Our Condo Search and Packing Up

I know this post is EXTREMELY long, but once I got started I couldn't stop, there is just too much to tell. I should have probably split it into two posts, one for the condo stuff, the other for the moving/packing stuff but I figured, you all can just read at your own pace. There are basically two large sections. If you want a good view of the videos, I would make sure you have QuickTime player on your computer, only because Windows Media Player flips some of the videos.  Enjoy!

Packing up and Preparing for the Move
The first 4 months of 2013 were the busiest I have ever been in my life and things really didn't slow down until 2 weeks after we arrived in Singapore. Yes pharmacy school was difficult, but that was more like a marathon over 6 years. Yes it was busy planning our wedding but that was over 9 months and I could do it a little at a time with a little sprint at the end. Preparing for this move was more like a sprint for 4 months straight and on top of the move, I was taking care of little Adriana and continued to work part-time until mid-March. Mark was also extremely busy at work getting things ready for the transition of his position and still traveling. I knew we would be busy, but I did not fully comprehend the magnitude of it until April when a lot of it hit at once, which will make more sense below.

One of the most important things we had to do in these four months was to say good bye. We will come home to visit once a year, but we will go to Dallas where the majority of our family is. Then Art, Nancy and my parents will fly down to be with us there during our visit. So there will be many of you we will not see at least for the next 3 years or so. :(  We want to thank all of those who organized farewell gatherings for us (I think we had 5 or 6 total!) and for those who made the trip to our house to say good bye. We are so lucky to have such support and love surrounding us! So sorry if we didn't get to see you before we left, as it was impossible for us to make it to everyone with the strain of the move.

Here are some facts that I think will be helpful when reading below:

• Move date: May 8th
• We didn't get a confirmed move date until February, so it was hard to plan some things until we knew when things were actually going to happen. We were given a range of April-June 2013 and that is all I knew for awhile. I was frustrated but ITW really did their best as they had to move some people (and families) around to get all positions covered.
• Shipments to Singapore
• We had two shipments going to Singapore, one by air and one by sea. The sea shipment had to be anything large we wanted to have in Singapore as the air shipment was only a 5'x5'x5' container that was to carry any essentials we needed in Singapore prior to the arrival of our sea shipment (takes 6-8 weeks by sea).
• Sea shipment: April 19th, estimated to arrive mid June (still not here yet!)
• Air shipment went out 2 days before we flew out (May 6th) and estimated to arrive by May 10th (2 day air with time allotted for export and import).
• ITW hired a relocation company, Xerox, to take care of all of our needs for the move and they were great! They answered any and every question we had, even how to transport the dog (sad face). They were "in charge" of the overall relocation and then they contracted out with other companies/services to get things done for us. For example, they hired the moving company.
• One of ITW's goals in all of this is that we do not financially "suffer" from this relocation. So they pay our rent in Singapore (~$6000/month for our little 3 bedroom condo!), they pay a certain amount of our utilities based on how much we used to pay in Ohio, they adjusted Mark's salary for the increased cost of living, and of course anything associated with the move (movers, shipments, plane tickets, etc). They also gave us a certain amount of cash to account for moving expenses upon arrival (furniture, appliances/electronics, driver's license, etc).
• Adriana's First Birthday on March 28th! Had to include this as it was a fact I had to throw a party and it couldn't be just any party for this special little blessing! Yes, I know, she won't remember it and I probably just should have let it go or done something low key with all that was going on, but I just couldn't. You only turn ONE once and one day I will proudly show her the videos and pictures!

So here are some details about the move based on some questions we have had from many of you:

1) ROXY!

I will start with Roxy as I am still struggling with not bringing her with us. I said this was going to be like a journal for me, so here I am writing down my thoughts and the reasons I keep going over and over in my head why she isn't here with me now. I miss her so very much, especially on nights like tonight when Mark is traveling.

