At around the same time as we were looking at one of the 20+ Bishan Loft apartments, we decided to spread the net by viewing apartments in Dover. Dover was equidistant between my parents and CS’s parents.

Dover Parkview: The first place we viewed in Dover was at Dover Parkview. The 12 year old condo was older, a slightly retro feel, but had very nice wide and green grounds. Unfortunately the bulk of the units there were 2-bedroom units, while we were in the market for a 3-bedroom unit. One unit almost made me consider living in a smaller place though – the 2nd bedroom was a charming extension of the living room when the folding doors were opened. The master bedroom was also a fairly good size. There was no storeroom though, and the current owners had built a huge 6 feet storage cabinet that ate into the dining room area to store things – and I’m pretty sure we have more stuff than that!

Heritage View: Just next door to Dover Parkview is Heritage View, our next stop. In contrast to Dover Parkview, the 10 year old Heritage View has more 3 bedroom units than 2 bedroom units and didn’t show its age as much as Dover Parkview. And it was here at Heritage View that we wanted to buy, and live. It had a lovely shared swimming pool and barbeque pit area, with some ground floor apartments looking out to the swimming pool or elsewhere with a small patio. The pool was nicely landscaped, with jacuzzi, lounging areas, wading pool areas – it would have been a blast to sit around reading on the deck chairs, or host a bbq at the pool.

The apartments were also really nice – our ideal unit would have been a 1,313 sqf apartment, 3 bedrooms with a very large master bedroom, and a little study area / nook between the living room and bedrooms. We fell in love with this layout, and planned to knock down one of the kitchen walls to extend the small kitchen into the nook with a bar counter. We could get a king-size bed in the master bedroom. We could build floor to ceiling bookshelves in the wall of the nook. It was a walk to the MRT, but not an impossibly long walk. And it was just a little, only a little, beyond our budget.

We viewed maybe 5 units at Heritage View, trying really hard with our agents to secure a unit. But the asking prices weren’t budging, and our budget wasn’t increasing as the recession meant no pay increments this year or big bonuses. By May, we had put in firm offers on 2 apartments. For one, we were the highest bidders, but the owner decided to sell to a friend. For the other, the seller refused to budge downwards from his asking price at all and we had recalculated and recalculated and really put in an offer that was our responsible maximum. With some hindsight, we had missed the boat on Heritage View while we took a short break on househunting in April – a few units had changed hands in April and early May, and sellers were sensing the momentum in Heritage View had swung in their favour.

As for us, we were out of luck, low in spirit, and asking God, “When?”

In the past 2 days, I’ve contributed to 2 envelopes of ‘white gold’ (the custom of giving a monetary token to the grieving family to offset funeral costs, etc).

Death surrounds. It is sad to think of the living left behind, who will miss you, who have to grow up without you, live life apart from you.  But the sadness is starker if the dead are gone forever, back to dust and ashes. It comforts me too when the dead are Christians, so that this is but a temporary separation, until we meet again in the courts of heaven. Death is a comfort, because you have gone home to be with the Lord first.

Death surrounds, but to the Christian, it is life after death that breaks through. Yet many I love do not acknowledge God as God in this earthly life, nor want to see Him face to face in the next.

Every day, 1,000 of my brain cells apparently die and are gone forever. So I thought I’d better get some details about our epic househunt down before I forget them all.

CS proposed in December 2008, and our wedding was set for September 2009. So we started house hunting more or less from January 2009. The property market had stalled after shooting up to the skies in 2007 and most of 2008, so we started looking for value in private apartments. Our criteria: affordability, location, space.

We first started looking in the Bishan area.

Bishan Loft - a 5 year old Executive Condominium that was my first choice for a long time. Close to Bishan MRT, close to a group of my friends, the bigger 3-4 bedroom units had a nice layout. Light and bright rooms, a possible walk-in wardrobe if we convert one of the smaller rooms, only 5 years old so not too much renovation needed aside from the fairly small and dark kitchens. We must have viewed 20+ units at Bishan Loft, and nearly put an offer down on a unit in March 2009 that would have sold for $100K more a short 6 months later when the market revived crazily again. We passed finally, because it was on the higher end of our budget for a condo that though it was only 5 years old, was starting to moult – the carpark floor had pits, the swimming pool had the feel of a public swimming pool, and we didn’t have family in close proximity to seal us there. I would have liked living in Bishan, and Bishan Loft would have been a fine place to live in.

Braddell View – We viewed 2 units in Braddell View, a 30 year old huge HUDC compound that is half private and half government owned still. It was like stepping back in time, into a Singaporean kampong enclave with proper sanitation. Lots of green, some lovely walkups, many huge units. Beautiful place to bring up children and have them run free. Facilities were rundown, but that wouldn’t be why you bought a place at Braddell View. At least 15 min walk to the MRT next to football field, even if all the agents claim it is only a 5 min walk. We passed on it because we don’t have kids, and concluded that you can only buy there to live forever because of the tricky land lease situation the estate is in – not fully private, so difficult 2-step process to enbloc; 60+ years left on the lease, so banks will not lend to interested buyers should we want to sell in the future.

Rafflesia – We saw one unit here in April, which was really asking quite a lot for a tiny apartment and tinier compound facilities. I am not a Rafflesian, so had no difficulties saying ‘Next, please’ to this.

