It has been many months since I last wrote here. Please pardon my tardiness as I had been too bogged down with stuff. So much has happened in the last 3-4 months! Almost life changing events I should say....

First, RG had decided to take up a short overseas stint. And since the both of us will be away for awhile, we decided that perhaps we should sell our apartment as the "fruit seemed ripe for picking"! Being the DIY sort, we decided to market the apartment on our own. Much work had gone towards that - decluttering, cleaning, researching, advertising, answering phonecalls, arranging for viewings etc. We even done up a blog with photos and details of the property. Luckily for us, we managed to secure an offer within 3 weeks! You can't imagine how happy we were to be rid of one major task.

At the same time while we were trying to sell our apartment, we decided to look around for a small flat to purchase. We figured it'd be better to still have a place that we can stay in whenever we are back in Singapore.....and we also need a place to keep our furniture and stuffs. We managed to find a place that we really like and within our budget after 2 weeks of intensive house hunting. But as the flat is really old, we had to do quite some renovations which was yet another big task added to our already long list of to-dos.

Then we had to pack. My goodness....the packing was the worst nightmare. We didn't realise how much stuffs we had gradually accumulated over all these years...until we started to pack. We filled up boxes after boxes after boxes.....it seemed like the packing was never gonna end. I was starting to lapse into a depression just waking up every morning and not looking forward to having to continue with the packing. When we realised that there was just too much to pack....we started to dump. Oh we dumped like we've never dumped before....the poor cleaners must have had a hard time emptying trash cans after trash cans of our stuffs.

We had to think about our flat renovations and finding a contractor while juggling all the other tasks at the same time. The old flat had quite a weird layout and we killed countless braincells trying to think of the best configurations for the fixtures in the bathroom and the kitchen. And finding a contractor that you can trust is like the next hardest thing in the world! We decided to go back to the one that we had engaged previously to work on RG's brother's home even though his quote was slightly higher than the rest. We decided safe is better.

Then we hadto sort out our visas, air tickets, hotel accommodations, car rental and a gazillion other things for our big move. We were also worried 'cos our overseas accommodation was not finalized. What if we can't find a place to stay? What if rental is very expensive? We almost went crazy with all the "what-ifs" going through our minds. But everytime I started to get a panic-attack....I kept reminding myself of the chinese saying - "the boat straightens itself when it reaches the harbour".

My next big headache was what to do with all my big chunky furniture? You see, we were moving from a 1625sqft apartment to one that's barely 580sqft. Most of my furniture were designed and built for huge homes. I figured that I could take 5-6 pieces the most of the existing furniture over to our new place. The rest will all have to go. So, I decided to hold a garage sale. I posted in various websites about the sale of our furniture and the response was just overwhelming. But coordinating the viewings/collection of all the furniture wasn't exactly easy and it took quite a lot of time and effort but we eventually sold all of our furniture.

One of the last things on the list was RG's car. We had to keep the car till just before we left as we needed it to run errands and transport stuffs. As with our apartment, we also decided to DIY the sale of the car. We posted the photos and information on a used car forum and immediately after our post went online, RG's phone started to ring non stop till he almost went berserk. He managed to sell it to the first person who came to view and test drive the vehicle. I think RG felt a sense of loss as he had grown very attached to it. I have felt the same about our apartment. It was when I realised detachment is the hardest thing to do.

So for the past few months, we juggled and juggled the gazillion things. It's amazing that we are both still sane. We even found time to meet with our families and closest friends to bid farewell. And finally, on the 12 August, we gave our home the last longing glance before closing the door behind us and then we left the apartment....and left Singapore.

Airfares - Cheap! Cheap!

Just heard from my gal friend that she booked her Emirates airtix to Melbourne for only $403!! I couldn't believe my ears and decided to check it out myself:

http://www.emirates.com/sg/English/destinations_offers/special_offers/special_fares/special_fares.aspx?id=425575#425575

Fantastic deals indeed...if you are planning your travels for these couple months. Only slightly over $700 to travel to numerous european cities and $424 to Brisbane. For my last trip to BNE, I had to pay $1.1K.

Damn I really wish I can afford the time *sob*

About passports....

Both RG and I had to renew our passports recently for our impending trip. I'm holding a S'porean passport while he's holding a M'sian one.

It used to be so much of a hassle to renew the M'sian passport. One would've to go to the consulate at least 3 times just for renewal alone. And it'd take days (even weeks) before you get your M'sian passport. That's why we were pleasantly surprised to find out during our recent trip to the consulate that RG could apply and collect his new passport on the same day! We almost couldn't believe our ears when we were told that. While that's definitely a great improvement in service quality...RG was disappointed that the M'sian government no longer issue the 64-page passport. The new ones are all 32-page and cost RM300.

For my case, I applied for my new biometric passport via mail. And I got a notice within a few working days to ask that I collect my new passport at ICA. Everything was done in a fuss-free manner. My only complaints are that the new biometric passport only has a 5yr (+) validity and it's 64 pages unlike the old passport which was 96 pages. But I'm grateful to have a S'pore passport...'cos we've visa waiver arrangements with so many countries (unlike RG who has to apply for visa to most of the countries i.e. China, Japan, USA etc.)...and at least the S'pore passport is much cheaper than the M'sian passport (SGD70 as compared to RM300).