One of the first things I started working on in January was getting things set up for Roxy to make the move as we had to follow some strict rules in Singapore to get her into the country and the timing had to be just right for her rabies shots, rabies titers and her export certificate from the USDA. Plus we had to book her "room" for quarantine well in advance to guarantee her a "good" spot. Well, after spending much of the month of January trying to get these things started, we found out it was going to cost us $6,000 to have a company called Air Animal transport her. We looked into other companies but they were all around this price. This includes the vaccines, transport to and from airport, care needs during the layover, the 10 day quarantine services, etc. We could have opted to do it on our own and it would have been cheaper, however, we then could not guarantee many things including her care on the flight and what would happen to her if we had a flight delay. Now looking back on it, thank God we didn't do it on our own as who knows where she would have stayed the night we were delayed and had to stay over in Tokyo. We just couldn't take the risk with her care, or justify the cost, money that could be put towards Adriana's college fund. Furthermore, we really weren't sure how she was going to handle the flight. The vet did approve her for the trip but she is 12 years old. Also, she absolutely hates to be locked up in a room let alone a crate. So yes, Roxy stayed in Ohio with Art and Nancy, a home she is very familiar with--she spent the first several years of her life here and stayed her while we vacationed. It really is a dog's paradise-out in the country with lots of room to run and a doggie door to come and go as she wishes.

2) What happened to our HOUSE and CARS?
All of the vehicles were sold: My parents bought my car, Mark sold his car on autotrader, Ryan got the truck, and the motorcycle is still up for sale (let us know if anyone is interested!). On May 5th, it really was crazy, we went from 2 cars and a truck to none of them all within 24 hours. That was a bit WEIRD not to have a car! Thanks to Mark's Dad for letting us use his car until we flew out!

As for our house, ITW recommends you keep your house and rent it out, just incase there is a situation where you have to move back to the US on short notice. We selected a property management company and ITW is paying the fees for this. So we continue to pay our mortgage for our house in Ohio and they pay our rent in Singapore, so really no difference for us on this end. It was so hard to leave this house. I know it is just a house but its the first house we bought together, the house we came home to as newly weds, and the house we brought our first baby home to. Lots of memories there and we will miss it and Springboro!

Below is a link to the rental listing of our house on the property management website. I thought I would share this for those who have come to visit us, because it is so weird to see the house empty! There is a video on there if you scroll down. Isn't it so weird?!  (If you haven't come to see us , its just an empty house).

Click link below to see video/listing:
Our Empty House! :(

3) How do you PACK to move across the world?
The packing we did really wasn't the packing you think of when you think of moving because ITW hired a company to actually pack the stuff. What we had to do was purge and categorize everything into five categories: sea shipment, air shipment, storage, donation and trash. In some ways it was wonderful to not have to worry about packing, but in other ways it was really difficult for me. First, who wants complete strangers putting their things in boxes? But once I saw what a good job they did and the stress it took off of me, I was glad they were there. Second, I had to put the house into the categories above and it was difficult to do this. I was worried something was accidentally going to go into storage that was suppose to be shipped. We first cleared out the basement and sectioned it off into storage and sea shipment. Once the weather got nice, I parked my car in the driveway and my side of the garage became sections of sea shipment, storage and donations. So as I went through the things in each room, I put them into these piles. Each room had its piles, but some of it could not be done until the last minute, in order to keep the house livable.

I would say about 90% of our things went into storage. We couldn't bring our furniture as there was no way it was going to fit in the condos over here. Really the only furniture we brought was Adriana's nursery. I wanted princess to have her room over here! We also left behind most of our electronics because not only are the outlets different (that can easily be fixed with an adapter) but the voltage is different: US uses 110volt/60 hertz system and Singapore uses 220volt/50 hertz system. Really we only brought our computers (they are made to handle a wide range of voltages) and Adriana's baby monitor because I love with it and couldn't part with it (by the way, I found it over here but who wants to buy it again!!).  Most of our cold weather clothes also went into storage. We only brought a few weeks worth of warmer clothes for our visits home at Christmas.

Here is a pic of the outlet here. Each outlet has its own switch for energy saving and safety. This Mama likes it! ;)

The day the movers arrived for the sea shipment (April 19th), I felt like we were in pretty good shape, I just had a few last minute things in the kitchen to go through. It was a different story the day they arrived for the air shipment (May 6th). This day marked the beginning of some pretty high stress and low sleep that lasted for about two weeks until we got to our condo in Singapore and started to feel settled. So back to May 6th....it was only a few days before we flew out and stress was naturally high. I will never forget the way Mark and I looked at each other when the we heard the moving truck pull up in front of our house.  You know the look Macaulay Culkin gives in Home Alone when he realizes he is home alone?