Seasons View – This is not so close to Bishan MRT anymore, but we were running out of Bishan options. This was closer to Marymount MRT, like Rafflesia. We viewed one unit here, which unfortunately had a terribly small master bedroom. We would have viewed more units at Seasons View, but the agent never called us back.

Springbloom – From Bishan and Marymount, we moved up the circle line to Lorong Chuan.  Springbloom is a 10 year old condo right opposite the then newly opened Lorong Chuan station. The inside of the unit we viewed didn’t impress us terribly, but the grounds are large and lovely.

Chiltern Park – Next door to Springbloom is another 10-year old development Chiltern Park, with slightly kitschy “anglo-Saxon” names such as Windsor Tower. The towers were fairly low rise, and while the unit we viewed needed far too much renovation and was far too large for us, we were interested in seeing more units in this condo. Unfortunately again, not many units came up for sale during our window, and we ultimately decided against Lorong Chuan because it was not close to either CS’s parents or mine.

From here, we moved westwards!

Planning a wedding opened my eyes to a whole new world of pretty. Some of it was healthy and got my lazy gears going in planning a big party, but others just bred envy and sadness when I realised no, this can’t be done for our wedding because a) we have chinese parents who have expectations and b) it’s really expensive to get a temperate ‘look’ in a tropical climate with 400 guests.

Anyway. Today’s thought is on wedding colours: what, a wedding must have specific wedding colours? Oh of course!, say all the wedding blogs. (Also, my 2 lovely bridesmaids insisted that they wanted to wear the same colour in the same fabric, so that meant I had to pick a colour!)

After exercising mightily (surfing) on the World Wide Web, I had a number of inspiration pictures:

1) JCrew, I didn’t know how much brides loved you:

2) Hence, pink/blue/white. I learned about the existence of inspiration boards:

In the end, my girls picked pink dresses, that we went shopping for in Arab Street, much like in this inspiration picture:

My evening dress however was blue and gold, like these gorgeous earrings that I wished I had bought:

And all the above was a long winded photo slideshow of why I <3 this year's Takashimaya Christmas paper bags: Blue, with Live Laugh Love in pink!

A question that explores what it means to be a nation, or in my context, what it means to be Singaporean:

What would you choose – slower growth (i.e. smaller bonuses, lower wage increments, skylines that change in 20 rather than 10 years) or fewer foreign workers?

Growth in the Singaporean context, is accompanied by the influx of foreign workers. An army of foreign workers are working to build the F1 track, the 2 Integrated Resorts, and the many stadiums etc that will house the Youth Olympic Games – essentially the government’s bets for growth drivers until 2011. At the same time, as we are transformed by 6-8% growth every year, fewer Singaporeans want to clean the tables in hawker centres and drive our buses. Companies too, frankly, don’t want to pay double to get a Singaporean to wait on tables when there are mainland Chinese willing to take half that pay for the same job. All this contributes to an ever increasing population of foreigners in sunny Singapore – and some of them want to stay. All this is now well and good, but as we continue to grow, and the foreign population increases to support that growth, it is a logical conclusion that one day there will be more non-Singaporeans than Singaporeans in Singapore.

Would it still be Singapore?

A few thoughts:

1) Yes, if Singapore = Singapore Inc. But Singapore, a nation of Singaporeans? (That’s my real question.)

2) Does it depend on what types of foreigners outnumber us? I think it does. If they will one day become Singaporeans, if we can see them as one of us someday, with the ‘lahs’ and the same obsession over orh luak, perhaps we wouldn’t care.

3) Does it depend on how much Singaporeans benefit? Of course. In Dubai, where citizens are more or less wealthy, the majority of the population is foreign, but the citizens don’t mind. These foreigners do the jobs that allow them to lead the lives they want to live. A good number of Singaporeans are heartlanders though, who are not independently wealthy, and perceive some foreign workers as a threat to their livelihood.

In the end I think it is about assimilation, and the time taken for assimilation. We are after all a nation of immigrants, and my grandparents were at one point “foreigners”. If we can accept those who drive our growth and want to stay as “different, but like us”, and they can accept us, becoming more “like us, but still me”, then the definition of Singapore and Singaporean stretches – and we can have our growth and not be “outnumbered”.

But realistically? I believe it is difficult for 2 reasons: 1) Generally, human beings don’t really accept and assimilate so quickly. My grandparents were from China; my parents and I who were born in Singapore are Singaporean. It seems to take at least a generation for true identity formation and association. 2) Singapore is also handicapped by the fact that we don’t even now, have a very clear idea of what it means to be Singaporean. We are still identity-forming, identity-searching as a nation – it is not easy to demand MORE flexibility and change from us to accept those who speak different, look different, eat different.

So for me?

If I were a macro nation builder, I would ask for slower growth. Slower societal changes, so that we have more time TO change as a society.

If I were in government, I want my cake and to eat it. I’d probably lean for growth, so to point to a GDP number at least when the next election comes along.

But I am me, and I’m not sure what I would choose. I do like my nice fat bonuses in good years, but I also want to be proud that I am Singaporean and of my fellow Singaporeans.

Note to self: There is some conflation between nationhood and state/citizenship in the above. Must rectify.