Yeah, that's it! haha!
Well this is the look Mark and I gave each other that morning, May 6th when our air shipment was to go out and they were to start packing our things for storage. We didn't feel ready and it was like, well, ready or not here we go! I felt totally unprepared, but the movers eased my worries when they said we were more prepared than many people are. I guess when its a move like this you can only do so much!?! I had a few hours of some anxiety that morning as they started moving through the house and it got more and more empty. I really just walked around the house, thinking I was doing stuff, but really I was just pacing from room to room. After a few hours, I did calm down and called Tammy to come pick up Adriana so I could focus on what was going on. THANKS AGAIN TAMMY! :) Also, my lovely neighbor Amy brought us over some lunch! THANKS AMY!

The next day, May 7th, started better as everything that was left in the house was to go in to storage, so that part was easy. This day actually got more stressful as the day went on because we flew out the next day but had to drive to Springfield as we were staying at Mark's Dad's house since ours was gutted and they could take us to the airport.  It took a lot longer than we thought to finish cleaning out the fridge and cleaning of the island in the kitchen as it had become a catch all over the past few days. Little did I realize how much junk was on that island. Once again, my lovely neighbor, Amy came to the rescue and helped! The car seriously looked like we were moving to college with all of the luggage plus we had kitchen items to give to Art and Nancy. On this day I learned some lessons for our next move:

• I will not stay in the house up until we move. I will get a hotel room for a few days if not a week before. There were just too many last minute things to take care of with the food in the kitchen and other items of daily living that made this last day chaotic. Some of the things I needed to do to pack up would have made the house unlivable, so I should have just booked a hotel and got the stuff done.
• I will not pack up everything for storage and fly out in the same week, let alone within 2 days! I would have rather had them pack up our stuff for storage a week or so before the flight, even 3 or 4 days before and I could just live in a hotel off of the stuff in our luggage and air shipment. We did it this way as this is how the relocation company recommended we do it, but it was all too last minute for me.

Other things we had to take care of included. medical appointments, setting up our Wills and updating life insurance policies, Adriana's passport, etc. but I won't bore you with all those little details. I was just happy we took care of this little stuff in advance! 

Our Condo Search and Selection
Another task during these months was to search for a place to live in Singapore. We started the process during the December visit but the goal at that time wasn't to find the actual place we were going to live, it was   to get a good idea of what the apartments/condos were like here and to see some of the different neighborhoods to help narrow down our search later. When we asked where are the bad neighborhoods, the response was, there isn't really a bad part of town, which was good to know. Other things we had to think about were the further from city center the larger the space we would have and the quieter it would be, but it would be less modern/older condominiums and less convenient to get around. The closer to city center, the smaller the condos with more city noise, but here you would find more modern condominiums with the convenience of the city's transportation systems closer to you (Taxis, bus, MRT (subway)). We ultimately decided to go for the condos closer to city center, but not right in the downtown. We thought, if we are going to live in a city, we should just do it up big and live in the middle of all of it. Plus, I knew I would need the ease of getting around and connecting to the city when trying to navigate around with Adriana while Mark was working. So we knew we were on the search for a condo close to an MRT station---its a lot easier to get on the MRT with a stroller than on a bus and I was not up for taking Adriana in taxi's with no car seat (that is what many do here). 

Surprisingly, many of the modern condos are all built with the same basic layout with differences in the smaller details. They all had the following: Entry into the main room which served as living and dining, with the kitchen off of that room. Behind the kitchen was the maids quarters which included a very small bathroom for her use, the laundry area, the bomb shelter and the back door to the condo (this is where deliveries and service men come in when needed). Then the other direction off the living/dining area was a hallway back to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Some places had one balcony, some had two (two is good for a cross breeze if you live on a high floor!). All had pools, workout facilities and playground for the kiddos. Ok, so let me explain a few things:

1) Why do they have bomb shelters??? Yes, this was an immediate question of mine as well and concerned me. I quickly found out that it is a government regulation to have bomb shelters in all households for public protection.  Like any large city in the world, Singapore can be a target for terrorism due to the large amounts of people in one spot. This does not mean that Singapore is at any higher threat then any other country or city, its just the government's way of protecting the public (so no need to worry, Mom!). Many times the bomb shelter is used as a pantry or as the actual room the maid sleeps in (this is sad as it is not even big enough to put a twin size bed in!). We are using ours as storage/pantry space. If you want to learn more about the bomb shelters and see a pic, click this link: Click for more info on the bomb shelter

2) Maids?
It is very common for people to have maids in Singapore (also referred to as foreign domestic workers, helpers, etc). Most come from the Phillipines and Indonesia and are willing to work for very cheap rates. They take care of everything from cleaning, cooking, to going to the grocery store and child care. At this point we have opted not to have a maid, just because I am not working. If I go back to work, we may consider part-time help.

We also had to decide if we wanted to go with a furnished vs. unfurnished condo. The first apartment we saw was furnished and it immediately turned me off from going with this option. The furniture was "tired" looking and I don't mean to sound stuck up, but I just wasn't comfortable using furniture others had used and abused, especially couches and mattresses. Ironically, we ultimately got a furnished apartment as Mark found one that was basically brand new (only used by one other tenant), the couch is leather (so I can clean it) and the mattresses were clean (plus mattress covers are a wonderful thing!). Here is why we went with the furnished:

1. If we did not go with furnished, we were going to have to temporarily move into a service apartment, which is basically like a souped up Embassy suites with a fully equipped kitchen including appliances, dishes, silverware, pots, pans, etc.They were very nice, but we did not want to have to move twice, especially for Adriana's sake and well being. We wanted to get her settled and familiar with her new home. 
2. We would have to seek out and buy furniture ourselves, which would extend the time it took to get settled which is so important when trying to learn a new culture and navigate a large city. Yes, it would be fun to buy new furniture and pick everything out on our own (for me at least), but for the short time we are going to be here, it just wasn't worth it as we would have to sell everything when we move back in 2-3 years. While we can find convenient ways to get the basics like groceries, clothes, and decor, buying and moving large pieces of furniture just isn't convenient for us here.
3. $$$Money$$$ As I have said over and over, it is EXTREMELY expensive to live here and the furniture prices are outrageous. ITW did give us a large sum of money to account for these costs so we could buy furniture, but if we don't spend it, then its ours to keep. ITW has taken care of us and adjusted Mark's salary to account for the increased cost of living, but it doesn't account for me not working and we do have a daughter we need to send off to college one day! So once we stumbled upon the new furnished apartment, it was a no brainer-save the money and take the convenience of having your furniture upon arrival! No service apartment needed!!

Now that we have arrived in Singapore, I realize going with a furnished apartment was one of the best decisions we have made yet in this whole process. I cannot imagine having to settle in again to another place and uproot precious Adriana again. She has settled in very happily and is eagerly exploring and enjoying her new home. We like refer to as Hurricane Adriana! She leaves a path wherever she goes! It is so priceless watching her find and discover new things!

Below are some interesting differences in the Condos here. At least this stuff is new to me, other large cities may do the same things, I have just never lived in a large city like this! There are actual pictures of our condo below and I know! I know! many want a video tour, but I am not quite ready for that yet. Our sea shipment isn't here yet, so I'm not feeling like showing a full video until we are more decorated and cleaned up! :) There is a video below of our actual condo BEFORE we moved in, so read on...

1. The Kitchen
• Kitchens are enclosed and many have a door as opposed to the modern day American kitchen that is commonly open to the great room and the center of the home. The closed off kitchen is built due to the fact that Asian cooking involves a lot of oil, spices and fish, all which can make for some unpleasant odors over time. By closing off the kitchen the odors are minimized in the rest of the condo. (You can see them in the videos below)
• They don't use microwaves here and they rarely bake, so some of the kitchens only have a stove! WEIRD! We got our landlord to include a new microwave for us and we made sure we picked a place with an oven, but it is a small one! It can fit one 9x13 dish in it at a time and it is quite interesting to figure out how to use it (more on that in another post).




• Many of them don't use dishwashers, so we had to be sure we got a condo with one. I am super pleased with the one we have. If you ever came to our house in Springboro, you know how much I hated our dishwasher b/c of the noise and only ran it when we went to bed. I love our new one!! Its basically silent, only the sound of a trickle of water. 
• They are very much into energy saving and thus their is a switch for everything, even to turn on the hot water to the sink, the gas for the stove and the power for the dishwasher and oven to run. The set of switches in our kitchen:

• Some of the kitchens we saw were seriously the size of a closet. Sorry, no pics of those ones, wish I would have got some but it was a must to have a decent sized kitchen. Many people here don't cook and just eat out all the time and if they do, they only use the stove and a small slab of counter space to do it. Take a look at the size of the refrigerator in "The Trizon" video below. Obviously some do not store a lot of food in the home.
2. The Bathroom
• Many homes do not have baths in them, just showers. We thankfully got one with a tub for little Miss Adriana.
• They basically have no outlets in the bathrooms. They have a built in hair dryer like you see at a hotel that has a few outlets in its console, but the outlets are weird and some say "for shavers only". I still haven't figure out how I will flat iron, if I ever get the guts to straighten my hair in this humidity!
  
• Again to save energy everything in the bathroom has a switch including the hair dryer, the jacuzzi jets and the water heater for the shower. At first, I was a bit hesitant with the water heater for the shower, b/c who is gonna remember to turn it on? So I wasn't sure if I would just leave this switch on all of the time, but turns out, some of the water does stay warm with the hot temperatures outside so if you flip the switch at the beginning of the shower, you have enough hot water to get your shower started and the heater quickly catches up with you. So, I do turn the water heater on and off, besides it saves money and I would feel guilty if I wasn't trying to be environmentally friendly now that I have the option.
• 
• For some reason all of the bathrooms have windows in them and most are huge windows. Some are frosted, but many are not. Some of them didn't even blinds up in them. They also commonly have a trough off the bath or shower outside to put plants in, then you can open up the window and bath beside the plants with the breeze blowing on you? Haha, I can't see myself doing that here not only b/c of privacy but b/c I would sweat as I was showering! There is also commonly a space between the shower and window to sit and steam yourself while glancing out the window, I guess? LOL. Thankfully we have big blinds in our bathroom as there are huge windows in there, but the windows do make it nice to see when putting on make up! :)
1. The Bedrooms
• Nothing really unique here except b/c of the tight space, there really are no dressers. The closets are big, have a few drawers in them and also have big cabinets above them the whole way to the ceiling for storage. I am sure missing our old walk in closet! I am super surprised at the lack of closet space here b/c many of the ladies I see out walking around make quite the fashion statement. Hopefully I will pick up some fashion sense over the next few years! :)



• Private Elevators (Referred to here as "lifts")
• I love this aspect it makes getting to our condo easier. I honestly was dreading having to use an elevator to get to my home, but this actually makes it much better. No walking down long halls and such to get to our place. You get in the elevator and when it opens, you are home!! Another awesome safety feature of this is that ONLY WE have access to our particular floor. So another resident in the same condominium who lives on the 5th floor cannot get to ours on the 18th floor. You swipe a little badge when you get on the elevator and it will only let you select your floor. I love it! There are three towers in the whole condominium and only two condos per floor, so there are two elevator shafts-which allows the elevators to open up to only one condo on each floor. 
• When the elevator opens, you enter our private foyer, where you take your shoes off. This is another part of this culture that I LOVE! You always remove your shoes when entering a home, we even have to remove our shoes when we enter the church nursery to keep the little crawling babies clean. Love the cleanliness!! As you can see in the video, this is where we store all of our shoes and thank goodness we have room to do it here, because we surely don't in our bedroom closet! I am still waiting for many of my shoes to arrive in the sea shipment! ;)

• The Air Conditioning (Referred to here as "Air Con")
• Each room has its own air conditioning unit just above the door to the room. Again, energy saving, so you turn off the air conditioner if you aren't using it. We actually turn off the air to the main part of the condo overnight and just leave the units on in our bedroom and Adriana's. They are all controlled by remote control. 
  



Here are three videos Mark took when we were doing the condo searching. These were our top three:

The Trizon

Rhapsody

The Latitude--Our new home! This is the actual condo we picked below:

A view of the entire condominium from the outside (we obviously didn't take this, its just off the web)

Adriana's new playground, she obviously has to grow into it, but she does love the slide already!

This is the Kiddie Pool

I will post some other pics of the outside of the condo in another post!

So the Latitude is the condo we ultimately chose. We looked at 12 condos when we came out in December and then Mark looked at 18 more when he flew back out in April! It was quite the task, but happy we put so much work into it because we are very happy and comfortable in our new home. We did downsize from our house as the condo is about 1605 sq ft (this includes the two balconies) but the space is very functional and livable. Its also very contemporary, which I love! We picked this one in particular for many reasons including its proximity to the grocery and a mall which are both within walking distance, proximity to bus stops and the MRT (subway), its only about 2 miles from beautiful downtown, the fact that it was furnished with new stuff and then also smaller details like the size of the kitchen, storage space, the private lift and a bathtub for Adriana. 

That's it for now..........next post will be about Adriana's big plane ride so you can see her air bed!!

Miss you all very much!